Whenever I see the following snippet I never remember if its synchronous or
asynchronous and I have to look it up:
xhr.open('GET', 'example.html', false);
I think it would be much more readable if there were constants for Synchronous
/ Asynchronous:
xhr.open('GET', 'example.html', XMLHttpRequest.SYNC);
If authors wanted to "start using it now", they could add the flags themselves:
XMLHttpRequest.SYNC = false;
XMLHttpRequest.ASYNC = true;
... or they could do something like the following (since I think undefined may
become the default value asynchronous):
xhr.open('GET', 'example.html', XMLHttpRequest.SYNC || false);
This gets especially hairy when the user + password parameters are needed, and
there is a "magic" boolean in the middle:
http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/XMLHttpRequest-2/#the-open-method
Suggested values would be SYNC/ASYNC matching the spec's "async" boolean name,
or the longer SYNCHRONOUS/ASYNCHRONOUS.
Is this something that would be considered, or is it so easy for authors to
make it clear, with comments or variable names, that it is not worth it? Maybe
I just need to remember what that boolean means!
- Joseph Pecoraro
