Archive for the ‘JavaScript’ Category
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
My name is Mike and I use Internet Explorer.
The IE9 Preview is looking strong, and Microsoft is bowing to the pressure of standards compliance. The IE9 Acid3 Test, which checks for CSS3 capabilities, is currently a very impressive score of 83; not very far behind Firefox’s 94. The release notes are a dream come true to anyone who’s done web development over the last ten years. Or is it too good to be true? If they didn’t include canvas in the next release it still might be years before we really have a full feature set of browser tools to work with, and canvas being arguably the most versatile, would be the most egregious omission. But the IE Team recently laid our fears to rest and updated their IE9 feature list to include canvas. Should we get excited? Or is this our abusive ex-boyfriend giving us a puppy? Before I’m able to seriously consider Internet Explorer as a viable platform, I may need professional help in order to get over the last decade…
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, APIs, browsers, CSS3, Firefox, HTML5, Internet Explorer, JavaScript, original content
Posted in AJAX, browsers, HTML5, JavaScript, News, original content | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
You want to debug a web page using your favorite AJAX library, but it isn’t loaded into the page. Fortunately, there is a solution…
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, APIs, debugging, Dojo, Ext JS, Firebug, Firefox, Frameworks, JavaScript, jQuery, logging, MooTools, original content, Prototype
Posted in AJAX, Debug, JavaScript, original content | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
A common step in the development cycle is to substitute fake data until real data is created, generated, or the API is set up to retrieve it. Creating this fake data isn’t usually difficult, but it can be a tedious and repetitive task. Club AJAX has added a new library item to create mock data for use in application development. Using the Club AJAX Randomizer, you can easily generate random numbers, booleans, colors, dates, characters, words, sentences, titles, names, and even website names. Helper functions are also available to scramble or return random elements from your own data.
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, code, JavaScript, open source, original content, random, Randomizer, weighted
Posted in AJAX, Club AJAX Google Code, JavaScript, original content | 15 Comments »
Monday, April 26th, 2010
If you are new to JavaScript, the method to get a random number may be difficult to grasp. The built-in function Math.random() does not accept any arguments, and it returns a decimal between 0 (inclusive) and 1 (exclusive). Most often, we want a whole number, maybe to be used for accessing a random element in an array. Consequently, random generators usually have to be custom coded. But what if we want to get a more weighted distribution of random numbers? Say of a random number between 1-5 we want 1 to show more often than 5? Even if you are not new to JavaScript, determining the math to add a weight to a random result can be quite tricky.
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, exponent, JavaScript, number, random, weighted
Posted in AJAX, JavaScript, original content | 5 Comments »
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Firebug, the massively successful Firefox addon is an awesome development tool, but it’s not perfect. Carelessness in using it can lead to irritating and even embarrasing errors. And the console built into Internet Explorer 8? It’s great that web developers finally have something to help us develop on IE, but it is still pretty lame. When you consider working with both of them both together, you have even more problems. In general, it’s very undesirable to have debugging code cause bugs. Fortunately, there’s a very simple way of virtually eliminating these debugging errors.
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, code, console, debugging, Firebug, Internet Explorer, JavaScript, logging, open source
Posted in AJAX, Club AJAX Google Code, JavaScript, original content | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
One of the more exciting discoveries in JavaScript programming was in 2001 when Douglas Crockford found the ability to create private variables in JavaScript. Granted, this was exciting, and as with any new toy, everybody started using them. Since then, you can’t find a book, tutorial or blog that doesn’t have some kind of “How to!!” showing how to do it. But, despite the excitement, private variables should be used in moderation at best.
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, Dojo, FileUploader, JavaScript, private variables
Posted in AJAX, JavaScript | 17 Comments »
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Bob and I have been studying JavaScript for years, we’ve started this website and user group, and we’ve even gone to conferences to evangelize the language. However, after doing the research for my RIA post, I’ve come to the realization…
JavaScript really is a toy.
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, JavaScript
Posted in AJAX, JavaScript, original content | 3 Comments »
Monday, March 29th, 2010
The HTML5 specification includes more than just new tag markup; it also includes features such as input widgets, canvas, SVG, video, and audio – all powered by JavaScript. HTML5 is hot and being touted as the language du jour for building web applications. You can’t read the tech news stories today without seeing HTML5 discussed – in spite of the fact that the most popular browser doesn’t even support it. But the RIA technologies have been around longer than HTML5 – in fact, RIAs technically don’t even include JavaScript or AJAX, and instead refer to Flash, Java and Silverlight. So how did HTML5 become become such a hot trend? We’ll get into HTML5 in a future post; first, let’s go into a little history of RIAs.
(more…)
Tags: AJAX, AS3, Flash, history, HTML5, Java, JavaFX, JavaScript, RIA, Silverlight
Posted in AJAX, AS3, HTML5, JavaScript, original content | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
As you can see, Club AJAX has a new look. Bob Byron and Mike Wilcox still run the local DFW AJAX User Group, but the website will now be blog-focused to provide more information about AJAX to a wider audience. Our goal is to provide at least one, full-length blog each week, and sprinkle in blog links about the latest events in AJAX news.
In addition to our blog and news, we will provide resources from our monthly Club AJAX user group meetings. Most of the meetings are recorded and available in the Videos section. Depending on the format, the Presentations themselves will be posted, or linked to if possible. And any code-alongs, demos, or examples will be available in our Examples section.
We’re still porting over the old information and working on new stuff, so check back often, and if you live in the area, come to the meetings! If nothing else you get free pizza provided by one of our many sponsors! And like any other blog, comments are always welcome.
Posted in AJAX, Announcement, JavaScript, original content | 2 Comments »
