Geek Daily

There are many times when I am writing an application I need to display data in a table. Most of the time a simple HTML table styled with CSS is all that I need but occasionally I want a bit more. Today we’ll look at designing a plugin for jQuery that will add some advanced features such as row selection and sorting.

Design Goals

Starting out we are going to keep this pretty simple and as it progresses we’ll add more features.

For now we are going to start with a hand coded HTML table and CSS. In a later post we’ll look at populating the grid from a data source.

In this post today we’ll apply the CSS to the table but will expand this to a skinning system later on.

We’ll also be applying the row selection feature today.

Starting Point

Let’s use a simple table as out starting point.

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="easygrid">
    <tr>
        <th>Name</th>
        <th>Title</th>
        <th>Age</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Bill</td>
        <td>CEO</td>
        <td>53</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Jason</td>
        <td>Developer</td>
        <td>29</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Sue</td>
        <td>Accountant</td>
        <td>37</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Frank</td>
        <td>HR Manager</td>
        <td>42</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Jill</td>
        <td>Graphic Artist</td>
        <td>31</td>
    </tr>
</table>

Basic Style

Next we will apply some basic CSS to make our grid look nice.

body, table {
     font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
}

table.easygrid {
     font-size: 11px;
     width: 600px;
     border-top: 1px solid #b8b8b8;
     border-left: 1px solid #b8b8b8;
}

table.easygrid th {
     text-align: left;
     padding: 5px;
     background: #424242;
     color: white;
     border-bottom: 1px solid #b8b8b8;
     border-right: 1px solid #b8b8b8;
}

table.easygrid td {
     padding: 5px;
     border-bottom: 1px solid #b8b8b8;
     border-right: 1px solid #b8b8b8;
}

table.easygrid td.alt {
     background: #f6f3f6;
}

table.easygrid td.selected {
     background: navy;
     color: white;
     font-weight: bold;
}

Building The Plugin

Here is the basic layout of our plugin. We’ll look at implementing those functions in a minute.

This is pretty simple so far. We have our default values, we merge the user passed options with the defaults, and then call two methods on each jQuery instance.

(function($) {
     $.fn.easygrid = function(options) {
         var defaults = {
             alternateBackground: true,
             allowRowSelect: true
         };

         options = $.extend(defaults, options);

         return this.each(function(index, table) {
             setAlternateBackground($('tr:odd td', table), options.alternateBackground);
             rowSelection(table, options.allowRowSelect, options.alternateBackground);
         });
     };
})(jQuery)

Here is our setAlternateBackground method. Note we are passing all the odd rows found in the current table.

function setAlternateBackground(rows, alt) {
     if(alt == true) {
         rows.attr('class', this.className + ' alt');
     }
}

This function appends the alt CSS class to each row if alternate row backgrounds is enabled.

The next function adds a click handler to each row to implement the row selection functionality.

function rowSelection(table, allowSelect, alt) {
     if(allowSelect == true) {
         $('tr', table).click(function() {
            //reset all rows
            $('tr', table).each(function() {
                $('td', this).each(function(index, cell) {
                    $(cell).attr('class', cell.className.replace(' selected'));
                });
            });

            //restore alt backgrounds
            setAlternateBackground($('tr:odd td', table), alt);

            //select this row
            $('td', this).attr('class', this.className + ' selected');
        });
    }
}

There is a little more involved with this function. If this feature is enabled we are adding a click handler to all the rows in the table.

First the click handler will clear any selected rows and reapply the alternate background colors. I am not sure why this gets lost.

Then, finally, the row that was clicked is selected by applying the selected CSS class to each cell of the row.

What’s Next?

That is it for this post but we will look at adding sorting to our grid in post in the near future.

Currently the row selection is a bit buggy in Firefox but works fine in IE. I will have the Firefox issues sorted out for the next post. You can check out a demo here.

Be sure you don’t miss out by grabbing the RSS feed, updates by email, or following on Twitter.

