Google App Script: Google, drop the caja compiler!
69 views
Skip to first unread message
Dilvan Moreira
Nov 30, 2012, 10:42:31 AM11/30/12
to google-apps-develo...@googlegroups.com
Hi,
I used Google App Script to developer my App and we (and other people using it) where really hindered by the problems it has.
The most damaging issue was that, suddenly, almost all of jQuery UI stopped working (near the deadline!). We had to re-write all code that was dependent on it that resulted in code that wasn't as good as it could be. For instance, one of the judges said that we should have used Calendar Widgets to choose dates in our app (GTD Easy Task), we where using them! But we had to drop them because the jQuery UI Calendar widget stopped working.
But we consider the Google App Script a great idea. What makes it unusable is the Google Caja Compiler: "The Caja Compiler is a tool for making third party HTML, CSS and JavaScript safe to embed in your website. It enables rich interaction between the embedding page and the embedded applications.".
In reality, the caja compiler is a broken tool that shouldn't be in production. It is unstable (some things work one day and stop in the next, for instance jQuery UIs). But it isn't just that, it seriously and needless restrain the ability of developers to create really nice and useful apps: The compiler severely restrict the javascript constructs it allows. So one cannot use most javascript libraries (jQuery is supposed to be an exception but jQuery UI stopped work) and, on top of that, the caja compiler do not warn developers that it is deleting parts of the javascript code in libraries (if you try to load them) or user code. If Google feels that. for some class of user, the caja compiler will be useful, make it possible to turn it off for others.
The Google App Script can be a very powerful and flexible programming environment, if Google caja compiler is turned off, until then we are not doing anything new on it.
Dilvan Moreira
I used Google App Script to developer my App and we (and other people using it) where really hindered by the problems it has.
The most damaging issue was that, suddenly, almost all of jQuery UI stopped working (near the deadline!). We had to re-write all code that was dependent on it that resulted in code that wasn't as good as it could be. For instance, one of the judges said that we should have used Calendar Widgets to choose dates in our app (GTD Easy Task), we where using them! But we had to drop them because the jQuery UI Calendar widget stopped working.
But we consider the Google App Script a great idea. What makes it unusable is the Google Caja Compiler: "The Caja Compiler is a tool for making third party HTML, CSS and JavaScript safe to embed in your website. It enables rich interaction between the embedding page and the embedded applications.".
In reality, the caja compiler is a broken tool that shouldn't be in production. It is unstable (some things work one day and stop in the next, for instance jQuery UIs). But it isn't just that, it seriously and needless restrain the ability of developers to create really nice and useful apps: The compiler severely restrict the javascript constructs it allows. So one cannot use most javascript libraries (jQuery is supposed to be an exception but jQuery UI stopped work) and, on top of that, the caja compiler do not warn developers that it is deleting parts of the javascript code in libraries (if you try to load them) or user code. If Google feels that. for some class of user, the caja compiler will be useful, make it possible to turn it off for others.
The Google App Script can be a very powerful and flexible programming environment, if Google caja compiler is turned off, until then we are not doing anything new on it.
Dilvan Moreira
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages