Neil Roberts

More attempts to explain why people like jQuery

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:34:22 -0600

More attempts to explain why people like jQuery:

“The reasons:

Behavior driven development (BDD)

MVC + J

Chaining of actions

CSS Selector rocks!

No more checks for presence of an element

Aids development process”

None of these are reasons I would ever suggest to someone who is choosing a framework. As someone who builds large-scale sites professionally, I view all (except for #6) of these reasons as counter-productive. It is why understanding the gap between professional tools (YUI/Dojo) and hobbyist tools (Prototype/jQuery) is so hard for people on either side of the equation.

Writing a jQuery plugin

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:02:07 -0500

Writing a jQuery plugin:

Mike Alsup:

“This design pattern has enabled me to create powerful, consistently crafted plugins. I hope it helps you to do the same.”

I hate to say this once again, but jQuery is about syntax, not about programming. This article basically sums that up. It’s a lot of very basic concepts of JavaScript, but using a lot of custom notation. Either way, some of the stuff the guys advocates in this article I quite agree with.

A great run-down of ECMA 4 bug fixes

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:07:00 -0500

A great run-down of ECMA 4 bug fixes:

John Resig:

“The bug fixes to JavaScript came from a number of places. Generally, however, they have come about due to aspects being under-specified, causing confusion to occur amongst language implementors.”

Project Management Idea from Joel on Scheduling

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:45:05 -0500

Project Management Idea from Joel on Scheduling:

Joel Spolsky:

“If you wanted to ship in six months, but you have twelve months on the schedule, you are either going to have to delay shipping, or find some features to delete. You just can’t shrink the blocks, and if you pretend you can, then you are merely depriving yourself of a useful opportunity to actually see into the future by lying to yourself about what you see there.”

Joel knows his project management, and this approach is really neat.

AJAX Experience Write-Ups

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:44:49 -0500

AJAX Experience Write-Ups:

Sanjiv Jivan:

“Overall I’d say that the conference was pretty hard core with little fluff. My biggest criticism is that I don’t feel that there was enough open discussion comparing the obvious contenders and the pro’s and con’s of each. And that not all toolkits were well represented in the little open discussion that they had. The presentations were given in isolation without the hard questions being answered like why Dojo vs. GWT. vs Flex vs Ext vs JQuery vs. Prototype and when each library is the most appropriate to use.”

Overall just well written an a fun read. There’s sort of a messed up bit where he says that The Dojo Toolkit is a framework, but whatever. Can’t win them all.

Sometimes People Write Bad Code

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:37:23 -0500

Sometimes People Write Bad Code:

Jared Spool:

“Like most folks using the web these days, our user had the expectation clicking on the links would bring up a page with more content.”

Nothing special, just a gripe about how bad JavaScript ruins the user experience. This type of stuff is always worth noting.

Joel is a Manager

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:35:41 -0500

Joel is a Manager:

Joel Spolsky:

“We’ll get a programming language that’s portable and efficient. It will produce code for every web browser, and it will obsess about performance so programmers don’t have to. And they’ll never have to think about web browser incompatibilities ever again.”

I love Joel’s writing about project management, but I can’t recall a single worthwhile article he’s written regarding the actual languages. I think the last one he wrote was about some custom language they wrote. This article gets a lot wrong, mostly because of how out of touch this makes Joel look. For example, many of the current popular frameworks do have a single, cachable, location that can be shared among all pages that use it.

It's Like... Being a Tool

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:23:09 -0500

It's Like... Being a Tool:

Ben Nadel:

“When I code in jQuery I am overwhelmed with this feeling that things are just falling into place. It’s not like an adrenaline rush or anything - I’m trying to think of how to explain it… it’s like when you think of something really funny to say and you’re just waiting for your turn in the conversation and this feeling of anticipation builds inside of you; it’s like that; it’s like you have this anticipation of greatness.”

I’ve already outlined this attitude before. It’s the same reason that people like ordering drinks at Starbuck’s.

I'm on Ajaxian

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:01:49 -0500

I'm on Ajaxian:

Dion Almaer:

“Neil Roberts has written a piece on Dealing with the Flexibility of JavaScript which delves into functions that are overloaded based on signature.”

