JavaScript
JavaScript Libraries Playing Nice with Others?
A common occurrence in Web 2.0 sites, and one that a recent Pingdom study notes, is the concurrent use of multiple JavaScript libraries. One explanation for this is that a required (more often desired) feature or widget may appear to only be available within one specific library.
The Evolution from JavaScript Hacker to Front-End Engineer
Image of the evolution of man.
Intro
I’ve been working on to add a reusable autocomplete functionality to forms YUI 2-based AutoComplete and began thinking of my professional development with JavaScript. I thought I’d share my experience moving from hacking JavaScript towards front-end engineering skills. I’m sure it’s not unique and perhaps this might help others moving on this path. I’m summarizing here, you won’t find detailed examples. Hopefully this will introduce some to the terms and topics of interest along this evolutionary path.
YUI Calendar Widget Wrapper
I'm writing a lot of simple JavaScript wrappers for YUI and jQuery UI widgets lately. Both of these libraries make adding widgets very easy with just a few lines of code. Over time, however, I'm discovering that I haven't written my wrappers to scale. Granted, when a new widget's added to an application it takes just a few seconds to add code to initialize it.
The first part of the remedy is to buckle down and do some research on common JavaScript widget patterns. Most commonly used patterns today involve rolling anonymous functions into the members of object literals.
Unobtrusive labeling of form inputs in tight spaces with jQuery
It's common practice these days to skip the use of <label> elements in simple forms. The most common example of this is a site's search form.
Javascript, Part 2
To do:
- Review other comparison blog posts and articles.
2006 http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UP3/Javascript+Toolkit+Comparison
2006 http://www.sitepoint.com/article/javascript-library
12/2007 CHART http://javascriptant.com/articles/24/javascript-libraries-by-comparison
10/2007 http://blog.reindel.com/2007/10/30/how-to-choose-a-javascript-framework/
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/05/09/is-your-javascript-library-standards-compliant/