One of the best things about developing from a Mac is the fact that it is a UNIX-based operating system. This means that my development environment is a far closer match to my production hosting environment (Linux) than it was when I was developing under Windows.
The net result of this shift in paradigm is a rapidly expanding knowledge of the command-set and OS structure. The exposure to UNIX has done me the world of good; particularly in regard to web development and server management. Sadly, the relative shelter I was accustomed to at Rentokil Initial, thanks to the inclusion of immensely talented and helpful server admins within our team, had hindered my development as a web developer, and provoked ridicule at the hands of my fellow Y! EU developers (in the nicest possible way, of course).
With all that in mind, here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve learnt that might be a useful reference resource…
Continue reading “The Joy of UNIX”…Right then. After almost a years hiatus, it’s about time I got back into this blogging lark. Unfortunately, I have a plethora of subjects I’d like to cover and no idea where to start!
I think I’ll get the personal stuff out of the way first and then I can think about planning the web development stuff…
Continue reading “Back on the Horse”…The JavaScript Module Pattern is a handy pattern for JavaScript singletons. It allows a developer to scope variables and methods to a given module with both private and public visibility.
Originally proposed by Douglas Crockford (and blogged on the YUI blog by Eric Miraglia), the Module Pattern has recently been through several iterations of pimpage (look Ma – a new buzzword!) at the hands of Christian Heilmann; the first entitled ”Show love to the Module Pattern” and the second, ”Again with the Module Pattern”. Before reading this post, I’d recommend you read all of these articles otherwise this is going to make very little sense!
Having used the pattern quite regularly over the last six months or so, I’d like to add my two-pennies-worth to the discussion with a couple of variations on the theme…
Continue reading “JavaScript Module Pattern Variations”…Safari, the excellent WebKit-based browser from Apple, has long neglected to include functionality that activates a form element (such as an input, a textarea, a select etc.) when its relevant label is clicked.
Although this behaviour has been fixed in the beta of version 3, any users still browsing with version 2 or below still suffer this needless blight on web accessibility.
I’ve recently reworked the JavaScript used in Steve Marshall’s tasty channelled search solution, which requires the label to be clickable, as it hides the corresponding radio input. For this reason, I’ve written a quick bit of JavaScript to activate this behaviour.
Recently, I’ve been working on some fairly Ajax intensive pages and, because I’m working in a team environment, the need arose for a simple bit of script to handle all the different Ajax “events”. This script needed to be small yet easy to implement
Enter the YUI. cue Enter The Dragon theme
So here’s a tasty little script that wraps Ajax requests and a YUI Custom Event in an instantiable object that works as an Ajax DAO…
Continue reading “AjaxEvent: Using YUI Custom Events With Ajax”…Categories: