Sneaky Snake

It's been 6 months but I haven't forgotten. One final update:

4 Comments · Posted: March 19th, 2008

getBoundingClientRect is Awesome

getBoundingClientRect is a method, first introduced by Internet Explorer 5 (and now included in Firefox 3), which provides the top, right, bottom, and left offset coordinates of an element. After PPK mentioned this method in a recent post of his, poo-poo-ing its applicability, I thought I'd take some time to show how useful it can [...]

15 Comments · Posted: March 18th, 2008 · Tags: dom, javascript, browsers

Progressive CSS Enhancement

A common - and desirable - technique for constructing JavaScript-based web applications is that of progressive enhancement: only providing capable browsers with the features that they are capable of utilizing - but providing incapable browsers with an adequate, albeit degraded, experience otherwise.

This provides the best of both worlds: Users of modern browsers (the majority audience) [...]

21 Comments · Posted: March 15th, 2008 · Tags: design, javascript, css

Search and Don't Replace

Earlier today a friend of mine, Marc Grabanski, pinged me with a question: What's the optimal way, in JavaScript, to convert a query string like "foo=1&foo=2&foo=3&blah=a&blah=b" into one that looks like this: "foo=1,2,3&blah=a,b". He had already come up with a solution of his own and was curious as to if it could be improved upon.
I [...]

42 Comments · Posted: March 14th, 2008 · Tags: javascript, book, secrets

Firefox 3 Memory Use

Mozilla developer 'Pavlov' wrote up some extensive details on memory use in Firefox 3. I highly recommend that you check it out.

I borrowed some of his data and created another view of the results. For example, here's the results from Windows Vista of a number of browsers:

Note that both Safari 3 and IE 8 crashed [...]

26 Comments · Posted: March 13th, 2008 · Tags: firefox, performance, browsers, memory

Secrets of JavaScript Libraries (SXSW)

Today, at SXSW, I hosted a panel discussion on the "Secrets of JavaScript Libraries." We set out to discuss the behind-the-scenes nitty-gritty code that powers the universal features of the most popular JavaScript libraries.

I think the presentation went quite well. I think we could've, easily, done a 2 hour talk with all the content that [...]

33 Comments · Posted: March 12th, 2008 · Tags: sxsw, javascript, libraries, panel, dojo, jquery, prototype

Mozilla BoF

Today was the Mozilla Birds-of-a-Feather here at SXSW. It was a lot of fun and was a great opportunity to catch up with a bunch of the community. Everyone from users, to web developers, to extension developers were in attendance.

We ran a mini contest, giving away some prizes for the best, original, Firefox extension ideas. [...]

3 Comments · Posted: March 11th, 2008 · Tags: sxsw, mozilla

State of jQuery and Drupal

Yesterday I had to opportunity to present at Drupalcon Boston 2008. It was a great experience to be able to mingle with the Drupal folks, hear their concerns, and see what kind of challenges they're facing in everyday development.

Overwhelmingly Drupal users are not of the JavaScript persuasion and jQuery was a breath of fresh air [...]

12 Comments · Posted: March 7th, 2008 · Tags: jquery, drupal