The seven rules of unobtrusive JavaScript

The seven rules of unobtrusive JavaScript: I’ve found the following rules over the years developing, teaching and implementing JavaScript in an unobtrusive manner. They have specifically been the outline of a workshop on unobtrusive JavaScript for the Paris Web conference 2007 in Paris, France. I hope that they help you understand a bit why it is a good idea to plan and execute your JavaScript in this way. It has helped me deliver products faster, with much higher quality and a lot easier maintenance. [Good stuff.]

scripteka

Prototype UI: Prototype UI is a javascript library based on Prototype 1.6 and Script.aculo.us. It's an extensive and fast growing library of UI components which can be used in complex web applications. Currently, Prototype UI provides such modules as Carousel, Modal window, Shadow and Context menu which can be used as one package or independently.”[Scripteka is collection of prototype.j extensions and libs. Excellent.]
Source: Scripteka

The $8 billion story/scam or Gift cards are for chumps

The $8 billion story/scam: Last year, more than $8,000,000,000 was wasted on these cards. Not in the value spent, but in fees and breakage. When you give a card, if it doesn’t get used, someone ends up keeping your money, and it’s not the recipient. People spent more than eight billion dollars for nothing… buying a product that isn’t as good as cash.

If I were a creative non-profit, I’d start marketing alternative gift cards. They would consist of PDF files you could print out and hand over to people when you give them cash. It could say,

“Merry Christmas. Here’s your present, go spend it on what you really want. AND, just to make sure we’re in the right holiday spirit, I made a donation in your name to Aworthycause.”

Stories come and go. It’s up to marketers to spread the good ones.

[Right on! Spread the meme: Gift cards are for chumps!]
Source: Seth’s Blog

Macworld: News: With Web 2.0, a new breed of malware evolves

Macworld: News: With Web 2.0, a new breed of malware evolves: Until recently botnets would always look for commands on a pre-allocated IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel but now distributed RSS-based command-and-control networks are coming into favor, Huang said. This makes it much harder for law enforcement to take down the computers that are actually sending the instructions to the botnet machines.
[Ooops.]

CSS 3: A Giant Serving Of FAIL

CSS 3: A Giant Serving Of FAIL:

In my “Standards Heresy” talk I noted pretty bluntly that CSS 3 is a joke. A sad, sick joke being perpetrated by people who clearly don’t build actual web apps. If the preponderance of the working group did, we’d already have useful things like behavioral CSS being turned into recommendations and not turds like CSS namespaces and CSS Print Profile. And I’m not even sure if the “Advanced” Layouts cluster-fsck should be mentioned for the fear that more people might actually look at it. You’d expect an “advanced layouts” module to give us hbox and vbox behaviors or a grid layout model or stretching…but no, the “answer” apparently is ascii art. No, I’m not making this up. It’s sad commentary that you can propose this kind of dreck at the W3C and get taken seriously.

Beyond what’s obviously wrong with the avenues being (inexplicably) pursued, there’s a lot to read into what’s not being worked on. Namely the serious and myriad problems with the basics of how CSS rules are written and applied.

[We were discussing this just yesterday… CSS is really a mess. I wonder if the browser folks could be talked in to supporting something more grounded in people’s needs?]
Source: Continuing Intermittent Incoherency

Making the OpenSocial API feel more at home

Making the OpenSocial API feel more at home:

Chris Chabot has been doing a lot of experimentation with the new OpenSocial APIs. He has written up his experience and created two prototype wrappers.

The first short article has some general information and background.

The second article includes the first library you can tell to load (owner, viewer, ownerFriends and/or
viewerFriends) information, and presents this information in an uniform way (instead of having to do different type of calls for different information fields) and with proper consistent error handling. With it you can very easily create your first OpenSocial container application in a friendly prototype style environment. You can take a direct look at the library itself.

The third article contains a Ajax.Request implementation, since Prototype’s version won’t work well or even at all in the cross domain environment of open social containers, it allows you to re-use your current Prototype based programs by trying to mimic Prototype’s Ajax call as well as possible given the constraints of the situation. Under the hood, _IG_FetchContent is used to talk back to the server.

It is good to see people take the raw APIs and make them feel more like their library of choice.

[Hmmm.]
Source: Ajaxian

Ask 37signals: Is formal education important?

Ask 37signals: Is formal education important?: What we care about is intelligence, curiosity, passion, character, motivation, taste, intuition, writing skills, and the ability to make smart value judgements. A few of these qualities may benefit from exposure to higher education, but we feel most of them are better learned through practical experience. Further, we don’t believe taste can be taught—you either got it or you don’t. We believe taste is one of the most important qualities in anyone we hire. [Amen.]
Source: SIGNAL VS. NOISE