Category: JavaScript
Best of JavaScript, HTML5 & CSS3 - Week of January 23, 2012
Posted on Jan 30, 2012
In this new series of posts, I hope to share the best links I found over the prior week on the topics of JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5. Those of you who follow me on Twitter or on Facebook may have seen many of these already, but it’s worth reviewing in case you missed some because, in my opinion, these are all posts you’ll want to bookmark for reference. Hopefully you find this a useful resource.
Continue Reading →What are the Best JavaScript Blogs?
Posted on Jan 11, 2012
As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am a voracious reader of all kinds of sites. My Google Reader RSS feeds currently aggregate close to 400 sites on a variety of topics. It took me years to build and refine a list of the best bloggers for ColdFusion and later for Flash and Flex. While I am not a total noob in JavaScript, I definitely don't have as deep a list of resources I currently follow related specifically to this topic. Yesterday, I reached out to my followers on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to see what resources other people follow and several people asked me to share the results - so here it is.
Please share some other sites you recommend in the comments. This list (to me) still seems light, especially on such a large topic as JavaScript. As a sidenote, all Sites are in alphabetical order (by last name where appropriate).
Continue Reading →Namespacing in JavaScript
Posted on Dec 14, 2011
One of the difficult things when transitioning from a traditional class-based, object-oriented compiled language like ActionScript or Java to JavaScript is that practices that were completely standard are now a matter of debate. Take for example namespacing. In ActionScript it would be completely ordinary and accepted to have a class such as com.rinaldi.portal.turret but in JavaScript, while that is technically possible, it is also both atypical and, apparently, not recommended. However, namespacing is especially important in JavaScript as the dynamic nature of the language and the lack of a compiler can easily lead to collisions. Nonetheless, there are multiple approaches to namespacing in JavaScript and, from what I could gather,no universally accepted standard. In this article, I will discuss what I have learned so far in terms of namespacing approaches and how to avoid variable and functon collisions.
As in my first article on prototype inheritence, remember that I make no claim on being a JavaScript guru. In fact, if you are a JavaScript guru, I’d love to hear feedback to clear up any misconceptions I may have. I am just sharing what I am learning as I go along.
Continue Reading →Understanding Prototype-based Inheritance in JavaScript
Posted on Dec 05, 2011
Recently I started on a quest to learn JavaScript, and I mean really learn JavaScript. Sure, for many years I have hacked around in JavaScript. I even did a good deal of work with jQuery in my past (in fact, some of my most trafficked posts to this day are jQuery posts from a few years back). However, this time I wanted to approach it from the standpoint of actually understanding the language rather than just hacking together some cool DOM manipulation. In doing so, I found my first mental block was trying to understand the concept of prototype-based inheritance that JavaScript uses and, following on that, getting a grip on the dynamic nature of the language.
This will hopefully be the first in a series of posts where I share my experiences trying to learn serious programming in JavaScript. Keep in mind that I make no claim on being a JavaScript guru. In fact, if any JavaScript gurus read this, I’d love to hear feedback to clear up any misconceptions I may have. I also will try to provide comparison examples, which will be generally in ActionScript since it’s what I know. Hopefully sharing my experiences will help any of you who may be taking a similar journey.
Continue Reading →jQuery Workshop - John Resig at FOWA
Posted on Mar 03, 2010
My experience at FOWA Miami 2010 ended with an afternoon workshop by John Resig covering jQuery that went from the basics of jQuery for those unfamiliar into some more advanced techniques. John described jQuery as a library that is designed to simplify the interaction between HTML and JavaScript. Essentially its intended to "route around the craziness of the DOM." John wrote it back in 2005 when he was working on an application but was tired of dealing with cross-browser issues. The goal was that one day you could code your application in one browser and it would work in all browsers (it doesn't route around CSS issues but jQuery doesn't change that).
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