Ajax Bestiary: A Javascript Field Guide
 
Ajax Bestiary: A Javascript Field Guide
 
 

Entries Tagged as 'Misc Toolkits'

Simplify Debugging With Firebug Lite

Posted by Don Albrecht

Firebug Lite in SafariMost of us are familiar with Firebug, the powerful & straightforward debugging extension for firefox.  You may not be familiar with it’s little brother, Firebug lite.

Firebug lite is exactly as it sounds, a light-weight firebug console for any browser.  Simply include the firebug script tag in any page and you’re console.log(); operations will work on any browser (IE, Safari, Firefox & More).  What’s more, if Firebug is installed in Firefox, it logs to the full Firebug console.  You can pull up the console by hitting F12 or CTRL + SHIFT + L at any time.

Don’t want to bother with hitting F12 every time you reload?  Just attach a debug=”true” attribute to the html element (<html debug=”true”> ).

But wait, There’s more.

Firebug Lite has an even littler sibling called Firebugx.  Replace the call to firebug.js with a call to firebugx.js and you neutralize any console calls in your code without having to hunt them down or find / replace.  Something that would have saved me a whole heap of trouble with the last BLT deployment.

Download Firebug Lite at:

http://www.getfirebug.com/lite.html 

FastInit: SuperCharge Your Pageloads

Posted by Don Albrecht

What is it:

FastInit is a small JS file to create a Faster window.onload. It implements a powerful onload function queue that fires once teh dom is ready and before all images have been downloaded. Ideally, this results in a dramatic decrease in a pages initialization time.

How it Works

You any functions to the queue by using the FastInit.addOnLoad( function 1, function 2, …); function. All functions are fired in the order in which they were added to the queue. addOnLoad can be called as many times as is necessary. It fails gracefully to standard handlers if the browser doesn’t support the faster methods.

Requirements

As of version 1.4.1 the need for Prototype has been removed freeing the code for use in any project where a speedy onload method is needed.

Check it out here:

http://tetlaw.id.au/view/javascript/fastinit

Spectacular, Unobtrusive Table Script From Frequency Decoder

Posted by Don Albrecht

Frequency Decoder Table

Following in his tradition of delivering, simple, easy to use widgets for beautiful design driven development, Brian McAllister has released this spectacular table widget.

Here are some of the key features:

Check it out at http://www.frequency-decoder.com/2007/11/15/unobtrusive-table-actions-script

SmartClient is going Open Source

Posted by Don Albrecht

smartclient The SmartClient library is based on databinding & presentation widgets (Similar to Spry).  And is being released as an OpenSource LGPL product. 

The LGPL Version is feature complete for client side development but lacks the presentation server & visual IDE included in the full premium version.

Check it out online  here:

http://www.smartclient.com/product/download.jsp