Question

I am using extjs4 to build a webapp that resides within drupal.
Many of my ajax calls are to menu items in a module within drupal.
The images my css directs to sometimes reside within my extjs folder, and sometimes in drupal.

A coworker insists that relative paths that use ‘../dir_a/’ are bad design, and are prone to risks.

Is this correct?
Is there another way?

My folder structure:

- drupal
   - v2 (extjs home folder)
      - css
      - extjs
   - sites
      - mySite
          - modules
              - webApp

My css files contain calls like these:

.x-action-col-cell img.restart-test-icon {
    background-image: url(../extjs/examples/sandbox/images/gears.png);
}

My applications has calls like these:

Ext.Ajax.request({
   url: '../webapp/tests/create/',
   method: 'Post'
});

Edit: Commenters have asked for clarification.
The coworker’s two main issue with this are:
1. “If the server side code will generate an address like /a/b/c without a trailing / you might have a situation where you get /a/b/c../d“
True? This sounds more like a server side problem.
2. “Have you seen anyone else using it?”
Which in my opinion is a very poor way to decide anything.
But I went ahead and tested some JS intensive sites (gmail, aws), using firebug and found no use of ../ in their JS or CSS.
Can anyone help me back up my claim that it’s perfectly OK?

Answer 1

a. “If the server side code will generate an address like /a/b/c without a trailing / you might have a situation where you get
/a/b/c../d” True? This sounds more like a server side problem.

I can’t think of any problem, if paths are well configured in your files.

b. “Have you seen anyone else using it?” Which in my opinion is a very poor way to decide anything.

It is a poor way, indeed (1). I tried the first website available (stackoverflow.com), see all.css included in this page:

.review-diff-bar .review-diff-bar-helper {
    background: url("../Img/diff-icons/full-html-diff.png") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent;
    ...
}

.openid-identifier {
    background: url("../img/openid-large.png") no-repeat scroll left center transparent;
    ...
}

this is a css, but the same applies to js files.

(1) info about fallacies like this one: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html