TOT - Web pages design question

[The Natural Philosopher]

because that is what javascript was designed to do: update the DOM on event driven triggers.

[Johny B Good]

I've just tried it with Opera 12.02 (on a win2k box) and got the following:

"The whole point of this page is to check what happens when javascript is disabled you still have it enabled!"

When I disabled java scripting in site preferences and refreshed the page, I then saw the coloured bars (sans any of that text) responding to mouseover (except for the top bar wich remained unaffected).

Knowing Opera's reputation for being the most secure of web browsers by design (at least before they caved into the urge to rewrite it using webkit), I rather doubt it has a built in java engine at its core (BICBW).

[Mike Barnes]

To my mind there are many more differences than similarities. AFAICS a large number of pseudo-classes, possibly most of them, are not event driven, and none of them updates the DOM.

But without evidence this is all a matter of opinion, and you're welcome to yours.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its a matter of definition.

All css updates the DOM. the hover class attribute does it on an event driven basis, and that is the absolute requirement for javascript. That plus a script interpreter.

The script interpreter is what is disabled by user control, not the actual javascript underlying engine. Whether you consider that javascript is *only* the interpreter, or the interpreter *and* the internal libraries and mechanisms it uses, is up to you.

[John Rumm]

That css looks pretty standard to me. I guess NCSA Mosaic would have difficulty with it, but just how far back do you want to go?

[John Rumm]

I understand the semantic argument you are proposing, but I think its a bit misdirected.

The handing of the DOM is the task of the rendering engine (Gecko / webkit etc), and nothing to do with JS interpretation. The rendering engine can pass script content to a JS engine to interpret, and also provides an API to allow the JS interpreter to make changes to the DOM.

However to describe the rendering engine as "library" of the JS interpreter is an abstraction way too far IMHO.

There is a very nice description of the architecture here for those that are interested: