Firefox and AJAX - my BUTT! Gimme a BREAK!

By
Yup. They've done it again. Asynchronous XMLHTTPRequest and javascript to load an XML Document "behind the scenes" in a web page and use it to update the UI. It's so absolutely innovative as a programming concept that they've even given the technique a new Acronymn - AJAX! Just like they gave REST it's name when all it really boils down to is simple RPC over http on the querystring, essentially. (Actually, Ajax was the son of Telamon king of Salamis. After Achilles, he was the mightiest of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War.)

Why do these people with their SOA's and their AJAX's and God knows what else feel compelled to do this crap? Sell more magazines, perhaps? Sell more software?

The problem is, XMLHTTP has been around for Internet Explorer since version 3.0. By Internet standards, that's ancient history. So now people have resorted to "reinventing" it to gain marketing hype and notoriety. In fact, the first "big" use of it was in Outlook Web Access, and it was written by the MS Exchange team. But, oh no! These Moz and Firefox people are gonna give it a brand new name -- as if they invented it. I only bring this up because I've been working on an all client-side RSS aggregator that I may roll into an ASP.NET server control, and I wanted to
see if I could offer support for Firefox in it.

Well, surprise! Turns out, they've shot themselves right in the foot: With Firefox, you can't even make a damned XMLHTTP request for a lousy RSS feed that's not in the same domain because they consider it a security risk.

Jeesh! Take your AJAX and shove it up your foaming cleanser guys! Boris sez, "Vee don't need no Steenking Acro-neems! Vee need PLAN dat VORKS!"
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous9:20 AM

    you should look into jsrs peter. it is, in contrast to xmlhttp and almost everything that ms releases, cross-browser and can be used in similar contexts...

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg11:40 AM

    I have used jsrs extensively, in fact Brent Ashley, its "inventor" has a link on his site to an article I wrote about it over 2 years ago on eggheadcafe.com. In this case, it is not Microsoft software that is having the issue at all, my post is about the fact that FIREFOX can't handle a cross-domain XmlHttpRequest for an RSS feed. MSXML does this just fine.
    Jsrs, while it is an excellent cross-browser solution, does NOT solve the cross-site security issue at all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:43 PM

    Wait, you're holding stronger security practices against Firefox? I understand your frustration, but I find it puzzling that you think IE's more lenient security measures are somehow superior.

    ReplyDelete
  4. peterbromberg9:01 PM

    here's the thing, friend:

    In IE, the USER can control this with trusted sites, allowing a legitimate web developer to provide a rich user experience. Firefox, can't do a thing. I believe in security; I also believe in innovation.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous6:01 AM

    I thought Ajax was just the name of the asp.net component that made it easier to access server side code, and not some marketing driven crap? Just wait for MS Atlas implementation to come out then you can expect to see some serious marketing BS.
    It is depressing to see so many Firefox fanboys wetting their pants over such an old idea finally making it into another browser.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous7:38 PM

    In the spirit of the post, what about the hubbub about SAS (software as a service). How many poor suckers are left with domains geared towards ASP (application service provider).

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6:04 PM

    sorry for my ignorance, but can't you make the RSS appear as an "in-house" resource by loading it throuhg an aspx file or ascx control?

    ReplyDelete
  8. peterbromberg6:24 PM

    Certainly you can. But that isn't the point. What if you want to build an RSS reader based on client - side code? You're screwed.
    At least in IE you can set the URL to be a Trusted site and you are good to go.
    The point of this whole concept is that THE USER, not the "Browser" should be able to make this decision.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Unknown4:16 PM

    totaly agree with you peter ... firefox sux ...
    now i am using a ajax click(trying to block cgi proxy website crap) and ... in a script it's send the info's throuth POST, and in another script ... hardly the same ie works, opera works, firefox watch from the other side of the fence =))

    i hate this situation when u are a web programmer and u need to create a site in a 3 ways perspective(ie, firefox, opera)

    if u know how to block cgi proxy website ... please send me a mail on google I AM DESPERATE !!! sorry for my english :))

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous8:46 AM

    An ancient thread, but I'm attempting to do this now and still no luck on FF2 or FF3, so I thought I'd comment. Yes, I remember 8 years ago in web school being able to bind an external *.xml or *.txt file to a regular HTML tag in IE. Must have been IE version 4 or 5.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some observations on Script Callbacks, "AJAX", "ATLAS" "AHAB" and where it's all going.

