Blogs

I’ve moved my blog over to http://ambiguiti.es from now on. Over there I’ll be talking about web and mobile development, and maintain a more general blog relating to events, conferences, job postings, and other such news in the industry.

Recently, I have been doing some research into where all the modern JavaScript engines stand in terms of implementation of ECMA 3 and in cross-polination of proprietary features. I came across some rather interesting features of Microsoft JScript that I sure as hell didn’t know, and maybe you didn’t either.

First of all, it’s worth noting that some of these features may originally have been written for the server platform and not the browser. Because the JScript engine is modular, Microsoft uses it in a lot of places. Thats also why you can do browser scripting in VBScript, much like you can write ASP pages in VBScript or JScript, and similarly for .NET.

Feature 1: Enumerator

Standard: JScript 3.0+
Support: Internet Explorer 4.0+

Syntax:
var myEnumObj = new Enumerator([collection])

Description: Enables enumeration of items in a collection. JScript Only.

Feature 2: VBArray

Standard: JScript 3.0+
Support: Internet Explorer 4.0+

Syntax:
var myVBArray = new VBArray(vbarr)

Description: Provides access to Visual Basic safe arrays.

Feature 3: Debug

Standard: JScript 3.0+
Support: Internet Explorer 4.0+

Syntax:
Debug.write(string);
Debug.writeln(string);

Description: Used for sending debug messages to Visual Studio or Microsoft Script debugger. Early version of Console.log!

Feature 4: JSON

Standard: JScript 5.8+, ECMAScript 3.1+
Support: Internet Explorer 8.0b2+

Syntax:
JSON.parse(text [, reviver])
JSON.stringify(obj)

Description: Provides methods to convert JavaScript values to and from the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

The other day, this book ended up on Andre’s desk from O’Reilly: slide:ology – The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. This book is less science and more art, but it’s full of inspiration and practical advice for people giving presentations. As someone who has seen a few talks, good and bad, a lot of this book rings true. In fact I think a lot of Nancy Duarte’s philosophy is similar to Edward Tufte, who is also a great presenter in his own right and a philosopher of the art of presenting – except maybe for the idea the Powerpoint is a tool to be tamed rather than one to be left out entirely.

Pick up a copy here.

The people at NetLifeResearch have put together a funny little ‘Bad Usability Calendar’ which is an interesting look at some bad habits in interaction design. I’ve reposted it here (bad_usability_calendar_08_us_english.pdf) for download but you can also get it off their site here (http://www.badusability.com/).

Some highlights:

• Only add personalization where it adds value
• Dont require login where it isn’t needed
• Bigger is better (at least easier to click)

I’m always having trouble getting accurate window geometry values for the various browsers/doctypes and edge cases in between. So I never lose the link again, and to share the wealth I’m posting an exceedingly valuable link to Quirksmode on this subject:

http://www.quirksmode.org/js/doctypes.html

I just finished giving a talk at the Google Web Toolkit conference in San Fran on JavaScript. Thanks to everybody for coming and for participating! Incase you are looking for my slide deck or source code you can find it here: http://www.nitobi.com/gwt/

I’m thrilled to let everyone know about our new support center, featuring mainly: comprehensive, searchable documentation!

This is a tool we’ve wanted to have for a long time and I’m relieved that its finally available and online for everyone to test out and hopefully start using.

If you can’t wait until the end of this post to try it out: go to http://support.nitobi.com

We took some time this week to produce some printable quick-reference pages for Nitobi components, which are now available for download. I’m looking for feedback so if anyone has any requests or suggestions, let me know!

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_grid_1_0.pdf

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_combobox_1_0.pdf

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_callout_1_0.pdf

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_fisheye_1_0.pdf

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_tabstrip_1_0.pdf

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_tree_1_0.pdf

http://www.nitobi.com/kb/docs/cheatsheets/nitobi_toolkit_1_0.pdf

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