> Having one library to rule them all doesn't drive things forward, a good example of this is when IE6 was the only major browser, browser development stagnated.
I think that's a poor analogy. Everything stagnated because no one could improve upon IE 6 - it was a proprietary browser which had no way to add in new functionality. This is very different from an Open Source project run by a community of people and companies interested in seeing it improve and strive.
> You mention you communicated with us? I'm not aware of this at all.
I had talked with a member of the team at some post-@Media event (I think it was @Media Ajax, maybe @Media proper). Maybe I'm mis-remembering who exactly but I've definitely chatted with a few people at the BBC about jQuery and Glow.
> Sizzle in Glow 2.0, although it's a bit vague about which browsers it intends to support. Would be great to know the details!
What I mentioned in the post still stands: It supports at least as many browsers as jQuery does. I'm absolutely open to accepting patches to fix any deficiencies in older browsers (same goes for jQuery as well!). I'd love to see Glow utilize Sizzle, definitely contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
How is the time and cost which of building and maintaining Glow outweighed by the level of page degradation that Safari 1.3 and other tiny niche users would have experienced (where it could not be mitigated by other page design considerations) using, for example, jQuery?
The Glow team itself is actually a very small team, even in BBC terms (which usually has small teams compared to a lot of companies). Add to this the in-house support they give to all of the other web products in terms of a library and general JS support and you have in effect a net gain in web producing ability - not a loss, so its more effective to do this and thus a more efficient use of BBC funds.
Perhaps you're not tied down to older browsers, so Glow has no benefit compared to other libraries, for you personally.
I'm a fan of the Radio 4 programme "More or Less", a review of stats in news stories. It's audience would seem insignificant compared to reality TV shows and soap operas, should the BBC scrap "More or Less" and reassign its budget to reality TV?
Would you say it's wrong that we support screen reader users, even though their numbers are small? Is time spent helping these users a waste of their licence fee?
No, we're happy to cater for minority users even if it means being behind other libraries. I wouldn't want other libraries to do the same, as they can be the choice for people who don't need the support of old browsers, and they can perhaps be faster and leaner for it.
Unless Glow is doing something nifty that jQuery is not other then supporting screen readers and older browsers.
This is not a matter of providing something people would otherwise not have access to. Safari 1.3 users would have been able to use the site without Glow, but their experience of it would have been a bit degraded. No doubt less so if a fraction of the time put into developing Glow had been put into finding the best ways to mitigate the page degradation. Safari 1.3 may have had its problems but it is essentially a capable rendering engine for the kind of page functionality the BBC uses. After all the BBC is hardly pushing the envelope for HTML & Javascript technology, nor does it need to in order to deliver its content.
I don't see that there is any serious business case for this amount of development to support this level of refinement for such a small group of users. The fact is that developers are in a luxurious position of following what appeals to their vanities rather than delivering value for public funds.
Someone mentioned the team was small. How many of them are contractors vs permanent? I bet they are not all permies. Even so, one permanent salary for two years is a heck of a lot of money to throw after a project replacing something which is 'good enough' and available for free.
Can you point to pages or features on the BBC site which, without the use of Glow, would render content inaccessible or completely unusable to Safari 1.3 users if jQuery had been used?
If indeed (as reading between the lines you appear to suggest) if a javascript framework needs to be hobbled to support screenreaders (good!) and obsolete browsers (bad!) then it may not be right to weigh in with one of the top frameworks. But you asked them first though right?
"More or Less" is great. But if commercial radio had a free-to-air program "Less or More" and the only difference was that you transmit at a frequency that's better for reception on crystal sets then I'd hope the BBC wouldn't bother but would add to the diversity of broadcasting some other way.
Selectors, DOM Manipulation, Events, Ajax, UI Widgets. At least it looks like it doesn't extend js primitives or DOM elements like Prototype and Mootools. It's sad that the BBC is continuing along this path despite the original reason for it... browser support... being a moot issue at this point. The JS world would be better off if they abandoned their support of their internal library and instead focused on using, supporting, and extending one of the existing open-source libraries.
jQuery is so open to user development and its plugin architecture lends itself nicely to the BBC team being able to add any functionality they feel is missing. I hope they at least consider dropping Glow and taking up jQuery instead.
Do you really think that picking up support for an EOL browser would be more time/effort/expense than developing an entirely separate javascript framework? Even given that others using the framework would also be interested in maintaining support?
What will have happened there is that library will have been branched for the BBC and then that branch needs to be maintained long term such that updates and patched have to be vetted and tested across our whole site before applied so they don't break this backwards compatibility. That starts to become a lot of work.
Plus you also now need to take into account that its not the BBC's project, its somebody else's and the BBC is just using it. For a big company with its own set of business objectives and varied project needs, its a risk to be relying on someone else's product. Its much better for that business to be able to steer its own products and have consistency between them and their road maps.
Please don't get us wrong. We did very seriously consider our approach. Its not a decision we took lightly. We sat down and rationalised all the options, risks and factors. If we hadn't have had some seriously talented JavaScript developers working at the BBC at the time, the decision may have been made for us.
You also did not need to branch jQuery, as if you had contributed to it then screen reader support would already be in its core now, or available via plugins. The point is, that with libraries that are truly open source like jQuery, all that work put into glow could have been put into jQuery. No branching necessary.
If jQuery chose to drop support for a browser you felt was necessary, you could have simply not upgraded to the next version of jQuery or complain about it and offer to do the work to make it compatible with those browsers.
Plus you would have been benefiting from the serious testing that the jQuery team puts jQuery through. All that testing and bug fixing is work the Glow team does not need to do, or at least bugs that the Glow team doesn't need to fix themselves.
I've used jQuery as the example here, because I feel its the best choice, but Prototype, Dojo, Mootools, ExtJS, could have also been good choices, though only Dojo of the four has such open contribution to the core as jQuery.
On a side note, something you guys may want to look into is concatenating, minifying, and gzipping your js and css files. It could reduce the js/css file size and number of http requests by as much as 2/3 on your pages.
Whilst it's very kind of you to give your stuff away, I think it makes life harder for those of us having to choose which Yet Another Javascript Library to use.
At some points, we've been ahead of jQuery when it comes to new browsers. Basically because we were able to quickly patch and release in order to fix high-profile BBC pages. This isn't a criticism of jQuery, but it shows the benefit of us being devoted to the BBC.
The BBC will always have to support older browsers because of our users. I think it would be unfair to ask other libraries to hang back with us (I'd much rather they advanced actually), and I wouldn't want to be using a library that left us behind.
At the moment, our support table is actually closer to other libraries' than it has ever been, that support gap will naturally increase and decrease over time.
We're not trying to steal your thunder at all, although I can see why it may have came across like that. My advice to developers is: use the library which has the most features you require. Whichever you pick, request the features that are missing.
With all the libraries innovating and others taking note, the quality of all libraries increases. Having one library to rule them all doesn't drive things forward, a good example of this is when IE6 was the only major browser, browser development stagnated.
We're not about filling a void in the market, but filling a void at the BBC. We're open sourcing our efforts because we should.
You mention you communicated with us? I'm not aware of this at all.
Having said all this, we're looking at the possibility of using Sizzle in Glow 2.0, although it's a bit vague about which browsers it intends to support. Would be great to know the details!
http://groups.google.com/group/sizzlejs/browse_thread/thread...
Cheers, Jake.