[Catalyst] OT: JS no longer sucks, (was Catalyst - any good AJAX tutes?)

[Ashley]

On Mar 7, 2009, at 12:55 AM, kakimoto at tpg.com.au wrote:
> Basically, I am a web developer who hates JS and want to do minimal  
> with
> it. Whatever I could get away with coding in perl, i would do it  
> cause i
> know the language better and that it's more reliable. Js is dirty (or
> well, the newer incarnations might be good but heck).

I used to feel the same about JS. The language itself has improved  
(I'm discovering ActionScript 3 is pretty damn cool too) and the kits  
to wrap it in a cross-browser fashion are awesome. Even the ones I  
think are not so great (like prototype) are still, objectively, quite  
nice. And there are several that are great and just a matter of taste  
or need. These are what I consider the best: Dojo (newer versions),  
MooTools, YUI, ExtJs (I'm starting to not like it as much now that  
the honeymoon is over), jQuery. The last being my personal choice:  
write less, do more.

jQuery reminds me the most of Perl while actually looking nothing  
like it. It's terse and immensely powerful. It gets out of your way  
and for a CSS/XHTML dev, it's second nature.

The hide/show on the "tutorial" for example is done with two jQuery  
commands — it could be chained as one but it decreases readability —  
and gracefully degrading layout. This is the markup, two PREs, with  
classes of "command" and "result."

<pre class="command">jinx at jasper[71]~&gt;whoami</pre>
<pre class="result">jinx</pre>

This is the jQuery-
   // Find what comes after a .command and hide it.
   $(".command").next().hide();
   // Put a click toggler on the .command elements to slideDown
   // and slideUp.
   $(".command").toggle(
                        function(){ $(this).next().slideDown() },
                        function(){ $(this).next().slideUp() }
                        );

And that's it! The markup is untouched if there's no JS enabled. So  
it's just command/result. If there is JS, you get the neat show/hide.  
Once you get the functional/callback style of code jQuery is  
completely easy to sling.

>  Thanks again, Ash. You rock.

Catalyst and jQuery make it easy, as I hope the example shows. By the  
way, the site, sedition.com, is Catalyst powered and has been since  
Friday, 1 December 2006. I'm trying, *again*, to rewrite the app  
beneath in a general and robust way for CPAN release. :)