Is easy implementation the same as good code?
Date : 2008 02 13 Category : Tech & Development
AjaxianI've just come across a solution for badges on web sites that makes it terribly easy for implementers. The idea is that the implementer could add a badge wherever they want in an HTML document, choose the look and feel and add a message to be shown. The implementation code is the following:
PLAIN TEXT HTML:<script src="badge.js" size="small" skin="blue">Brandname</script>
The badge script then replaces the script node with the badge using the settings defined for each script include. Clever, right? Well, almost. Security concerns and invalid HTML aside (the attributes - content inside a script is valid and should be ignored according to the W3C when a src attribute is present) there are many more issues with this:
you need to loop through all script nodes, read the info and create the correct badge - this can get slow the badge.js script gets called over and over again, even if it is only needed once (granted, it will be cached) every script inside a body makes the rendering engine stop, pull the src and try to execute either that or the content of the node - this makes for terrible performance.I've written up an example of how the above works and three alternative solutions that work around these issues.
What do you think? Should the ease of implementation be the success factor or the performance for the end user?