There’s stupid on the Internet
General May 14th, 2008
Since Marc is preoccupied with the birth of his daughter, and isn’t around to witness the stupid I found on the Internet, I figured I would share it with ya’ll here.
Lately, I’ve been made aware that web pages that take in user input have started including JavaScript badges that delay typing into the form. These badges delay the focus, so even when the page is loaded and the form is there, you cannot start typing until they’ve loaded. This is the perfect place for asynchronous JavaScript — load the page, give me my input focus, and then load after-the-fact whatever you want me to see. I see this on campus with the Bluestem password page and the “Secured by Thawte” badge, but there are other examples in other places. Like GMail, for example.
When I loaded the GMail login page, I was delayed from typing in the login box while it loaded its news applet… which proudly proclaimed it had sped up the GMail loading process. Unfortunately, they were only talking about the post-login–to-inbox process. Maybe they should speed up their login page too.
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