I studied web applications in the old days before the Javascript libraries and web application frameworks appeared. When I find time (which may not happen), I would not mind updating my experience with these more modern methods. However, if I wrote a web page with one of these modern packages, I would not want to combine something too modern for many user base browsers.
This leads me to some behavior that I have noticed on several websites with relatively smooth Javascript effects. One site where there was a problem is the Davis Vanguard blog , which uses Joomla 1.5. Another is MathOverflow. The most serious problem is that often, when I do something relatively simple, my laptop freezes for a few seconds, long enough for the user interface to look ridiculous, not a stain. At Davis Vanguard, all that is required is a top-down scroll on one of the discussion pages. In MathOverflow, this usually happens when I enter a response in the response field. But it’s possible, perhaps, to create a few seconds of freezing, even just by scrolling through the page of a popular question. (This happens after jsMath is displayed.)
I am running Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop and Firefox 3.0.19. One key to the problem is that when this happens, the system clock freezes along with the Firefox session. This makes me wonder if jQuery or Joomla or something will force DNS lookups now and then. Of course, I could upgrade my system to something more modern, and maybe I should. But this may not be just a solution if I wrote a website for use by other people.
A more general question: if I want to use the spiffy Javascript library, but I also want to avoid this kind of traps --- free UI delays, rendering errors, etc. --- What should you do? Is jQuery better than MooTools? Is it a question of using the Javascript library correctly or avoiding certain cross-functions? Is Ubuntu 8.04 Losing Time? Is it because Chrome has much better Javascript support than Firefox? Or should I blame DNS as provided by Comcast?
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