Over the last few years Rails has helped Ruby’s popularity explode. One of the biggest reasons for this is the time that Rails can save you. By working within a well defined framework a lot of development decisions are simplified and it is easier to be more organized. Throw in some great tools like ORM, Unit Testing, Mocking, and more and you have a powerhouse of developer efficiency and quality.

There has always been and probably always will be feuds over what is the best platform but what I want to show you is that those arguments are mostly irrelevant. Regardless of what platform you choose to develop on there are most of the same tools available in one form or another. The common components, for me anyway, that help me produce high quality code faster and is easier to maintain are a good IDE, easy to use unit testing and mocking frameworks, an ORM, a MVC framework, and a good JavaScript library.

I am a .Net developer by trade and a PHP developer sometimes by choice. I enjoy both environments for different reasons. I am going to talk about each of these components in a bit of detail and explain why I think they are important and then at the end of the article I will provide a list of each of these components for various languages (.Net, Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby). I have decided to only list free or open source tools because they are easy for someone to try out and we all like to save a few bucks.

The Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

To me this is the prime essential. Sure you can program in Notepad and compile with the command line but it will likely take longer and it will require more discipline to stay organized. With a good IDE you have easy project management (all you files grouped together with tabbed browsing), syntax highlighting, compilation (if applicable), and auto complete.

IDE are continuously getting more and more sophisticated and plugins allow for lots more functionality like svn and git management in the IDE.

For me my favorite IDE is Visual Studio. There are some other great programs out there like NetBeans and Eclipse but for whatever reason I have become partial to Visual Studio.

Unit Testing And Mocking

These two items go hand in hand. No application is complete without proper testing. There are plenty of people on both sides of the fence when it comes to testing. I know, I was a skeptic for a along time. It just felt weird to spend time writing code to test the real code I was going to write. Finally I just decided to give it a try and it has changed the way I program. When you are focusing on how to test your code you just write cleaner code and it’s nice to have a quick way to know if the change you just made broke anything.

Object Relational Mapper

If you have ever used an ORM you know that it can save you a huge amount of time. One of the concerns I had before jumping to an ORM was performance. I wanted to know if using an ORM would make my application slower but I was asking the wrong question. I should have been asking whether or not the small performance hit was worth the huge time savings. The answer to that is a definite YES! Rarely in an application will the ORM be the source of poor performance and if it is it can be refactored to improve or you can use straight SQL if need be.

It all comes down to not worrying about performance issues before you have any. Yes it is important to keep performance in mind but using an ORM shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

MVC Framework

MVC has become very popular thanks in part to Rails and it’s revolution in the way we do Web Development. The key component to it’s popularity is that it separates the different concerns of your application into seperate pieces. This separation allows easier testing, better design, and makes your application more maintainable overall.

JavaScript Library

It seems there is a JavaScript library for just about everything these days. I remember not too long ago there were that many and JavaScript use hadn’t exploded yet. A JavaScript library is important to your productivity. The library shouldn’t compensate for poor JavaScript skills, you need a solid foundation, but should compliment a good understanding of it. The library will take care of browser compatibility issues and low level operations letting you focus on getting the job done.

ASP.Net
IDE: Visual Studio 2008 Express
Unit Testing: NUnit
Mocking: Rhino Mocks
ORM: NHibernate
MVC: ASP.NET MVC
JavaScript: jQuery

Java
IDE: NetBeans
Unit Testing: JUnit
Mocking: EasyMock
ORM: Hibernate
MVC: Struts
JavaScript: jQuery

PHP
IDE: PHPEclipse
Unit Testing: PHPUnit
Mocking: PHPMock
ORM: Propel
MVC: Symfony
JavaScript: jQuery

Python
IDE: PyDev
Unit Testing: PyUnit
Mocking: PythonMock
ORM: SQLObject
MVC: Django
JavaScript: jQuery

Ruby
IDE: RadRails
Unit Testing: Test::Unit
Mocking: Mocha
ORM: Sequel
MVC: Rails
JavaScript: jQuery

Be sure to grab the RSS feed, get updates by email, or follow me on Twitter to stay up to date and not miss any posts.

Working in JavaScript is one of my favorite things to do. I love how dynamic the language is and how powerful it can be. discount carpeting . This programming dream is often turned into a nightmare by varying browser implementations, blatant disregard for accepted Web Standards (I’m looking at you IE), and a host of other odd things that can pop up.

The Problem

As is usually the case, Internet Explorer is very forgiving when it comes to the DOM and lots of times implements alternate methods of accessing certain functionality.In my current project I am using the rel attribute to keep track of which row of data is being accessed. I know some of you may frown on this, however, it is an acceptable (to me) tactic as this is for a closed intranet where there is no concern for search engines. In Internet Explorer object.rel is an acceptable method for accessing the value of the rel attribute of a particular property.Somehow I worked past this point without testing in Firefox so when an error kept occurring that was caused by Firefox not liking object.rel it took me a while to work back through the code to isolate this problem.

The Resolution

The problem has a really simple fix. In my case it was harder locating the problem then actually fixing it. To get around this problem you don’t need any object detection, you just need to use the standard method for accessing attributes, object.getAttribute(‘rel’). Go figure.

The Moral Of This Story

The lesson that we should take away from this is to only use approved, standard methods of functionality. casino online . This too will lead you into problems due to inconsistent implementations but at least you are doing it the right way. You can then implement your own work-arounds or use a library like Dean Edwards’ IE7 script that will fill in all the holes in Internet Explorer to make it more standards compliant.

What is JavaScript?JavaScript is used on a lot of websites to make your experience better and to allow for more interaction with the website. It is possible for Javascript to be disabled so the steps below show you how to enable JavaScript in the event that is gets disabled.More and more sites and services are requiring JavaScript. relationships . An example is Google Docs. Without JavaScript enabled you cannot use the service at all.How do I enable JavaScript on my computer?Internet Explorer (6.0)1. Select Tools > Internet Options.2. Click on the Security tab.3. Click Custom Level button.4. Scroll down to the Scripting section.5. Under Active Scripting, select Enable and click OK.Internet Explorer (7.0)1. Select Tools > Internet Options.2. Click on the Security tab.3. Click the Custom Level button.4. Scroll down to the Scripting section.5. Select Enable for Active Scripting and Scripting of Java Applets.6. Click OK.7. Select YES if a box appears to confirm.8. Click OK. painting color wheel . Close window.9. Reload page.Mozilla Firefox (2.x)1. Open Firefox.2. On the Tools menu, click Options.3. Click Content in the Options list.4. Under the Content section, check the box next to Enable JavaScript.5. Click the Advanced button to open the Advanced JavaScript Options box.6. Check the boxes under Allow scripts to section that you want to allow.7. Basement Remodeling Denver . Click OK.8. Click OK.Why would you want JavaScript disabledThere are a few reasons you might want to disable Javascript:1. You don’t want to see annoying ads that get past popup blockers.2. JavaScript code can crash your browser or make the website very slow if it is written poorly.3. You don’t care about bells and whistles and just want to get to the content.

Internet Explorer never ceases to frustrate me. I have been writing my own JavaScript library, mostly to sharpen my skills. I was moving along and had written a large portion of code, easy OOP classes, a few utility functions, and my HtmlElement extensions. Problem was I had only been testing the code in Firefox. louis vuitton outlet . At this point I desided to run it through Internet Explorer just to verify that it worked. becker animal hospital . This is where I stayed for about 30 minutes. No matter what I did I could not get things to run in IE. landscape jobs . It kept throwing a useless error, ‘Object expected’, that didn’t seem to relate to anything.As it turns out IE has a couple of instances you cannot use.First off you cannot use the word class in any way, shape, or form. It doesn’t matter if it is a method or property of an Object, you just can’t use it.Secondly, you cannot have a method or propery of an Object named extends.These apply to all lowercase letters only. cheap longboards . If you try this IE will throw errors all day long while every other browser in the world will gladly accept it and run fine. I should have guessed when I saw that Mootools was using Class and Extends but then again it is just impossible to guess what kind of mess is under the hood of IE.If you are wondering this is not fixed in IE8 beta 2 either…probably never will be. My guess is that they are used internally somehow so you are blocked from using them.Hopefully my 30 minutes of frustration will save you from running into this problem.