By
I've taken a more than cursory interest in the whole Remote Scripting (.NET species) vs. AJAX and now ATLAS discussion, mostly because I started using Remote Scripting since Microsoft first released it, and because I continued to refine it after seeing Brent Ashley's excellent work with JSRS, which was one of the first "real" cross-browser solutions back in 2000 (that's the turn of the Century for you history buffs). Now Bertrand Leroy, a Microsoft guy whose work I like , has authored some very interesting ASP.NET 2.0 script callback stuff that he points to on his blog, and he is obviously (at least, to me he is) involved quite heavily in the development of this new ATLAS infrastructure that they'll preview at PDC. Leroy's most recent post brings to the surface what I agree are the major differences between the "AJAX a - la .NET" approach as popularized by Michael Swartz with his AJAX.NET library, and Leroy's RefreshPanel, the ASP.NET 2.0 b...
Read more

IE7 - Vista: "Internet Explorer has stopped Working"

By
Image
This one was a bitch. All of a sudden for no reason at all, out of the blue, I get this dialog "internet Explorer has stopped working". I didn't install any new software, crap- I didn't do anything! So here I am using FIREFART to go on the internet and find out what to do! Damn! Good thing I've got the sucker on the same machine (I'm not "anti-Firefox", i just don't use it that much except to check my page renderings). The Fix The fix (at least for me): 1) Go into Control Panel, and choose "Internet Options". 2) Under the "Advanced" tab, press the "RESET" button at the lower right: Don't ask me why this happens, or why the fix works. That's a BUG, D00D - I don't care how you slice it!
Read more

FIREFOX / IE Word-Wrap, Word-Break, TABLES FIX

By
One of the most annoying things a developer (who would normally delight in writing code, not futzing with markup) can have is getting rendering issues between different browsers. The two biggest players are of course Internet Exploder and Firefart (as I lovingly like to refer to each). In most cases that's going to take care of 98 percent of your total site traffic. IE has had a proprietary "word-break" style attribute for a long time, and this made it into the CSS 3.0 spec. But that doesn't necessarily help you with Firefox right now. Firefox literally - (and I consider this completely idiotic, since it's been in their bug database for FIVE YEARS) does not have a reliable CSS style element to force table cell content to break in the middle of a word in order to stop the content from expanding your table / div off the page or over other content on the page. Here's a partial fix, which will work for most tables and browsers. The style declaration (I call it m...
Read more

System.Web.Caching.Cache, HttpRuntime.Cache, and IIS Recycles

By
Recently I chimed in on a newsgroup thread to an OP (Original Poster) who was questioning why he was losing Cache items. This individual would load a dataset from the Cache object into a local object to use to perform processing. He had been using httpcontext.current.cache and noticed that sometimes he was not able to get the dataset out of the cache. He tried switching to HttpRuntime.Cache and it seemed to help. The OP claimed that the application is under heavy hits, and once or twice every month he would see this error. He wanted to know why does the HttpContext.Current.Cache call work sometimes, while some other times does not. A couple of posters replied, one of whom is a respected MVP who usually makes very astute, high-quality posts. He posted," The cache is only valid during the life of the request. how is you[sic] code using the cache?" Somebody else (also pretty astute, usually) responded, "Cache is valid during lifetime of application not request.....". W...
Read more

FIX: Requested Registry Access is not allowed (Visual Studio 2008)

By
Symptom: in Visual Studio 2008, you attempt to add a new WebContentForm and associate it with a MasterPage. You receive an error dialog "Requested Reqistry Access is not allowed". Don't ask me what caused this; I'm guessing that the registry keys involved had their access denied due to removal of a previous version of Visual Studio, leaving the new guy (Visual Studio 2008) in the lurch. Here's the fix: Download "subinacl" here . This is a command-line tool that enables administrators to obtain security information about files, registry keys, and services, and transfer this information from user to user, from local or global group to group, and from domain to domain. After installing subinacl.exe (it will be in the C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools folder.), drop to a command prompt and run the following batch file, which you have saved in the same folder with the filename "FIX.bat": subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudi...
Read more