The next generation of JavaScript debugging is upon us, and it’s name is FireBug. For the uninitiated, FireBug is an addon for Firefox that makes developing JavaScript easier. Besides a new JavaScript debugger with breakpoint support, it allows you to write debugging info to a console window, evaluate JavaScript in a command line (not unlike... […]

I have been known to tell people in an enterprise environment to avoid global functions and variables in JavaScript at all costs. My reasons are purely from a maintenance point of view: it’s easier to document variables attached to classes or namespaces and it’s easier to debug (because you know where to find the variable/function... […]

When last we left Eureka, it was a JavaScript console that interacted with Internet Explorer. As I thought more about it, it seemed that there could be ways to reuse the components of the original Eureka for other purposes. So, I proudly introduce the Eureka Suite, which will be an ever-growing group of JavaScript utilities.... […]

Software development always seemed to be separated into two main categories: graphic designers who devised the user interface and software engineers who implemented it. There was a very distinct line between these two functions; the graphic designers did no programming and the software engineers did no user interface design. The web is an interesting animal... […]

Got an e-mail from Lonnie this afternoon pointing out Google’s latest creation: Google Web Toolkit. The is interesting: write all of your JavaScript code as Java first, to take advantage of all of the tools available for Java, then convert it to JavaScript as the final step for deployment. I think it’s an intriguing concept,... […]

I know, it’s really out of fashion to give Microsoft anything but grief, but I really feel like I need to at this point. After being stodgy and slow-moving for so long, Microsoft has really ramped up on all playing fields. They are working on Internet Explorer 7 well ahead of what they had said... […]

Over the past year or so I’ve been learning about design patterns and finding them incredibly useful. For languages that have interfaces, it’s especially useful. Even though JavaScript doesn’t have such a concept, you can still apply traditional design patterns to the language. As evidence, I’ve begun writing a series over at WebReference covering Design... […]

Finally got around to fiddling with Eureka this past weekend. The end result is version 0.2, which introduces three new commands: /memory – displays the current memory utilization of the Internet Explorer process. /leaktest – reloads a page ten times and takes memory measurements to determine if there are any leaks on the page (I’d... […]

I’ve never done unit testing…ever. I’ve heard the phrase and wondered what the heck it was for some time now, so I decided to go and download NUnit, a unit testing framework for .NET. Now that I’ve started playing with it, I really like it. Basically, create a special project with some special classes that... […]

I’ve never been a big fan of using the Internet Explorer CSS expressions, under the belief that you can use regular JavaScript to do the same thing whenever you want. However, recently I fell victim to the belief expressions may be useful and decided to give it a try. Then proceeded to spend three days... […]