MAJOR RESEARCH/CREATIVE ACTIVITY SAMPLE #6
"The Practical Manager's Guide to Useful JavaScript Snippets," Computerworld, the news weekly for Information Technology Leaders, August 19, 1996 (simultaneously published on-line www.computerworld.com).
In December of 1995, Sun Microsystems and Netscape announced the availability of JavaScript, which is "an open, cross-platform object scripting language for the creation and customization of applications on enterprise networks and the Internet." In more simple terms, JavaScript is a programming tool for developing web sites and web site-type presentations readable on any computer, regardless of the operating system.
Because of my ongoing research into the presentation of journalism content on the Web, I became immediately interested in this new technology. I saw in JavaScript the promise of more customized web content and design possibilities. In the following weeks, I began studying JavaScript to learn how it worked and how it could be applied to my research.
Along with my study of the scripting language itself, I began searching for web sites that had begun to apply it. As I have found with other new presentation technologies on the Web, most of the cutting-edge uses of JavaScript were on commercial sites and on the sites of "aficionados" who were experimenting with it and self-publishing their work.
I pitched an idea for an article about the potential of JavaScript to several trade and consumer magazines. Steve Ulfelder, the In Depth section editor of Computerworld responded and asked me for more information. We talked about the possibilities and he directed me to write an article presenting some of the possible uses of JavaScript. He wanted an article that would present to working professionals actual JavaScript examples that they could immediately plug into their own Intranet and Internet presentations.
I searched the Web for as many possible presentation scripts as I could find. I had to consider the value and the effectiveness of each one. I tested each one to make sure it worked. I narrowed my research results down to six of the most appropriate and effective scripts and prepared the explanations and directions for finding them.
The resulting article became one of the first published presentations of the practical applications of JavaScript. In the three-and-a-half years since, JavaScript has become one of the most important technologies developed for the Web, driving the interactivity of the most cutting edge websites.