//what doesn't workvar class = function() { };var obj = { extends: function() { } };//what worksvar Class = function() { };var obj = { Extends: function() { } };

From time to time I need to know what the position of a particular element is.I could use trial and error until I find the correct position but this is not efficient and it breaks the second I make an adjustment to the elements or any of it’s parent elements. Atlanta Plumbing Company . So how can we easily get an elements position? I’m going to break this up a bit so it will be easy to understand.First we will create a function that excepts an element.

function getPosition(element) {

Next we’ll initialize some variables to hold our running totals.

var left = 0;var top = 0;

Now we’ll ensure that the offestParent property is supported.

if(element.offsetParent) {

This next part is the real meat of the function that will traverse the DOM and calculate the offset values. This loop will continue until element is null.

while(element) {left += element.offsetLeft;top += element.offsetTop;element = element.offsetParent;}

Finally we just return the calculated values.

}return {offsetLeft: left, offsetTop: top};}

This function will now give use the exact position of the top left corner of any element we pass to it. auto seat cover . limousine service . I have tested it in IE7 and Firefox 2 but it should work in any browser. We’ll look at a task in my next post that uses this function to calculate pixel coordinates on an image element. Be sure to grab the RSS feed from the link at the bottom of this post because you won’t want to miss the next post.Here is a working sample for you to try.

<html><head><title>Find Element Position Example</title></head><body><div style="padding:10px"><div style="padding:17px"><div id="elem">My Element</div></div></div><script>function getPosition(element) {var left = 0;var top = 0;if(element.offsetParent) {while(element) {left += element.offsetLeft;top += element.offsetTop;element = element.offsetParent;}}return {offsetLeft: left, offsetTop: top};}var element = document.getElementById('elem');var pos = getPosition(element);alert(pos.offsetLeft + ', ' + pos.offsetTop);</script></body></html>

When you think of the keyword this you probably assume it refers to the current instance of the class. This is true for most object oriented languages like C# and Java.For example I could use the this keyword in C# like this:

class Cat {string _name;public Cat(string name) {this._name = name;}}

In the above example you see this illustrated. In C# and Java, this always refers to the class instance.So, knowing this you would probably assume the same would be true of JavaScript and it’s this keyword. This is, however, not the case. Like a lot of things about writing object oriented code in JavaScript, this behaves differently in some situations. this does not always refer to the class instance depending on how you use it.

function Cat(name) {this.Name = name;}

In the above example it works just like our C# example but let’s look at a situation where things can go wrong if you are unaware of some rules.

var wrong = new WrongClass();wrong.publicMethod();function WrongClass() {this.publicProperty = 'props';this.publicMethod = function() {console.log('public method');privateMethod();};var privateMethod = function() {console.log('private method');console.log('public property equals ' + this.publicProperty);};}

In my examples I am using the console object of Firebug to output my data.So what is wrong with the above example? It looks like everything should work, right? Well, operating on the assumption that this always refers to class instance then the above code would be correct. We are, however, using JavaScript and shouldn’t be that surprised that it does things a little differently.The output when publicMethod() is called would be:

>>> public method>>> private method>>> public property equals undefined

The reason this.publicProperty is undefined is because when entering the private method the scope of this changed. It no longer means the current instance of the class ‘WrongClass’ but it now means the current instance of the function ‘privateMethod’.Another situation where the scope of this would change is when dealing with event handlers.

document.getElementById('button').onclick = function() {alert(this.id);}

In the above example this would refer to the instance of the document element ‘button’. There are many cases of scope change that you need to be aware of when dealing with object oriented techniques.Back to our ‘WrongClass’ example. maryland self storage . I’ll show you how to make that example work the way you would have expected it to work in the first place.

var right = new RightClass();right.publicMethod();function RightClass() {var self = this;this.publicProperty = 'props';this.publicMethod = function() {console.log('public method');privateMethod();};var privateMethod = function() {console.log('private method');console.log('public property equals ' + self.publicProperty);};}

You’ll see that in the above code I have declared a variable called self. I assign this to this variable. This allows me to then use ‘self’ any time I want to refer to the class instance without worrying about scope.You can call your variable anything you like but ‘self’ seems to be a common practice. So, now in ‘privateMethod’ when ‘publicProperty’ is called using ‘self’ it will output the proper value.

