[mschwar99]

I think you'd find a site like stackoverflow to be a more helpful place to ask a question like this. Certainly there are JS experts around here, but people tend to be in a different mode when browsing HN and are more up for discussing tech at a 10,000 foot perspective.

Here is a good summary from SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2067472/please-explain-js...

To quickly answer:

1) Yes - Its the browser security model enforcing this rule and not anything directly related to the DOM. In theory the rule is in place to make cross site scripting harder. It is bizarre that there is an easy work around like JSONP, but I'd say lets just be grateful that it exists.

2) Common. Its a hack, but its also useful enough that its widely used.

3) Yes - thats proxying your data. Very common.

[iqster]

Thanks so much.