Recently I decided to move on with my web programming skillset, and see (at last) a little more modern approach that include much client side coding, with Javascript. The first thing you learn when studying such approaches is the XMLHttpRequest, which is used to send/receive data with the web server.
To aid me, i purchased the Head First Ajax
Imagine my suprise when in the first pages of the book i found this code?
function create_request(url) { var req = null; try { req = new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch (tryMS) { try { req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch (otherMS) { try { req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch (failed) { return null; } } } return req; }
In my previous article, I stated that web programming is a little chaotic (the way it is), and the problem is the diverse technologies that are used, among with the ad-hocracy of the browsers.
And voila, one more snippet to my wall of fame, which shows the rubbish approaches that are used in some implementations. Internet Explorer decided that he should have another way to implement the http functionality object and with two different ways, making the programmers, trying to initialize 3 objects in total, with nested try/catch statements.
I really do not know, which great business policy is served with this implementation … maybe I lack the big picture management thing that exists in the head of some people, that take those superb decisions.
