The Adventures of Cindy Li
@media 2006: Javascript friend or foe? panel
June 16 , 2006
Speakers...
Moderator: Cameron Adams. web technologist, The man in blue
Simon Collison: Yahoo
Stuart Landridge: Link to Kryogenix, information architect, author of “DHTML Utopia”
Peter-Paul Koch: freelance web developer, and well known JavaScript expert, living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Dan Webb: Dan’s blog on Vivabit
What’s a library
Simon.. there is a lot out there…
What’s good about libraries?
Dan: working with more applications and web 2.0 things like I personally
sick of copying nad pasting files. We use code and don’t copy and paste.
There are some people that fix browser problems for you.
But that’s debatable.
Cameron..Simon has some experience with big companies…
Nate is going to talk about web properties and how they use it.
The key problems in javascript advent model varies across browsers
Ajax which again differes against browsers
there are things directly that don’t work across browsers
That gets really tediously
Drag and drop which is trendy and a nightmare to build from scratch and taking patterns
that aren’t embeded across
C: simon gets to test on yahoo..... with so many users
S: there are ie6, firefox, safari and the latest opera as well any Yahoo has to work across those
they are tested across those browsers, as a baseline they are coded for those environments
What’s bad about libraries
C: PPK hates libraries
PPK: they are great as long as you know what they are doing.
If you don’t know they will work 50% time…
People tend to use them to quickly
Who is using javascript libraries regularly?
I think that points to part of the problem.
The web developers want to know how it to work in browsers.
The javascript obscures it too much as far as
Dan: you can do amazing effects but I can gurantee using any of these around the source code and you need
to understand how it works or you will have a terrible time debugging these things
Stuart: How many of u use javascript?
half the room....
The law of leaky abstraction…
when something doesn’t work you dont know what the javascript is doing so
thats what is bad about the libraries. You don’t know and you don’t learn.
Abstractions are for abstracting work
Simon: The document...leaky abstraction is worth reading that’s something I’d recommend to take a look at
Dan: It doesn’t necessarily need to be a problem where they are quite monolithic all or nothing
When you adopt if you need this little bit I need to use the entire thing and work out
the dependencies and people are downloading these things and I don’t want to use a downloadable
javascript. That is a different approach.
Stuart: I had to download one file and that loaded another five so to drag open this thing…
and that is a problem the whole point is code readers. You make it dependable but if you want to leave
one tiny thing you have to import all of it so it works and they have to work 30 seconds.
Dan: Dependency management that differs from traditional programming. I think its sort of
one of the main reasons why people aren’t adopting libraries and use atomic functions
Simon: This is a whole problem but there are known ways ...
Go to one website and copy the yahoo user interface
Dojo has been looking into edge library…
and say to anyone that wants to use and everyone links to the same library and it caches it
There is minification and other code crunching and not as much of a problem.
There are solutions out there
Dan: if someone has a lot of bandwidth and test this
Stuart: no one cares about geocities
::laughs:::
There isn’t much cooperation between them. You’ve got to include it for all of them
Simon: Motor kits has systems for uploading and Dojo too but differently
Jsan? Something for everyone to use
So there are attempts at them getting them to work
Stuart: people are starting to think about that
What makes a diserable Javascirpt library?
Dan: I actually do like libraries that sort of operate at a lower level and fixes little bits of javascript
your avg javascript works on events and you always use lists of nodes and processes and
attaching behavior and things for working for lists and use that well
I’d really like to see easy ways of selecting nodes and CSS query and selectors
Its incredibly useful to me.
I prefer some ofr the lower level and I don’t want a whole calendar component. You always have different needs
and working at that higher level.
Cameron: boutqiue libraries?
Dan: yes most definitely I don’t know.. Jquery aspects of that I really like. It’s quite compact
and selecting nodesand fits there and does its job
PK: A small thing one large page with code snipets that you need put it in your own file
event handling and nodes.. you use that kind of library
The principle is choosing your own compoentnts
Stuart: I can see that if you are PPK but most people are not javscript genius
I want a javascript that works the way I want and it to be 5k.
I don’t want a library that takes a day to load.
PPK: So you should understand javscript
S: that’s crap
If there was a library which was nice and small and it paved over some of the things and
used it anyway? or not bother?
50% have used…
I’m not sure you can make a good javascript library.
D: it is a baseline of something you always use not a lot but some you always
use in your basic file. I’d like to see it be a lot easier to do DOM Scripting but
no one has come up with making that yet…
step away from the complicated bits and no one has come up with it yet and people
should certainly try.
S: higher level, you can see what libraries do for you but from actually the library is for you
to use firstly it has to be well documented. Most libraries are spotty.
If you pick up something that no one is using then its a dead end.
JV the abstraction links really badly you need to know whats going on.
You have to see that this is clear and willingly to see the entire thing and see if there are
bugs to fix it. Getting back to the web tool kit.. google. They don’t encourage…
they make it you don’t want to dirty your hands. If there is a problem you are already stuck.
You’ve got to create a new text book. Takes away from all of it working.
Javascript isn’t a bad language but it has warts. It has some good things you will get out
of more.
PPK: You have to libraries that treat it like javascript.
Dan: there is a big difference between taking good ideas from a language. its flexible
and taking a good idea is one thing but force it to be another language because
its your language is the problem.
PPK: They don’t want to learn javascript
If you want to learn javascript you have to use javascript
Are libraries guns in the hands of children?
Dan: yes they are....
its a high level thing back in the late 90s doing my Dhtml hacking and realizing my sins and
now its come back and jv is ok again but we’re still seeing the same mistakes
and there is another home page thing there is a bad thing.
Libraries don’t make it any worse.
Cameron: scriptactulous.. when everything is flying then life is good
PPK: everyone had floating divs because it is cool
people are thinking why they are using javscript more…
Stuart: Rubbish....
go look at the dhtml sites they aren’t going away now they can fetch it at the server
Simon: when they released the design patterns ... for how you should use
the page. how do you highlight it on the page.
How do you make it clear that you can drag and drop?
Its problems like that peop are realzing that just because you can use it doesn’t mean
its a good idea.
You need a way of showing people how that happens. There is a bunch of theory to enhance.....
Cameron: obviously simon is a bit of a yahoo wh…
Which libraries are good?
Stuart: i dont like libraries that’s why we use yahoos.. everytime I import it.
but that’s fine it works and thank you.
I always use it for AJAX cause its such a pain. It takes it away and call me when you’ve done it but
Simon: I picked the same 4
DOJO
there is monkey kit takes lots of different. sane environment
prototype behaves ...
yahoo
bubbles as the same community adoption and the best documentation as well
Stuart: Dojo is too clever
there is nothing in Dojo that you can’t do in other places
I still don’t understand.. guns in children. I am quite liberal but I don’t think people should have access to that.
What we are trying to do is taking features today and storing data offline and store your documents
Simon:A hidden app…
Dojo seems to tackle those out there things and use
What are Javascript libraries are headed?
I will think in essence things are minimal.
cameron:Are there a big aggregation happening? Is DOJO going to overtake the market
Dan: no one has come up w/the best solution that’s why they are desparate in their designs
Simon: there is no perfect goal and the kind of applications and the kind they are developing
they are fundamentally different beasts
Dan: been thinking about how we design using jv a different way and that aren’t monolithic and
have more of a modular appraoach and improvments can be made and I am looking
to see what people are going to do and make people use easier API and some of them are quite long
winded
Cameron: but you only have to type 65 characters for yahoo’s
