JAVASCRIPT UI ARCHITECTURE PART II

Kyle Simpson continues his look at JavaScript front-end architecture.

GRAPHING WITH FLOT

Jason Gilmore introduces the Flot graphing library.

GOOD CODING PRACTICES

Evandro Miller illustrates some of the most common JavaScript bad usage cases and shows alternatives to accomplish the same tasks with clean, non-obtrusive script.

SECURING WEB APPLICATIONS PART II

Tom Hughes-Croucher wraps up his look at web application security and how you can keep your sites safe.

JAVASCRIPT BEGINNER’S CORNER – OBJECTS

Tom McFarlin gets you started with objects.

CROSS PLATFORM – RICH EDITORS

Christian Tiberg covers the various options available to embed rich text editors in your JavaScript apps.

RICH ENTERPRISE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT WITH EXTJS

Andre Buchda illustrates the use of ExtJS as a building block for the replacement of a custom XUL/JavaScript framework for the German company Sixt

COMMUNITY NEWS

Matt Henry rounds up the latest news from the world of JavaScript

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Thanks to Christopher Schmitt for the passes to the online summit – looks to be a great day, with some of your favorite JSMag contributors presenting there as well!

Traits.js

Traits.js is a library that allows you to use traits in Javascript. In case you’re not familiar with the idea of a trait, it’s something like a mixin (though traits are more flexible) or an abstract class (less apt, but maybe a more familiar concept given its use in PHP & Java). The idea first popped up in Squeak and PLT Scheme, and most recently has become a big part of Scala (along with several other languages). A trait is essentially a collection of methods that can be imported into an object. The Traits.js library allows you to compose traits (i.e. make a new trait by combining other traits), overwrite trait methods, and even provides a way to resolve conflicts among trait methods with the same name. It’s a very clear but powerful API.

The library uses a lot of the awesome new ECMAScript 5 object-manipulation API (a good discussion of which you can find here) Better still, it works with both ECMAScript 3 as well as ES5, so while it conforms to the new standard, it is still fully functional in older ES implementations.

If you’re interested in this stuff, you can see a very in-depth tech talk (video, slides) that goes into a fair bit of detail about Traits.js. Also, there was a lengthy discussion of traits this week on the es-discuss mailing list.

ES5 Implementation Tracker

Speaking of ECMAScript 5, here’s a quick pointer to a list of ES5 implementations. It’s pretty much just a roundup of bug tracking tickets for several Javascript engines that follows those engines’ progress in adding ES5 features. If you want up-to-the-minute news about when you can use a particular part of ES5 in a given browser, this is the place to look.

Scriptsrc.net

Scriptsrc.net provides a simple way to get links to several popular Javascript libraries hosted on Google’s CDN. Just tap a button, and the script tag containing the link to the library is copied to your clipboard. As a side note, I’d be curious to hear why the site’s authors omitted YUI3, when they included YUI2. Other than that, it looks like a handy resource.

Well, that’s it, folks. The first weekly roundup of Javascript news here on the JSMag blog. Did I overlook something of epic importance? Let me know in the comments. Or just @ me on Twitter.

IN THIS ISSUE…

JAVASCRIPT UI ARCHITECTURE

The great @Getify (”Kyle Simpson” in real life) demonstrates his Client-View-Controller (CVC) approach to JavaScript front-end architecture

CLIENT-SIDE CACHING

A look at implementing client side caching using ExtJS and jQuery.

EXPLORING RAPHAEL

Shea Frederick joins us again, and has a look at the Raphaël library and how it helps to create vector graphics that are cross browser compatible.

AMPLE SDK

Ample SDK is a new Open-Source JavaScript GUI Framework created to simplify development of client-side applications. Sergey Ilinsky brings you up to speed on all things Ample.

ROLL YOUR OWN

Rob Robbins shows you ways to incorporate chainable methods in your own libraries

JAVASCRIPT BEGINNER’S CORNER – FUNCTIONS

Tom McFarlin gets you up to speed on functions

CROSS PLATFORM – AJAX

Christian Tiberg demonstrates using AJAX calls across major libraries

JAVASCRIPT PATTERNS – PROXY PATTERN

Stoyan Stefanov covers the Proxy pattern, and how it can help speed up your processing

COMMUNITY NEWS

Matt Henry rounds up the latest news from the world of JavaScript

Learn more or purchase here ]]> http://jsmag.com/blog/2010/05/jsmag-may-2010-now-available/feed/ 0 http://jsmag.com/blog/2010/04/win-a-free-pass-to-the-web-optimization-summit/ http://jsmag.com/blog/2010/04/win-a-free-pass-to-the-web-optimization-summit/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:42:10 +0000 mgkimsal http://jsmag.com/blog/?p=168 The Web Optimization Summit is happening May 12, and JSMag wants you to be there!  We’ve got 2 free passes we’ll be giving out on May 5.  Winners be randomly selected from everyone registered with JSMag.