I can’t wait for people who haven’t read my article to comment on it!

I was at Google

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:47:06 -0500

I was at Google:

Leslie Hawthorn:

“We just wrapped up our third Summer of Code, and as with 2006 we invited mentors from all successful organizations to Google for our annual Mentor Summit.”

Let’s play “Where’s Neil”

Kudos for Dojo Developers

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:43:02 -0500

Kudos for Dojo Developers:

John Dorsey:

“Two separate Dojo toolkit projects have been updated. One enhances Dojo support for the Drupal PHP-based content management system, and the other provides an image gallery widget for the dojox.image project.”

It’s nice to see Shane O’Sullivan and Chris Barber getting the congrats they deserve.

Fun AJAX Quote

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:37:54 -0500

Fun AJAX Quote:

Brian LeRoux:

“Ajax is no longer an acronym. It ain’t always async, javascript nor xml. The ‘and’ part was right.”

Following the word “JavaScript” on twitter is a lot of fun.

The Crazy Function Signature of JavaScript

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:08:52 -0500

The Crazy Function Signature of JavaScript:

Me:

“JavaScript is flexible in almost every way, and many people end up either abusing the flexibility, or creating strategies of overcoming the flexibility that only create confusion and messy code.”

Revolutionizing the Web

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:58:47 -0500

Revolutionizing the Web:

Patrick Fitzgerald:

“Want to get your hands on some crazy delicious Web 2.0 venture capital, but don’t have mad AJAX skills? If you can copy and paste, you too can have a website that looks oh-so two thousand and six!”

Dojo Image Widgets

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:21:25 -0500

Dojo Image Widgets:

Shane O’Sullivan:

“The code is now part of the dojox.image project (dojox is the Dojo extensions project, for cool new code that may in the future make it into the core code base if enough people like/want it).”

I wrote zoom/scroll for one of my old widgets (that I need to update) that I mentioned to Shane quite a while ago. It might be worth brushing that off again and trying to get it into DojoX.

Some Very Quick Dojo 0.9 Migration Notes

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:16:40 -0500

Some Very Quick Dojo 0.9 Migration Notes:

Wolfram Kriesing:

“First things first, if your project allows you to migrate to 0.9 (you got the time to do it) - do it! It’s worth all the sweat and it might cost you some.”

It’s nice to see a third party making note of this stuff, especially since it’s more likely that there will be complaining, which I think is both useful and enjoyable.

Third-Party Dojo Writings

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:00:11 -0500

Third-Party Dojo Writings:

“Before I start covering more advanced topics, I’ll focus the next few weeks on the basics of the Dojo Toolkit. As such, the first topic that needs to be discussed is the work-horse of any modern AJAX application: the asynchronous calls to a website. There are 2 functions of importance in Dojo: xhrGet and xhrPost. But enough talk, let me show the examples.”

So this site just popped up on my radar and it looks like they might end up providing some neat articles about Dojo. It’s on my watch list now, and I’ll keep you updated with the interesting bits.

Use JavaScript Like it's JavaScript

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:06:46 -0500

Use JavaScript Like it's JavaScript:

Bob Buffone:

“P.S. Leave the Java coding standards in .java files.”

It’s an article under the guise of “performance optimization” but is really saying “don’t apply the constructs you used in other languages to JavaScript”.

(Via Tom Trenka.)

Messing With Images

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:04:05 -0500

Messing With Images:

“CVI equals to ‘Canvas Vml Image effects’. The CVI libraries requires no plugin or extension. The CVI libraries uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean and they work in all the major browsers - Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Opera 9+, IE6+ and Safari. On older browsers, they will degrade and your visitors won’t notice a thing.”

A neat little library to do JS-driven image manipulation.

First jQuery, now Prototype?

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:02:09 -0500

First jQuery, now Prototype?:

Prototype Documentation:

“But in fact, Class.create takes in an arbitrary number of arguments. The first—if it is another class—defines that the new class should inherit from it. All other arguments are added as instance methods; internally they are subsequent calls to addMethods (see below). This can conveniently be used for mixing in modules”

Great, Prototype has better OO syntax than Dojo’s messy dojo.declare