Passing Second-Class Arguments

Before it's current incarnation, I was frustrated by my own, soon-to-be-renamed, Proxy object. [Mind you, I don't mean the upcoming E5 Proxy object.] As a function manager, Proxy offers the benefit of passing secondary execution information, to it's managed routines. (These "extra" arguments permit comprehensive forking.) As with many function managers, this well-intentioned practice wound up restricting the number of arguments allowed in managed routines, resulting in a polluted signature.

Proxy and the ES5 (Harmony) Proxy

I didn't know it then, but Proxy is a native object in ECMA-Script 5 (ES5), the next web programming language. What this means is that I must change the name of my Proxy object to something else - yet to be determined. Moreover, I'm sure there will be inquiries (from all two of you) about the differences and similarities between my Proxy object and "theirs".

Clear options in a MULTI-SELECT field without loops

If I've published anything that qualifies as a "tweet", this post does. Though I have been busy, it has been a while and I sorely miss blogging. With the holidays all around us, small posts make for published posts.

Perhaps I've never had to auto-select OPTION elements in a multi-SELECT field, but I discovered a simple method for doing so, that was worth noting.

Learning to Open-Source via Proxy

The Internet is a relentless, fast-paced, consumer of content, and I'm a bit of a recluse. My engagements had been brief and trifling; irc chatting, a blog comment here, a forum post there. Then, as a test use of github.com - a popular code-sharing service - I published Proxy. It was my debut in the open-source JavaScript world¹, and I was determined to see it through to the end. However, in the reverse time-warp that is the Internet, I've learned that the end never comes...

The smallest boolean in JavaScript

One of my projects has a pretty large API, with lots of methods returning boolean values. At first, I returned 1's and 0's - which are not actual booleans, but are certainly good enough (for most applications). However, for a public API, I knew they would need to return true or false... After making the edits, my file size jumped. Which is how I found the smallest boolean in JavaScript.

Use JavaScript comment-urls instead of the traditional void(0) method

The longstanding compromise, between reducing inline JavaScript and preserving accessibility, has been to use "javascript:void(0)" in link hrefs and form-element actions. These elements and attributes are the hardened fall-back to DOM Level 2 events, and (unlike myself) many believe something must be there. Well the ubiquitous technique has a successor that is new to me. I'm no more excited about it's purpose, but glad something new has come along.

Inferring node placement via special sourceIndex values

I needed to know whether a node was in the DOM. Figuring there was a native property or method towards this end, I scoured Mozilla's documentation but could find nothing. Then Microsoft (yes, them) offered hope with Internet Explorer's sourceIndex property:

Retrieves the ordinal position of the object, in source order, as the object appears in the document's all collection.

sourceIndex (MSDN)

w3c browsers fire bubble listeners before capture listeners

In w3c browsers, the event object's eventPhase property may indicate when it is in capture or bubble mode with a 1 or 3, respectively. A value of 2 indicates that the event object is "at" or processing the target node. However, when the eventPhase is 2, the event's mode is fuzzy.

Internet Explorer doesn't bubble click events to the window

This is a simple one. I put some sample code on jsbin.com to show how IE doesn't bubble click events to the window, while w3c browsers do. This is important, because I would normally think to use the window as a "global event listener", not the document. Yeah, I learned this one the hard way.

Debug easier by naming your closures

I was profiling some code when I noticed that several routines were listed as "(?)()" in Firebug, and "JScript anonymous function" in MS's Visual Studio. This proved frustrating, as recognizing my closures were critical to evaluating my code - I couldn't tell which were performing well, let alone executing.

Internet Explorer sanitizes events between nodes

Events are hard in IE. That is just a fact.

I'm not here to gripe about how IE's event object doesn't adhere to standards, nor offers alternatives. Really, I'm not. This is actually a surprising discovery that has less to do with the standard IE/MS diatribe, and more to do with a unique aspect of their event object.