Are you not registered yet?  Visit http://www.jsmag.com/sampler to register for your free PDF sampler and enter to win a pass to the Web Optimization Summit!

The Web Optimization Summit is an online event bringing together some of the top names in web optimization techniques, including JSMag contributors like Kyle Simpson, Stoyan Stefanov and Tom Hughes-Croucher.

Fine print

You don’t need to make a purchase, but do need to have a valid email account on file with JSMag by 8am GMT -500 on May 5, 2010.  Winners will be notified by email, and will need to respond by May 6 in order to claim the pass.  If we don’t hear back from the selected winners, new winners be will drawn and contacted.

If you are interested in contributing, please register as an author at http://webdevpub.com/wdp to get started.  You may download our introductory PDF for authors to learn more as well.

Authors are paid a small fee for contributions, and are allowed to keep the copyright on the articles for future publication.

The charts over at the MSDN blog look like there’s some nice features and great speed coming in IE9, to be sure.  And in their recent unveiling of IE9 preview releases, MS has promised new builds every 8 weeks.

Here’s a small roundup of some useful tidbits on IE9 I’ve found.

• Platform Preview Webcast
• MS IE9 download page
• MS “Test Drive” page with IE9 demos
• IE9 User Guide
• Recent IE Blog posting on IE9
  

I’m probably going to be trying it out next month.  The most interesting thing I’ve read so far was a reference to IE9’s ability to compile JavaScript directly to machine code, to take advantage of multi-cpu processing.  Certainly given IE’s tight coupling with Windows this will be something they can do much more easily than other browsers.  Will it make a difference?  To performance speed on certain tasks, I can imagine it would.  I’m not sure that doing those sorts of tasks in JavaScript will catch on, though, and it might be that developers looking to do those sorts of heavy CPU tasks might just stay in Silverlight if it’s only going to be beneficial on Windows platforms.

That’s just a first impression though – it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.  Long term, though, MS still needs to get users off *IE6* before we can make much more progress as a development community.  Without specifically having to target browsers, I can be *fairly* assured that what I’m writing will look and operate decently on Safari, Chrome, FF and Opera.  IE *still* ends up being a struggle, and while it’s a large piece of the pie, in many communities it doesn’t even represent the largest minority of browsershare these days.

This issue marks our one year birthday, and to celebrate, we’re giving away free issues!  Use the coupon code “oneyearold” in the shopping cart area to select a free issue of your choice – it’s that easy!

JSMag March  2010 Issue

TAME THOSE PERFORMANCE MONSTERS

Kyle Simpson shows how to load your JavaScript more efficiently

AN OVERVIEW OF SERVER-SIDE JAVASCRIPT

Tom Hughes-Croucher shows you your options to keep using the language you love on the server

MARKING TERRITORY WITH THE GOOGLE MAPS API

Learn how to make the most of Google Maps with Jason Gilmore

ROLL YOUR OWN

Rob Robbins kicks off his new column on building your own library

JAVASCRIPT BEGINNER’S CORNER

Tom McFarlin covers programming conditions

CROSS PLATFORM – DOM MANIPULATION

Christian Tiberg explores selector functionality between major libraries

JAVASCRIPT PATTERNS – CURRYING

Stoyan Stefanov shows you how to add some spice to your apps with currying

COMMUNITY NEWS

Matt Henry rounds up the latest news from the world of JavaScript.

Page count: 34

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JSMag February  2010 Issue

GETTING STARTED WITH NODE.JS

Ben Dowling gives you the low down on getting up and running with Node.js.

UPLOADING IMAGES WITH HTML5

Christian Tiberg compares uploading an image with both YUI and jQuery.

JAVASCRIPT BEGINNER’S CORNER

Get started with JavaScript’s basics with Tom McFarlin.

WEBOS: PALM’S GAME-CHANGING MOBILE OPERATING SYSTEM – PART 3

Frank Zammetti’s wraps up his series on Palm’s webOS platform – part 3 of 3

PLUGGING IN TO JAVASCRIPT

Shea Frederick demonstrates building your own plugin using both jQuery and ExtJS.

JAVASCRIPT PATTERNS – PRIVATE MEMBERS

Stoyan Stefanov explores the Sandbox Pattern.

COMMUNITY NEWS

Matt Henry rounds up the latest news from the world of JavaScript.

Page count: 32

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