Javascript is cool and things we only dreamed of 8 years ago are now common. However, the trends are leaning towards writing tremendous amounts of application code for web sites and web applications that run client-side in the web-browser. Sites are using more and more animation and effects. Now [people are contemplating][0] how to do cpu intensive computations in web browsers.

There is nothing bad about this, but something that needs to be pointed out is that a wide range of devices will be accessing your website. Do you test on older, slower systems? Do you test on laptops and mobile devices? I can’t tell you how often I visit websites these days and hear the fan on my laptop kick in. (It just happened now, as I write this… someone just started a chat with me in gmail)

I’ll be honest, I don’t test as well as I should, but I do tend to notice when sites are cpu intensive because my laptop’s battery suffers greatly. I just don’t hear people talking about this topic, which concerns me a little bit.

[0]: http://www.julienlecomte.net/blog/2007/10/25/running-cpu-intensive-javascript-computations-in-a-web-browser/