Learning JavaScript

Alternative Storage Techniques

To store larger cookies or more complex objects, previous applications have used a variety of hacks, including a LiveConnect interface between JavaScript and Java applets, or ActiveX controls. Another approach is to use hidden elements in forms to persist the data from form submission to submission. An approach gaining increasing popularity, especially with the advent of Ajax technologies, has been to use the Flash built-in persistent mechanism.

Communicating Outside the Box

Learning JavaScript never ends. Just when you think you’ve worked with all aspects of the language, something else comes along. It might be fun, it might not be fun, but there is more to this little lightweight language than first meets the eye.

As I mentioned in Chapter 1, JavaScript was originally intended to be one half of a one-two punch put out by Netscape: functionality created on both the server and the client browser, with communication between the two through an integration plug-in known as LiveConnect. Through LiveConnect, developers working with the newfangled programming language Java could interface directly to JavaScript on the browser.

Nowadays, most server-client interaction happens through Ajax, which is described in Chapter 13. But in those early times of technological exploration, LiveConnect was one sexy concept.

Much of the Flash/JavaScript early integration was based on this LiveConnect interface, though Macromedia eventually created its own scripting language, ...