RockyCode

If you have to store your text strings for internationalization (i18n) on the server, that's one thing. But, if you can store them in Javascript, you might think about using RequireJs and its i18n plugin, because it makes it nice and easy.

When you start writing applications with BackboneJS, that means that you're dealing with some dynamic UI. There are elements being pushed into and pulled out of the DOM. I was having problems trying to reference DOM elements that were dynamically inserted into the DOM by other Backbone views. The fix was simple but not immediately obvious without cracking open Backbone.

As more application logic gets pushed into the browser for client-heavy apps, the need for javascript testing increases. Lately, I've been doing some Jasmine unit testing of an application that uses RequireJS. Here are some general pointers and potential pitfalls to watch for.

Backbone has a great inheritance mechanism. It's as easy as Backbone.Model.extend(). This much is obvious. Let's try a few other things, like: Subclassing our own classes, calling to super classes, adding subclass attributes, and adding various subclasses to a collection based on a super class.

As web developers we're used to being able to write a jQuery selector and easily get the DOM elements back on the page that we're looking for. In the case of jQuery Mobile, it's slightly more complicated because a "page" is a different beast.

I've seen a number of different ways that internationalized strings get put into Javascript code. Of all of them, I kind of like just bundling the resource bundle of key value pairs in Javascript files themselves, one for each language or something close to that. But, in a recent project, there were a few other constraints, so we did it another way.

This is lacking. It's been one of the few disappointments I've had with WatiN. It does not handle XPath support out of the box. I found several other posts out there on the same issue with work arounds but we found a pretty slick solution using JavaScript-XPath.

Jquery has made developing javascript fun and enjoyable. It is a fantastic library that essentially allows the creation of library extensions on top of it via plugins. Jquery plugins are surprisingly easy to write and elegant to read and use. Here are a few tips on where to find good plugin candidates, design principles for plugins, and an outline of the basic structure that I have found most useful when writing plugins.

Let JQuery determine which radio button has been selected

Okay, Okay, I admit it. I'm javascript challanged. As a Java developer, I've looked down my nose at paltry javascript, treating it as a "me-too" technology trying to cash in on the hype surrounding java all these years.
As a result, I've missed out on a lot of js goodies. And, with javascript entering a renaissance of sorts, combined with the wildfire-like buzz surrounding libraries such as jquery, it's high time I learn some.

Jquery gives a great, easy-to-use mechanism for extending its API and creating your own plugins. For stuff that looks like it could be useful generally, you should really try to put it into a nice little plugin package. For submit buttons, there is a general thought that they shouldn't be clicked twice (especially for functions such as financial transactions), so I created a plugin that fits an app that I have been working on recently, where there are many, many submit buttons, saving very granual pieces of content through ajax requests.

Jquery plugins are a joy to use, and they are surprisingly easy to write. Everyone that writes lots of Jquery code should seek to take potentially-resuable functionalities of code and put them into a nice, compact plugin. In the app I've been working on, we have a lot of user-generated content that we don't limit the length on, so it can grow very large. To combat this, there is the UI pattern on the site that there is a "read more" link available to show the remaining text for the long-winded texts, while just showing a snippet otherwise ...

Jquery and other sweeto js frameworks have some awesomeness to help you change the css classes of various elements on the page with ease and grace. They have some very convenient functions to add and remove classes. These are uber-useful and highly recommended for saving you precious time and jiggawatts, but if you don't have jquery available to you, sometimes you may want to do this in raw javascript.

I've been fooling around with a thumbnail gallery that pulls up either an associated video or image. Here is how I got the workings to work.

Have you ever had a problem with ajax requests caching in Internet Explorer. I have, and recently I came across a nicer solution than I have traditionally used. In the past, I have used a unique parameter on the url to keep IE from caching previous requests to the same url, like so:

Sometimes it is useful to be able to iterate through the fields in a javascript object and use the values kept therein for something spectacular. I've found this to be the case for POJSOs (+S = 'Script') that I pass down to the client with new-found data from the backend.

In a recent admin tool I was creating, I was using SOUIT of Javascript... apparently more than I knew how to write well. Eventually, it all worked wonderfully -- that is, until someone tried to use it in a lesser browser -- Internet Explorer. The error was thus:

Lots of websites give you the ability to copy certain pieces of text/code/something off their website in a "copy to clipboard"-type functionality. In the process of creating just such a function on a little page I was making, I wanted to make the html that was copied very tight and compact. The most annoying things were the whitespace and the newlines. Here's some javascript to strip out the whitespace between xml/html tags.

Callback functions are a nice feature of Javascript. It's nice to be able to just use a function handle to show that it should be called when a certain something completes. Sometimes, however, we want to do more than just specify a function handle. We want to pass parameters. Why? Because sometimes the callback method cares about other data that was available before the original request. Here's an example:

Jquery has some awesome event-handling abilities. The elusive ability to pass parameters into these event callbacks seems way harder than it should be. Nevertheless, I have found *a* solution. I really doubt it's the best one. I really hope it isn't.