JavaScript is a loosely-typed case sensitive language. Technically everything in the language is a variable. Yes, it may be a string, a function, an array or an object, but everything is a variable at its core. Because you can make your variables all lowercase or all uppercase or anywhere in between, it’s important for the … Read more
There has been much discussion in the JavaScript community about JavaScript loaders, whether they are needed, what they do and whether it should be a function of the browser. I figured while there is so much buzz around the topic, it’s a good time to put in my own thoughts. What is a script loader? … Read more
I’m thinking about putting my series on application architecture in EXT and Sencha on hold for now because the Sencha team has announced their plans for EXT 4.0 which looks like it will include a very nice MVC framework built in. My plan is to restart this series when the new version of EXT comes … Read more
This post is directly related to my previous post on MVC and EXTJS. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d suggest that you take a look at it before diving into this one. For the purpose of demonstration, we’ll be building a simple application that displays photos from various APIs. The first thing you’ll need is … Read more
If you haven’t seen any of the rich interfaces that have been built with EXT JS and Sencha Touch on web applications, Adobe Air applications or native smart phone apps, you will. The Sencha family gives us everything we need to build large applications, but it doesn’t limit us on how we can write them. … Read more
So, I recently was working on a project using Sencha Touch and Phonegap to create an iPhone App and everything worked perfectly when I was using the emulator for the iPhone 3, but when I emulated it for the iPhone 4, it wouldn’t load anything at all. The solution? Apparently, the DOM was still rendering … Read more
When I started writing JavaScript (and code in general, for that matter), one of toughest things for me to wrap my head around was what variables and functions I could access from where. For example, I would try things like this: The previous code would fail because the variable hadn’t been set yet when it … Read more
If you’re like me, you are constantly looking for better ways to architect your JavaScript applications to be scalable and modular. One of the keys to writing an application that fits the bill is to use reusable components that, instead of calling other functions or components directly, broadcast events that multiple components may be listening … Read more
There are literally tons of JavaScript frameworks out there to ease the pain of website and application development. Obviously, the most popular one out there right now is jQuery, but that is not to say that there are not other libraries out there. So the question becomes, should developers use libraries or is it just a … Read more
Ajax is awesome for things like rich internet applications that don’t require SEO because of their internal nature, or for on-page events like form validation and submitting, but from an SEO standpoint, adding content to the DOM is illegible. But you still want the increased usability of not having to reload the page every time … Read more