>>> public method>>> private method>>> public property equals props

Firstly I would like to thank Wink Chin for sending me an email to let me know the link to the demo of the Twitter API was broken. I have fixed that so you should have no trouble previewing the code in action.

I haven’t done much work on the API lately but I have noticed a buzz around the blogosphere about Twitter and it looks like a good opportunity to revive the project. I hope to be posting more about the API in the near future and will hopefully have some updates and new features for you to play with.

The latest updates for the API are here and here and you can download the demo code here.

Here is some highlights from this week.

Hijax
When I was originally writing the DOM Scripting book, its scope was very clear – it was to be an introductory work on JavaScript and the Document Object Model, with an emphasis on best practices. I made a conscious decision not to cover advanced topics like XMLHttpRequest.

But as the writing of the book progressed, Ajax really began to explode. It became clear that I’d have to at least mention the subject, even if I couldn’t cover it in detail. That’s where the book’s final chapter came from.

Jason Calacanis, Please Help Me Become A Pathetic Affiliate Marketer
I’m hoping Jason Calacanis can help me out here. Everyone knows that Jason loves to stir up trouble at Internet conferences and he recently caused quite a stir at Affiliate Summit West a couple months ago when he referred to Zac Johnson’s $300,000 check from Yahoo as pathetic.

Simple Subverison Repository Setup with VisualSVN Server
I have a few projects I am developing for my own company and choosing source control has really not needed much discussion. I use Subversion for everything because it’s free, works really well, has great community support and support a wide-variety of clients on many operating systems.

Why I’m a better software developer than you
What makes one developer better than another? Shouldn’t we all be performing at the same level? Of course not, we’re not sewing buttons on an assembly line. We’re using every bit of our intelligence to create something that we can only begin to understand.

Here is what I liked this week. Enjoy!

Comparing Popular JavaScript/Ajax Frameworks
After four days of ASP.NET AJAX training with Stephen Walther I set out to learn more about my options in choosing a solution for a JavaScript/Ajax framework. If I realized days later I would be writing this comprehensive post on 7 of the most popular frameworks, I may have just went with the “Inny-Minny-Miney-Moe” method!

jQuery AJAX calls to a WCF REST Service
Since I’ve posted a few jQuery posts recently I’ve gotten a bunch of feedback to have more content on using jQuery in Ajax scenarios and showing some examples on how to use jQuery to cut out ASP.NET Ajax. In this post I’ll show how you can use jQuery to call a WCF REST service without requiring the ASP.NET AJAX ScriptManager and the client scripts that it loads by default. Note although I haven’t tried it recently the same approach should also work with ASMX style services.

SQL SERVER – Better Performance – LEFT JOIN or NOT IN?
First of all answer this question : Which method of T-SQL is better for performance LEFT JOIN or NOT IN when writing query? Answer is : It depends!

Video: Write Your First Silverlight Game
In this video, I demonstrate how to start writing your first Silverlight game. I show how to create a dramatic space scene, add a soundtrack, and associate movement with the mouse wheel. This is the first part of a two-part series.

Reading binary files using Ajax
But when it comes to binary files, helping hands from server-side technologies are often necessary.

So I googled around to see what I can do about binary files with Ajax and found this Marcus Granado’s post at http://mgran.blogspot.com/2006/08/downloading-binary-streams-with.html

What he posted there worked like a charm for FireFox and Safari but I couldn’t get it to work for IE.

