David writes:
Hello, all.
I hope somebody in this group can either answer my questions or point
me in the right direction.
I write Javascript routines that do mathematical, floating point,
computations. I like Javascript because a person does not have to
download anything to their computer, and the source code is
viewable--making it easy to download and include in a "C" program.
However, a few people have told me they do not use Javascript for
security reasons.
I think javascript is pretty well confined these days, but abuse of
less secure incarnations has given it a bad reputation. Ask people
what their fears are and do a bit of research for them.
Can somebody please suggest some options for me.
1) I am considering JAVA (Don't the same security concerns exist for
JAVA as exist for Javascript?)
Java was designed with security in mind from the start. The
disadvantage of Java is that you can't guarantee that the Java plugin
is installed. Java is used more in servers these days, and recently
in mobile phones.
2) Should I consider PHP? (I don't know anything about PHP; what makes
it different from Javascript for creating dynamic pages?)
PHP runs on the server not the client, so wouldn't be good replacement
for javascript in most applications. It generates pages and sends
them to the client. To change a page requires that it is reloaded by
the client.
3) Should I consider something else?
Flash's actionscript is a version of javascript (more precisely, both
are implementations of the ECMAScript standard). No one worries about
flash security, and I expect it's installed on more machines than
Java. The disadvantage is that flash isn't free.
--
__o Alex Farran
_`\<,_ Analyst / Programmer
(_)/ (_)
www.alexfarran.com 
