Douglas Crockford

JSON is a universal data format. It provides an uncommonly effective bridge for moving data between systems and between languages. It is rendering the X in AJAX superfluous. JSON is also really simple. This talk will spend several seconds to fully explain the entire JSON language. There will also be a first look at a new JSON solution to the Cross Domain Problem. ... (more)

Kaleidescape - Give It a Better Image

Douglas Crockford's Blog DRM is sometimes called an enabling technology, in that it is supposed to enable new business models. But it is really a disabling technology. As DRM fails, there have been suggestions that the name be changed to something that includes the word enabling; give it a better image; something more right than rights. DRM isn't just a disabling technology, it is also a disabling contractual framework. To sell a DVD device, you must make a deal with the DVD Copy Control Association in order to use the CSS copy protection system that was broken nine years ago. ... (more)

Does XML Have a Future on the Web?

Douglas Crockford's Blog I was invited to speak at XML 2007 last month. I was given the topic "Does XML have a future on the web?" My answer was "yes." As evidence, I offered that there are still people selling Cobol compilers. Once this stuff gets into the enterprise, it can take generations to get rid of it. A more interesting question is "Is XML on the web trending up or trending down?" Clearly, it is trending down. For data transfer applications, XML is losing ground to JSON because JSON is simply a better data transfer format. And XHTML has failed to displace HTML in the mark... (more)

Discoverer of JSON Recommends Suspension of HTML5

"There is much that is attractive about HTML5," says Douglas Crockford, known to millions of developers as the discoverer of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), the widely used lightweight data-interchange format. "But ultimately," Crockford continues, "the thing that made the browser into a credible application delivery system was JavaScript, the ultimate workaround tool." The problem is that there is what he calls "a painful gap" in the specification of the interface between JavaScript and the browser. The result? XSS and other maladies. The responsible course of action, Crockford... (more)

Douglas Crockford on JavaScript Security: Durable Objects

Yahoo! User Interface Blog Cooperating applications, such as mashups, must be able to exchange objects with robust interfaces. An object must be able to encapsulate its state such that the state can be modified only as permitted by its own methods. JavaScript’s objects are soft and currently the language does not include any means to harden them, so an attacker can easily access the fields directly and replace the methods with his own. Fortunately, JavaScript provides the means to construct durable objects that can perfectly guard their state by using a variation of the Modul... (more)