The need for speed
4 Jun 2008 4:57pm GMT Another day, another incremental release of jQuery. This one is sporting 13% faster CSS selectors and 103% faster event handlers. Meanwhile, as the JavaScript libraries continue to evolve and improve, the browser engines are also focusing on speed improvements. Dave Hyatt and the WebKit gang have announced a brand new JavaScript engine called SquirrelFish. This looks like being about 60% faster than the previous WebKit interpreter so you can expect quite a speed boost in the next version of...
Radio on the TV
11 May 2008 3:06pm GMT I was in the illustrious surroundings of Rissington last week to deliver a DOM Scripting workshop. My good friend Ann was in attendance. During the latter part of the workshop — which was deliberately more loosely structured than the rest of the day — she pointed me to a really lovely bit of JavaScript form enhancement. Take a look at the UK and Ireland TV and radio listings on Yahoo. See that search form in the upper right corner? It’s using the standard design pattern of...
Comprehension
19 Mar 2008 11:47am GMT Don’t tell Paul but I sometimes listen to the Boagworld podcast. I’m sharing this dark secret with you because recently the podcast featured a good interview with Christian Heilmann. Christian talks about best and worst practices in writing JavaScript today. It’s well worth a listen. But when the subject turns to Object Oriented Programming, Christian makes a pointed reference: And there’s not much magic to it. I mean I get annoyed when I see JavaScript guys going...
ABBRacadabra
28 Jan 2008 6:24pm GMT In Chapter 8 of the DOM Scripting book I’ve got a little script that looks through the contents of an HTML document, finds any instances of the abbr element and then constructs a definition list with the information contained within them. Then there’s a section in the chapter called A browser bomb in which I explain how the script needs to be forked because Internet Explorer refuses to recognise the abbr element—part of a longstanding spat with Netscape. This means not only...
Bulletproof Ajax workshop in Brighton
11 Jan 2008 11:48am GMT My first public appearance in 2008 is coming up in two weeks. I’ll be spending a day delivering a Bulletproof Ajax workshop. In case you couldn’t tell from the title, it’s based on the book of the same name (wot I wrote). The workshop will be held in the cosy and comfy environs of the Clearleft office building in the heart of Brighton. This is an entry-level introduction to the hows and whys of implementing Ajax. I’ve given this workshop before and it’s always...