693 items tagged “javascript”
2007
The Zimki Plan. Zimki is a hosted JavaScript application server by Fotango. The idea is to open source it, then build a component so developers can seamlessly switch to hosting on Fotango’s server farm if they need to handle a spike in traffic.
Sumo! A Generic Microformats Parser For JavaScript. Dan Webb’s BarCamp talk on Metaprogramming JavaScript will be a must-see.
Live DOM Viewer (via) Neat tool from Hixie that provides an insight in to what browsers are actually thinking.
The window.onload problem (still). Peter Michaux offers the most comprehensive overview of this important topic to date.
Fork JavaScript. A great name for Yet Another JavaScript Library. This one tries to combine the best bits from YUI and Prototype.
MySpace: Too Much of a Good Thing? CSS customization really was just the result of forgetting to strip HTML. They “eventually” decided to filter out JavaScript(!)
jQuery 1.1. jQuery is one year old. The latest release features API improvements and some significant optimisations.
The JavaScript alert(), confirm() and prompt() functions in Firefox, Opera and MSIE (but not Safari) will truncate the message after any null character. So an unsuspecting programmer who inserts user-provided text into one of these dialog boxes opens up an opportunity for the user to rewrite the bottom of the dialog box.
AJAX Debugging with Firebug. Great Firebug tutorial from creator Joe Hewitt himself. I didn’t know you could trigger profiling from your own code using console.profile() / console.profileEnd().
Offline Gmail and Blogger Using the Dojo Offline Toolkit. These are just mockups at the moment, but they’re a useful illustration of how offline browsing modes for Web applications could work.
macrumorslive.com. The MacRumors ajax keynote coverage gets better every time—now they have live photos in addition to the text updates. Simple but effective.
IE JScript Performance Recommendations Part 3. Once again, Microsoft’s official advice is to avoid closures entirely rather than learn how to use them safely. Sigh.
The Dojo Offline Toolkit. The Dojo Offline Toolkit will be a small, cross-platform, generic download that enables web applications to work offline.
2006
Javascript character set screw-ups (via) Some browsers treat JavaScript files as having the same content-type as the page from which they are linked. This could cause problems with UTF-8 encoded JSON; the workaround is serving up ASCII with unicode escape sequences.
Why JSON isn’t just for JavaScript
Dave Winer’s discovery of JSON (and shock that “it’s not even XML”) has triggered an interesting discussion thread, on his blog and elsewhere. Plenty of people have re-assured him (and themselves) that it’s only used for JavaScript—it’s convenient in the browser but irrelevant elsewhere.
[... 787 words]Conditionally Sticky Sidebar. A nicer implementation of the trick I’m using for my add comment form; this one takes advantage of position: fixed in browsers that support it.
Create cross browser vector graphics. An accessible introduction to dojo.gfx, a powerful 2D drawing API built on SVG and VML.
YUI CSS Grid builder (via) The YUI CSS grid system can be hard to get your head around. This interactive tool makes it much easier to figure out.
Making GWT Better. Explains the philosophy behind GWT. It’s all about the tools!
GWT 1.3 Release Candidate is 100% Open Source. At least you can see how the code generator works now.
Java SE 6 Released. “Script engines” (like JavaScript, Jython and JRuby) become a first class citizen.
WYMeditor. A semantic rich text editor that appears not to suck!
Including Dojo, The Really Easy Way. Drop in a single include to load code on demand from AOL’s CDN.
Introducing the Technorati Link Count Widget. I’m trying this out; it’s pretty sweet. Nicely unobtrusive too.
Tamarin
On Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation and Adobe announced the Tamarin project, an open-source ECMAScript virtual machine based on the ActionScript engine used by Flash Player 9.
[... 380 words]Dojo 0.4 release notes (via) GFX (a 2D drawing API) is awesome; dojo.html.metrics looks extremely useful, and onDomLoad is always nice.
Browser JavaScript in Opera. Opera monkeypatches some sites, and auto-updates the patches once a week.
XMLHttpRequests using an IFrame Proxy (via) Another scary hack abstracted away by Dojo.
Notes on JavaScript Libraries
@media 2006 was a blast. Great talks, great people and some of the highest production values I’ve ever seen at a conference (check out the bags!).
[... 682 words]Fjax: Just say no
To my utter amazement, a decent amount of buzz appears to be building around a new “technology” called Fjax—much of it centred around this interview on Webmonkey, but also benefiting from a mention on the O’Reilly Radar and of course the obligatory Digg story.
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