Latest entries in category 'JavaScript'https://www.b-list.org/weblog/categories/javascript/2016-05-05T01:48:21-05:00James BennettThings and stuff2016-05-05T01:48:21-05:002016-05-05T01:48:21-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2016-05-05:/weblog/2016/may/05/things-and-stuff/<p>I’ve been awfully busy lately, but also thinking about a lot of stuff. Since microblogging is no longer really a thing I have access to (Pownce, I miss you), that means doing periodic brain dumps, yay!</p>
<h2>Conferences and costs</h2>
<p>Over the past few months there’s been a pretty significant conversation starting about tech conferences and “paying” speakers (where “paying” typically means at least providing a free ticket to anyone giving a talk). Which is a topic full …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/The JavaScript knowledge gap2007-02-16T01:15:35-06:002007-02-16T01:15:35-06:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2007-02-16:/weblog/2007/feb/16/javascript-knowledge-gap/
<p>JavaScript is a paradox of a language. It has nearly universal availability in its target market — client-side Web scripting — and is a major component of “Web 2.0”, but very few people actually write or even really <em>know</em> JavaScript. Many “modern” web-development frameworks remove the need for that by offering direct translation from some other language to <span class="caps">JS</span>, or by offering “helpers” which generate and include JavaScript automatically. And even among the few …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Choosing a JavaScript library2007-01-22T05:38:27-06:002007-01-22T05:38:27-06:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2007-01-22:/weblog/2007/jan/22/choosing-javascript-library/
<p>Previously <a href="/weblog/2007/01/15/lets-talk-about-javascript-libraries">we looked at some objections to JavaScript libraries</a> and some possible responses. Now it’s time to ask a bigger question: do you need a JavaScript library, and if so how should you go about choosing one? I’m not going to recommend any particular library, because I don’t think there’s such a thing as one-size-fits-all in web development, but I can list a few things which are useful to keep in mind when making these …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Let's talk about JavaScript libraries2007-01-15T06:31:56-06:002007-01-15T06:31:56-06:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2007-01-15:/weblog/2007/jan/15/lets-talk-about-javascript-libraries/
<p>JavaScript’s got a bad rap; it’s the language everybody loves to hate, and the one language which, more than any other in the modern web developer’s toolbox, people will go to insane lengths to avoid writing directly (witness Google Web Toolkit, JavaScript “helpers” in server-side frameworks, etc.). Which isn’t fair, really, because (as I’ve said many a time) most people don’t actually hate JavaScript <em>the language</em>; they hate the buggy and inconsistent <em>implementations</em> of …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/I can't believe it's not XML!2006-12-21T02:25:22-06:002006-12-21T02:25:22-06:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-12-21:/weblog/2006/dec/21/i-cant-believe-its-not-xml/<p>As you may or may not have heard, <acronym title="JavaScript Object Notation"><span class="caps">JSON</span></acronym> <a href="http://www.scripting.com/2006/12/20.html#godBlessTheReinventers">came to Dave Winer’s attention today</a>. He is, quite obviously, of the opinion that this is just a reinvention of what people are already doing just fine with <acronym title="eXtensible Markup Language"><span class="caps">XML</span></acronym>, thank you very much, so what’s the point?</p>
<p>Of course, this ignores the fact that the Lisp folks have been making the same argument for years, wondering why there was this great pressing need to go …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Sniffle2006-12-18T01:07:44-06:002006-12-18T01:07:44-06:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-12-18:/weblog/2006/dec/18/sniffle/
<p>The other day, the <a href="http://blog.dojotoolkit.org/2006/12/15/renkoo-beeta-goes-public">Dojo blog</a> announced the public beta of <a href="http://renkoo.com/">Renkoo</a>, an “evite killer” which relies heavily on the asynchronous features of Dojo and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_%28programming%29">“Comet”</a>, the name that’s been given to the use of long-lived <acronym title="HyperText Transfer Protocol"><span class="caps">HTTP</span></acronym> connections to provide instant updates of state in event-driven web applications.