But luckily, within the same page, someone had posted up a solution for IE as a comment, which is written in VBScript.

Safari CSS Masks
Webkit continues to impress with it’s early implementations of new standards. WebKit now supports alpha masks in CSS. Masks allow you to overlay the content of a box with a pattern that can be used to knock out portions of that box in the final display. In other words, you can clip to complex shapes based off the alpha of an image.

aveda institute dc . It’s been a slow week for me as far as reading and blogging goes but here are a few bits from this week.Javascript: Introducing Using (.js)The goals of using.js are to:

• Seperate script dependencies from HTML markup (let the script framework figure out the dependencies it needs, not the designer).
• Make script referencing as simple and easy as possible (no need to manage the HTML files)
• Lazy load the scripts and not load them until and unless they are actually needed at runtime

Youre Fat and I Hate YouIt irritates the hell out of me that so much modern JavaScript development hinges on frameworks. Not because theres anything wrong with that in pragmatic terms, but because Im interested in the mechanics of things, and programming with frameworks obscures the mechanics.

Here are some interesting stories from this week.

IE 8 strict mode doesn’t allow for CSS opacity?
So the fact that this has been labeled as by design suggests that IE8 will be the only browser produced in the last 10 or so years that will not support opacity in its strictest mode. Thats rediculous.

Google Will Sell Performics, SEOs Exhale
Exciting news from The Official Google blog today that reveals Google will stop scaring SEOs everywhere and will sell off Performics, the search marketing company that they accidentally acquired when they bought DoubleClick last year. To avoid the conflict of interest that comes when you’re a search engine selling search engine optimization services, Google will split Performics into two companies – an affiliate marketing company and a search marketing company – and then sell the search marketing half.

Webforms is dead. Long live MVC!
Scott Hanselman’s fourth screencast *confirms* that the interfaces and abstractions made as part of the MVC (HttpContextBase, IHttpRequest, IHttpResponse, etc.) will not be put into the existing Webforms model. That means that once MVC is released, the old HttpContext object in WebForms will *not* inherit from HttpContextBase, nor will the WebForms versions of HttpRequest and HttpResponse objects implement the interfaces.

But I’m not moving my mouse!
The IE team reacted correctly: the bug has been solved in IE8b1. When the mouse does not move any more the mousemove event stops firing, as it should.

However, this same bug was recently introduced in Safari (Windows) and Opera!

Safari 3.0 and Opera 9.26 support mousemove correctly, but Safari 3.1 and Opera 9.5b have copied the IE bug.

What are custom events?

Simply, a custom event is something that happens that you feel is important enough to define actions to execute when this something happens. Clear as mud? I think I confused even myself. A custom event is just like a native event (onclick, onload, etc) except you define what it is and when it should fire.Dustin Diaz explains custom events extemely well in his post about JavaScript custom events.So why am I posting about it too? Well Dustin’s explaination and implementation uses the Yahoo User Interface library (YUI). I don’t use YUI. So I wrote up a simple class that allows you to implement custom events that is library independent.

The class

Here is the JavaScript class that is the base for our custom events.

var CustomEvent = function() {//name of the eventthis.eventName = arguments[0];var mEventName = this.eventName;//function to call on event firevar eventAction = null;//subscribe a function to the eventthis.subscribe = function(fn) {eventAction = fn;};//fire the eventthis.fire = function(sender, eventArgs) {this.eventName = eventName2;if(eventAction != null) {eventAction(sender, eventArgs);}else {alert('There was no function subscribed to the ' + mEventName + ' event!');}};};

So here we have a class that defines the name of the event, subscribes a function to use, and a method to fire the event. Pretty simple.

Simple example

Here is a simple example of how to setup a custom event.

var myEvent = new CustomEvent("my event");myEvent.subscribe(function(sender, eventArgs) {alert(eventArgs.message);});

The above code creates an instance of CustomEvent and assigns a name of “my event”, how creative . denver retirement homes . Then it subscribes a function to the event via the subscribe method. The function that is subscribed will display an alert box with the value of the message event argument. The sender and eventArgs get passed when the event is fired. We’ll look at this next.

