Web developers don’t usually browse the net like your average surfers. We will often view pages with a critical eye, tear them apart and see how they tick. I know I do. Sure, I’ve got periods when I’m lazy and just feel like surfing around or watching videos. But usually the engineer in me will [...]

I hear a lot of developers asking about loading CSS and JS files dynamically. Surprisingly, creating script and link nodes is just like creating any other nodes. All you have to do is create them using DOM methods and append to the head: The Script var loadCSS = function(file) { var link = document.createElement(’link’); link.href = file; link.rel = ’stylesheet’; link.type = ‘text/css’; document.getElementsByTagName(’head’)[0].appendChild(link); }; var loadJS [...]

First, a disclaimer: dynamically evaluating scripts is not recommended! Indeed, if your application requires the usage of this script, chances are you’re doing it wrong. The separation of design and logic likely hasn’t been properly enforced if you’re using this method. It’s just an awkward use-case that should be avoided. That said, here it is… Many [...]

I’ve been tagged by the insanely creative Jacob Seidelin, which means it’s my turn to fill out the Software Development Meme! How old were you when you first started programming? I was about 12 years old. That combined with my love of Nintendo really makes it sound like I never left the house, but I found time [...]

I unfortunately am not allowed to participate, but in anticipation of Yahoo!’s Hack Day 2008, I put together a little app I’ll hopefully be able to port to YAP: twittertyper! The concept is very simple. twittertyper displays the latest tweet from Twitter. To read the next one, first type out the tweet. The text is highlighted [...]

A Scholastic quality assurance employee Quality Assurance people are important and valuable, to be sure, but they can also make developers’ lives much more difficult. This is particularly bad because (like many roles in an organization), their end goal is to help the developers make better software, not stress them out. Here are some of the common [...]

So unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the release of Google Chrome. Being a hardcore Firefox nut myself, I’m not just skeptical, I’m largely indifferent. With Firebug, I’ve got the perfect web developer environment, so I’m good to go. It would be hard to sell me on something else. Google is [...]

As most JavaScript programmers know (and many are all-too familiar with), speed is a major factor when considering how to accomplish any given task. Once in a while, a script will still run too slowly even after standard optimization tricks have been applied. When this happens, it makes sense to revisit common practices to see if they can [...]

The Problem If you’ve had your hands in JavaScript for a while, chances are you’ve ran into this bug. You’ve got a bunch of elements you’re either adding to the DOM or a bunch of listeners you’re attaching to elements. Either way, you keep getting the same result: the last value in the loop. Here’s an example: Let’s say [...]

I’ve been spending loads of time recently with a new project that’s supposed to be comprised mostly of what I love doing the most: hardcore JavaScript. Unfortunately, most front-ends aren’t much without a back-end to fall on, so I’ve had to hit the PHP pretty hard too. When modifying the framework I had built, I noticed that the [...]