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what the voices in my head tell me to write
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Starting to like javascript again
It used to be "javascript is evil, its only used to make bells and whistles that dont do anything useful".
I would jump through all kinds of hoops to avoid using javascript where it would have been very useful. I never really liked javascript coding anyway. It was always so repetitive with document.getElementById all over the place and lots of browser sniffing to get things right.
Then AJAX started making things even more complicated... and to be honest I don't see the point of most AJAX based sites. A lot of them use AJAX for the sake of it just like the javascript bells and whistles of old.
Early AJAX code was a complete mess too. Even more browser sniffing to be done and lots of complicated stuff to consider and code for. Along came javascript libraries that promise to take care of a lot of this stuff. I still didn't like a lot of them as they tried to force their own syntax which didn't always make a lot of sense. Some of them are like prototype / scriptalicious are tied to other frameworks etc fairly tightly. Others concentrate on silly interface widgets I never see anyone seriously use.
Now I have discovered JQuery and really like it. I like how you use css selectors to choose what to work with... I love how you can chain things together and I love how its possible to do AJAX and AHAH code with a single function. The onReady functionality instead of onLoad is fantasitic
I had to write a load of javascript today and it was a breeze. Select the element you want with CSS, attach a load of actions to it and impress some one in under 5 minutes.
Permanent link and Comments posted by Rob Cornelius @ Wednesday, January 16, 2008