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<p>Except I can’t check out Renkoo in my browser of choice — Safari — because I get automatically redirected to their <a href="http://renkoo.com/unsupported.php">“unsupported browser” page</a>. They …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/The functional language that's right under your nose2006-10-11T03:54:36-05:002006-10-11T03:54:36-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-10-11:/weblog/2006/oct/11/functional-language-s-right-under-your-nose/
<p>Recently I’ve been getting an itch to learn a functional programming language. I’ve made a couple attempts on Lisp over the years, with mixed results; I can write fairly basic Common Lisp, and hack on Emacs a bit, but I’ve never advanced much beyond that. I’d been looking at some of the trendy, popular functional languages (well, popular among certain circles) like Haskell, OCaml and Erlang, when I remembered that I already knew a functional …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Django tips: A simple AJAX example, part 22006-08-05T10:17:00-05:002006-08-05T10:17:00-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-08-05:/weblog/2006/aug/05/django-tips-simple-ajax-example-part-2/
<p><a href="/weblog/2006/07/31/django-tips-simple-ajax-example-part-1">Last time around</a> we looked at how to write a simple view which processes a form and either returns errors or returns success, and then tweaked it slightly so that the same view could handle either a “regular” form submission (in which case it operates normally), or an <code>XMLHttpRequest</code> (in which case it returns <acronym title="JavaScript Object Notation"><span class="caps">JSON</span></acronym>).
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<p>Today we’ll look at writing the JavaScript side of it; for reference, <a href="/examples/ajax/1/">here’s the live example</a> we’re going to …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Django tips: A simple AJAX example, part 12006-07-31T05:34:00-05:002006-07-31T05:34:00-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-07-31:/weblog/2006/jul/31/django-tips-simple-ajax-example-part-1/
<p>One thing that’s come up over and over again in the Django <acronym title="Internet Relay Chat"><span class="caps">IRC</span></acronym> channel and on the mailing lists is the need for good examples of “how to do <acronym title="Asynchronous JavaScript and XML"><span class="caps">AJAX</span></acronym> with Django”. Now, one of my goals in life at the moment is to try to fill in the gaps in Django’s documentation, so…
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<p>Over the next couple of entries we’re going to walk through a very simple form, which will submit via <span class="caps">AJAX</span> to a …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Helpers, scaffolding, tradeoffs and other stuff2006-07-17T02:27:00-05:002006-07-17T02:27:00-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-07-17:/weblog/2006/jul/17/helpers-scaffolding-tradeoffs-and-other-stuff/
<p>In one of the very, very few coherent things I’ve seen him say in comments posted here and <a href="http://domscripting.com/blog/display/78">elsewhere</a>, one Lucas Carlson brought up the other perceived advantage of JavaScript helpers: <a href="/weblog/2006/07/02/django-and-ajax#c220">they save time</a>:
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<blockquote><p>Sure it is possible to add javascript helper functions to Django, and yes that would speed up initial development times and reduce bugs since Python is usually more terse than <span class="caps">JS</span>… even for expert <span class="caps">JS</span> programmers.
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</blockquote><p>I’m going …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/JavaScript, ORM and "hiding SQL"2006-07-04T11:58:34-05:002006-07-04T11:58:34-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-07-04:/weblog/2006/jul/04/javascript-orm-and-hding-sql/
<p>So <a href="/weblog/2006/07/02/django-and-ajax">my little rant on <span class="caps">AJAX</span> support in Django</a> apparently touched a nerve with a couple people; that means it’s time to write more about it.
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<p>One of the common points people have been raising, in comments and elsewhere, is that I shouldn’t rail against “hiding JavaScript from the developer” when Django’s <acronym title="Object-Relational Mapping"><span class="caps">ORM</span></acronym> already hides <span class="caps">SQL</span> from the developer; from the perspective of a server-side developer, <span class="caps">SQL</span> is just as important, right?
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<p>Yes, <span class="caps">SQL</span> is just as …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/Django and AJAX2006-07-02T20:30:21-05:002006-07-02T20:30:21-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-07-02:/weblog/2006/jul/02/django-and-ajax/
<p>One hot topic that keeps coming up over and over again on the Django mailing lists and in <acronym title="Internet Relay Chat"><span class="caps">IRC</span></acronym> has to do with when Django will get “<acronym title="Asynchronous JavaScript And XML"><span class="caps">AJAX</span></acronym> support”. There are two answers to that question; one can be stated with authority, and the other consists entirely of my own unofficial and non-binding opinion. Let’s start with the first:
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<h2>We’ve already got it, and more is on the way</h2>
<p>Doing <span class="caps">AJAX</span> with Django has always been …</p>
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https://www.b-list.org/about/copyright/The Google Web Toolkit2006-05-21T00:34:52-05:002006-05-21T00:34:52-05:00James Bennetthttps://www.b-list.org/tag:www.b-list.org,2006-05-21:/weblog/2006/may/21/google-web-toolkit/
<p>So Google went and released <a href="http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/">something that people are calling an “<span class="caps">AJAX</span> toolkit”</a> and, as so often happens whenever Google does something, the Internets are buzzing. But, in the long run, I don’t think this is going to be a game-changing move, and I think that should be pretty obvious to anyone who sits down and thinks about it.
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<p>The first question to ask about Google Web Toolkit is simple: who is it useful for? …</p>
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