JavaScript and CGI: General questions

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2002 at 11:22:50AM -0700, Ken Moffat wrote:
> Joel Hammer wrote:
> > This sounds interesting.
> > Will it make it impossible/difficult for people to steal your web site
> > content by just downloading the html and using it locally? It sounds like it
> > will.
> > Joel
> > 
> 
> 
> Yes, the code is generated by php, so all the browser sees is the 
> resulting output, which is not your source.
> 
> Python is also excellent, as noted by Richard. Just depends on where you 
> are comfortable.
> 
> -- 
> Ken Moffat

Seems to me there's a bit of confusion here.  The use of Javascript is
orthogonal to the use of Python for sure, and maybe PHP as well.  That's
because Javascript is executed by your browser and allows things to happen
there without further interaction (and delays) over the internet.  Python
for instance, is perfectly capable of emitting Javascript mixed in the
HTML; probably PHP can do this is as well.  They can be used together
because they do very different things, and do them at different places.

This is the disctinction between server-side and client-side programming.
Python is server-side, and your browser sees only what the Python program
outputs (HTML, XML, Javascript, binary images; whatever) and not the Python
source.  Client-side things like Javascript and Java applets have to be
downloaded for them to execute on the browser.  With Java, bytecodes are
downloaded, not the source, so it's moderately secure (but can be dis-
assembled to recover something very like the source).  With Javascript,
the source itself is downloaded, which is why you can enable/disable
Javascript at the browser.  You'll note that you cannot disable Python
or PHP, because they don't execute on your machine but at the server.

If you have a task you want done _at the browser_ you cannot expect to
satisfy the need with a server-side programming tool.  Javascript is
therefore going to be around for a while.

++ kevin



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