Firing the event

Finally we will fire the event. This can be done from anywhere in your application.

myEvent.fire(null, { message: 'you just witnessed the firing of a custom event called ' + this.eventName + '!'});

We assigned a value of null to the sender argument because there is nothing that initiated the event fire in this case. If you had created this event in a photo gallery application and the event was to fire whenever a photo was inlarged (onEnlarge?) you would probably make the sender the photo that was enlarged. This would allow you to pass the photo to your enlarge method from inside the event. The possibilities are endless.And lastly we assigned a value to message. Note that eventArgs is a JavaScript object (either { } or new Object()). This is important so you understand how to assign eventArgs properly.Happy event creating.

Here is what I found interesting this week.

Key events and Safari 3.1
There has been a change in Safari 3.1 for how keypress events are handled. John Resig interviewed Yehuda Katz to get the skinny and understand why this was done.

eBay Discriminates Against Ebook Sellers, Squashes All Digital Downloads
In what will go down in Internet history as probably one of the lamest decisions ever in e-commerce, running second only to the firing of AOL CEO Jon Miller in 2006, eBay announced yesterday it will no longer allow any digitally downloadable product to be sold via an auction.

Where’s my .NET 3.5 (on IIS), Dude?
The not so obvious ‘problem’ is that if you fire up a machine that has .NET 3.5 installed, you might be surprised to find that the IIS service panel’s ASP.NET does not show an option to select the .NET Runtime of 3.5.

Opera and WebKit pass Acid3 test
The latest builds from Opera and WebKit are scoring a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. Wow!

Where is Firefox on Acid 3? Here.
Some people have been surprised to not hear much from Mozilla around Acid 3. WebKit and Opera are duking it out, but what about Firefox?

Mike Shaver of Mozilla has posted on his views that Acid 3 is a missed opportunity and is pretty damning of the whole thing.

Using the YouTube API via Ext
With the YouTube API recently released, there’s bound to be lots of cool controls coming out soon. Thorsten Suckow-Homberg spent a weekend hacking up a Ext-based user extension that leverages YouTube’s chromeless API to build The Ext.ux.YoutubePlayer.

20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider
When you use WordPress you’re given the choice when publishing between doing it as a ‘post’ or as a ‘page‘. Posts go up on your blog while ‘pages’ are static pages that you can publish without it having to go up on your blog.

I’ve posted about Dean Edwards‘ Base2 library in the past but I wanted to write a post that brings all the growth Base2 has under gone over the last couple of years into a brief overview of the project so it is easy to see the progress Dean has made and where the project is headed.

In early 2006 Dean Edwards began a little project called Base. This was he first attempt to ease the pain of developing Object Oriented JavaScript.

I want a nice base class for JavaScript OO:

• I want to easily create classes without the MyClass.prototype cruft
• I want method overriding with intuitive access to the overridden method (like Java’s super)
• I want to avoid calling a class’ constructor function during the prototyping phase
• I want to easily add static (class) properties and methods
• I want to achieve the above without resorting to global functions to build prototype chains
• I want to achieve the above without affecting Object.prototype

About one year later Dean released the next iteration, Base2. Although Base was a fairly simple library to use there was no documentation. Other than Dean’s, very helpful, posts on his website there was nothing you could refer to in the traditional reference sense.

In August of 2007 there appeared a nice post on Dean’s site that annouced the arrival of some documentation for Base. Although it is stamped as currently incomplete (at the time of this article anyways) it is a huge boost for the library and the community that has grown around it.

In early 2008 Dean released some improvements for Base2 and some nice code examples further demonstrating what the library can do to make developer’s lives easier.

One thing that, I believe, makes Base stand out, and Dean as an excellent programmer, is his commitment to standards. Base adherse to some fundamental OOP rules, which Dean has outlined in a nice reference guide for library developers.

Base has enjoyed great admiration in the JavaScript community with other libraries using it as a starting point for their library cores.

