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JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

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Re: JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

#11

Post by axod »

brlewis wrote: post #6
axod wrote: post #5

# $(”div”).draggable() creates a draggable # $(”div”).draggable(”destroy”) destroys it Am I missing something here, or is that an extremely ugly design choice? Passing strings into functions to specify what function you want? eugh

It's called message passing. It used to be part of the commonly accepted definition of OO.

Sure. I still think it's ugly though. It reminds me a lot of an old coworkers code. He decided to simply expose one method to his subsystem - .execute(String what, String[] args) Then you would pass in strings to specify what you wanted it to do. It made my brain hurt for weeks.

Re: JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

#12

Post by olavk »

brlewis wrote: post #6
axod wrote: post #5

# $(”div”).draggable() creates a draggable # $(”div”).draggable(”destroy”) destroys it Am I missing something here, or is that an extremely ugly design choice? Passing strings into functions to specify what function you want? eugh

It's called message passing. It used to be part of the commonly accepted definition of OO.

I don't see how it is more like message passing than an ordinary method call? Only difference AFAICT is that since JS don't support "catch-alls" (yet), you can't handle missing methods at the receiver. But that does not seem to be relevant here.

Re: JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

#13

Post by axod »

simonw wrote: post #8
axod wrote: post #5

# $(”div”).draggable() creates a draggable # $(”div”).draggable(”destroy”) destroys it Am I missing something here, or is that an extremely ugly design choice? Passing strings into functions to specify what function you want? eugh

I think they ended up having to do that because of jQuery's chaining support. Most of jQuery's functionality lives in a single namespace (jQuery.fn) which means you can chain method calls together like this: jQuery('div:first').addClass('hello').text('Hello World').draggable().css('color', 'red'); If a plugin needs three or four methods, that's three or four extra functions on the one object - which ends up looking q…

I still don't like it in terms of taste. I guess one question would be how does it handle a typo in the string.

If you call a.destroooooy() then you'll get a js error, but if you call a.execute("destroooooy")...

Re: JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

#14

Post by olavk »

simonw wrote: post #8
axod wrote: post #5

# $(”div”).draggable() creates a draggable # $(”div”).draggable(”destroy”) destroys it Am I missing something here, or is that an extremely ugly design choice? Passing strings into functions to specify what function you want? eugh

I think they ended up having to do that because of jQuery's chaining support. Most of jQuery's functionality lives in a single namespace (jQuery.fn) which means you can chain method calls together like this: jQuery('div:first').addClass('hello').text('Hello World').draggable().css('color', 'red'); If a plugin needs three or four methods, that's three or four extra functions on the one object - which ends up looking q…

I really like this DSL aspect of jQuery!

I wonder however if a plugin could define its own namespace, like:

    $('blah').draggable().create({options}).css(..)...
    $('blah').draggable().destroy().css(..)...
draggable() returns a wrapper that exposes only the dragging specific methods, but the underlying jQuery is passed through and returned by any method called on the wrapper. That way you don't have to add all methods in the same namespace.

On second thought I don't know if this wouldn't just be confusing :-)

Re: JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

#15

Post by DougBTX »

axod wrote: post #13
simonw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they ended up having to do that because of jQuery's chaining support. Most of jQuery's functionality lives in a single namespace (jQuery.fn) which means you can chain method calls together like this: jQuery('div:first').addClass('hello').text('Hello World').draggable().css('color', 'red'); If a plugin needs three or four methods, that's three or four extra functions on the one object - which ends up looking q…

I still don't like it in terms of taste. I guess one question would be how does it handle a typo in the string. If you call a.destroooooy() then you'll get a js error, but if you call a.execute("destroooooy")...

They'll both be run-time errors, hopefully they throw an exception.

Re: JQuery » jQuery UI v1.5 Released, Focus on Consistent API and Effects

#16

Post by jamongkad »

simonw wrote: post #9
JimEngland wrote: post #2

I haven't had the chance to use jQuery, how does it compare to other JavaScript libraries such as MooTools or Prototype?

One big difference is that both Prototype and mooTools make modifications to the built-in types (extra Array methods etc). jQuery (and Dojo and YUI) explicitly avoids doing this for compatibility reasons. It's no coincidence that mooTools and Prototype are the only two big libraries that can't co-exist on a single page. The interesting thing about jQuery is its focus - it almost exclusively works to improve the inter…

It's the abundant use of Closures is what brought me to jQuery in the first place. Like you I favor this approach

$('div').draggable().create({Object hash}).draggableDestroy();

It may look awkward at first but I think it will a result into a new win in the long run. I'm having alot of trouble downloading the new library for some reason but can you do something like this?

$('div').draggable().create({Object hash},function(){ alert(Object Creation confirmed}; ).draggableDestroy();

I think the ability to launch a callback function on the creation of a object could open oppurtunities for better UI feel and responsiveness.

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