[thelist] Top 10 JavaScripts

Jeff Howden jeff at jeffhowden.com
Wed Oct 15 20:27:39 CDT 2003


stuart,

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> From: Stuart Young
>
> I'm assembling a cut n paste archive for my students of
> the top 10 most useful JavaScripts, and I wondered what
> the listees considered to be the top 10 JavaScripts,
> the ones that no web developer can live without, the
> ones that you keep using on project after project.
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

i admire what you're trying to do, but i think that what you think are the
essential scripts are, in fact, not useful at all.

imo, the most important scripts are not those that do things like turn a
select menu into a "jump menu", image preloading scripts, rollover scripts,
or even open a popup window, but those that are used as foundations for much
more complex systems.  things like lists for trimming whitespace form field
values, working with lists, data masks, and extensions to existing objects.
with these things so much more is possible.

sure, there are functions that i copy and paste from regularly for projects
i work on.  however, i find myself constantly fiddling with the ones that
aren't for the preferred tasks i list above.  take my preload and rollover
functions, for example.  those two functions have gone largely unchanged in
3 or 4 years.  i use them occasionally, but end up tweaking one or both of
them slightly depending on the project i'm using them in.  on the other
hand, my url, cookie, and "cgi" object scripts get used over and over again
as is in projects.  they're building blocks for much bigger things.

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> And how do you identify the best version of each of
> these?
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

it's a catch-22 really.  until you have the knowledge to write such things,
you're not really in a position to determine which is the best version.

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><
> Obviously they should be usable, accessible, highly
> browser compatible and y2k compliant. e.g. no browser
> detection, object detection.
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

i don't agree that the scripts have to necessarily be highly cross-browser
compatible.  maybe in your environment they need to be.  however, if the
only environment they'll ever get used in is comprised 100% of a particular
browser then there are some definite performance gains by not forking your
code for every little browser bug.

.jeff

------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Howden - Web Application Specialist
Resume - http://jeffhowden.com/about/resume/
Code Library - http://evolt.jeffhowden.com/jeff/code/



More information about the thelist mailing list