Here's another thing that bothers me. It's that people with Internet access at work spend all of their time on the Internet and not doing their job. It used to be video games, now it's web sites. I keep seeing this attitude in articles I read, and it's rather degrading to assume that employees will just ignore their jobs if something shiny comes along.

People are curious, and will explore interesting things, like the web. But like all other distractions, eventually they get tired of it and go on with their lives. The ones that don't are not the kind of employees that you want to hire anyway. People know what their jobs are, and will do them.

A little of the problem lies with the company. If an employee is bored, is not challenged with their work, then they'll goof off, no matter if it is the web or video games or reading or whatever. Ultimately, it is the employee's responsibility to do their job competently. Concentrate on earning their loyalty will solve more problems than trying to stop them from wasting their time on recreational activities.

Another topic. Almost a month ago I decided to learn JavaScript. Normally I'll buy a book, but if the need is low I'll try to learn it online. So I went to a couple of sites that had tutorials; not bad and good introductions, actually. But a little light on the content.

Then I went to Netscape and read their JavaScript tutorial and afterwards the guide. Relatively well written and organized, very much like a book. I still like reading from beginning to end, and dislike having to go through a maze of links to get to information that you'll miss otherwise. I don't want to read a book and miss out on the breakout articles and other ancilliary information. So reading a book and seeing all these links that have to be followed or otherwise you'll never get to those pages, is rather annoying.

A good example though, is the Annotated XML Specification. This was written by one of the authors, and is formatted as three panes. One is the main text, one is for table of contents, and one is for extra information. Hit a link in the main text and the writer's commentary shows up on the third pane. In this way you don't skip back and forth, and you'll get all the information while leaving the main text intact.

Let's go to a bad web example: Microsoft's JScript documentation. This consisted of a tutorial, which is actually quite good. It has JScript examples which don't work on Communicator (understandable, although you could easily write compatible code since the tutorial is mostly just the basics). But other than that, the rest of the information is scattered. The JScript Reference is just an index page where you can select a definition, hit a button, and be taken to a page with a short description of the object. Then you have to go back to the index page to choose another item -- a very cumbersome method if you want to browse everything. Articles on DHTML and programming using Microsoft objects are just that, articles. There is no real reference manual. Most disappointing, although it has a nice format.