Thanks Dean for the great leadership you bring to the web development community and keep up the great work.

If you have been programming for any length of time you probably know what method overloading is or have at least heard of it.

What is method overloading?

Method overloading is a feature found in various object oriented programming languages such as C#, C++ and Java that allows the creation of several functions with the same name which differ from each other in terms of the type of the input and the type of the output of the function.[Wikipedia]

With the formalities out of the way, there are times when method overloading can be very helpful. JavaScript is no exception. The problem is it is not as apparent how to achieve method overloading in JavaScript because it doesn’t work the same as more traditional languages do.

What won’t work

Let’s look at implementing an overloaded function how you would think it should work.

function myFunction() {  //function with no arguments}function myFunction(arg) {//overloaded function with one argument}

Now JavaScript will accept this and you may think you are done. car seat cover . Think again. You do not have an overloaded function. In the above example your second function definition just overwrote the first so you only have a function that excepts one argument. I told you it doesn’t work the same.

What will work

Now that we have looked at what won’t work let’s take a look at the proper way to implement an overloaded function.Let’s look at a simple example using bunnies. Awww, how cute.

function getBunnyColor() {var name = arguments[0] == null ? 'peter' : arguments[0];switch(name) {case 'peter':return 'brown';break;case 'flopsy':return 'white';break;default:return 'unknown bunny';break;} }getBunnyColor(); //-> 'brown'getBunnyColor('flopsy'); //-> 'white'

What is that?

Now I’ll explain what I did. Every function has an array called arguments. This array contains the arguments that are passed into the function even if specific arguments are declared in the function definition.So knowing that I didn’t bother to declare any arguments when I defined the function. malibu alcohol detox . I instead used the arguments array to detect what had been passed in. If arugments[0] was null (no argument had been passed) then I assigned a default name of ‘peter’.

Conclusion

So JavaScript implements method overloading a bit differently than most languages meaning your function definitions will look different but you use the overloaded functions the same way. Hope this helps you out!

Well it is Thrusday but I won’t be around to post this on Friday being a holiday and all. I only have one link for you this week. d man . Either it has been a boring week for dev blogs or I have been way to busy with other things to find them. Enjoy.A collection is not an arrayJames Edwards summeriezes this point. heating repair . Although at first glance a collection of DOM elements may look like an array (you can iterate like an array) but ultimately it is not an array and lacks many of the array methods like push().

I have decided to start doing a Friday round up of all the interesting articles I find during the week. Here are some stories I found interesting for the week of March 3 to March 8. Enjoy!

Internet Explorer 8 will render in Standards Mode by default
The IE team has announced that it will render HTML markup in “the most standards compliant way it can.” It is nice to see that MS has decided to actually listen to what web developers want, in regards to IE, for a change.

The Top 5 Recommendations For Monetizing Your Blog
The readers over at ProBlogger have given their top recommendations on how to make some money with your blog.

Acid 3 released, Webkit praised
Jon Tan ran a few tests and posted the results. Hixie commented on his blog about the release, and praised WebKit on how they have been closing a large number of bugs

Silverlight to run on Symbian phones
Microsoft is working with Nokia to get Silverlight running on Symbian mobile phones. Would this help influence your decision to use Silverlight for UI over other technologies?

MVC Framework Preview 2 released, Jeff Palermo disappointed
Jeff gives a good overview, along with his opinion, of the changes that have been made in preview 2.

Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is now available for download.
Take the first release of IE8 for a test drive. Will it deliver this time?

This is a common question I see a lot on the Web Development Forum I help moderate. Many new developers read the tutorial on XHTML and ask “if target is depreciated then how do I open a link in a new window?” The answer is you use JavaScript. It is true that if the user has JavaScript disable then the link won’t open at all, right? I’ll show you the best way to open a link and have it degrade gracefully if JavaScript isn’t enabled and will even defy popup blockers.

Our leading lady, the anchor

Here is the link we’ll use for this article and will add our JavaScript to this link later on.

<a href="http://www.w3schools.com">Web Development Tutorials</