This is a bit off topic for this blog, but is something that has very much been on my mind lately.  I’ve been maintaining an archive of all of my work over the past 12 years.  Everything from coursework to UI markups, Personal Notes to SVN repositories all lived in a set of redundant 750 gb external hard drives.  Over the years , I’ve found these archives to be an invaluable asset (especially with modern desktop search tools).  Last monday, those drives were stolen.

Although I can cope without the data, I need to start compiling a new personal archive & I’m curious what other people have done for backup systems & how you deal with offsite backup of personal data.

Organizational standards are wonderful things.  They enforce consistency, help insure institutional competence and can dramatically reduce the learning curve to get additional staff up to speed on a project.  At the same time, in the world of AJAX standards can be too slow to adapt to a constantly changing landscape.  How do you strike a balance between flexibility and consistency?

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Dustin Diaz recently posted about Rolling out your own javascript interface in his blog.

http://www.dustindiaz.com/roll-out-your-own-interface/ 

While his code is nice and clean and it does provide what he was hoping to achieve:

There are times when using a JavaScript library is called for. Building large web applications that use a wide array of utility functions that help aid in developing multi-tiered class systems, advanced UI components, complex event models, and heavy use of DOM scripting helpers. Yep. Those are all great.
However, there are other times when you don’t need all that. And often what we end up doing is just importing a few of our favorite functions as globals, and work off those. But what ends up happening in this case is that we lose the particular style that these libraries offer.

In essence, he’s offering a light weight solution to the fundamental issue persistent to all javascript development: (”javascript sucks”). His solution is to coble together a light weight version of prototype containing only what he needs.

My questions are three fold:

1. Is rolling your own framework worth it? The new generation of code profilers for the various toolkits can dramatically decrease download size and focus on the functionality needed.
2. Is there sufficient demand for a new ultra light weight toolkit to address these issues?
3. Why not use full toolkits:  Many of them are small enough in compressed form not to make a noticeable difference in load times.

This has been out there for quite a while now, but I thought it should be included in the bestiary out of completeness.

http://clientside.cnet.com

Basically, here’s the idea.  Instead of relying solely on the remote host to provide you with your JSON files, JSONP is a standardized way for requesting formating for the JSON data that allows the client to inject code at the beginning of files produced by the server.  It’s not a perfect solution but it does help circumvent some of hobbles placed on Javascript based mashups by security sandboxes.

Remote JSON - JSONP

There’s a myriad of AJAX frameworks out there to streamline the development of interactive sites. While methods of implementation vary and the functionality toolkits offer can vary dramatically. All toolkits fundamentally provide you with certain key features.
Basic Features

• Simplified AJAX calls. All frameworks streamline the way in which you process POST and GET requests by abstracting away the cross browser descrepancies.
• Improved DOM Access. All frameworks improve interactions with the DOM through performance benefits and improved API calls.
• Object Orientation / Elements. All frameworks provide a level of object oriented abstraction to simplify and structure coding as well as some level of abstraction for DOM nodes.
• JSON Support. Most if not all frameworks provide strong support for the JSON data interchange standard.

Advanced Features
There are also some advanced features common to most if not all frameworks.

• Drag & Drop. Most frameworks provide tools for manipulating elements via drag & drop.
• Animation. Many frameworks provide animation tools to enhance the interface. These can vary dramatically between toolkits in performance & available effects, however.
• Event Handling. Since the default javascript event model can be slow and buggy at times. Most frameworks abstract away the default event system with a new slots & sockets approach.