Some time ago, design for CSSZenGarden using a knife that slashes through the document was all the rage.

Now I stumbled upon a referrer in my stats that got me sniggering: blether.com has a much more subtle gimmick like that, and I am sure that if you open this site on public terminals you’ll encounter a lot of people scratching the screen.

It is amazing how something dormant for a long time in the developer community emerges simultaneously at different spots.

My own Show love to the object literal was basically intended to explain the OL as a coding style and syntax allowing your scripts to be self-contained.

Dustin Diaz had a similar post cooking for quite a while and released his JSON for the masses a day later. His post is very enthusiastic about the whole subject, but does confuse some matters.

As always, and through the wonders of remote scripting (yes, I coined that term for comments being added at other people’s blogs linking to your own) a lot of discussions arose. Once again the hardliners of OO development tried to get JS to follow the same rules as higher programming languages, whereas JavaScript novices got very excited about some inconsistencies that might actually prevail as a myth for a longer time now. It is amazing how JavaScript sits in the middle of the whole development spectrum and everybody has an own – very fixed – idea about what good JS is. I got one, too, and there is a draft here about that subject (Hint: It does what it is supposed to do, and is easy to maintain by the intended audience).

Read all about how Dustin and me got informed about what is wrong or what is good about what we said:

• Comments on AJAXian
• Comments at Dustin’s
• Comments here

Now here is my view on the matter:

The object literal

I like the OL as a syntax, and explained why in the post: It could be a signal that a script is more modern and was developed with unobtrusivity (hah! I guess nobody used that one yet) in mind. It is high time to find a mean for JavaScript novices to spot what is good to use these days and what is debris from the DHTML days. We could also call all our scripts “beta”, that’d also make them smack of Web 2.0!

Jason, err JSON

I like JSON as a data format, but it is not the same as the OL. JSON is a subset of the OL, and basically is a scripting syntax version of XML: It is there to hold data to send it back and forth in a readable and easily convertible way. JSON allows and encourages things like:

var data={
'my wedding':'fat and Greek',
'Plan':'9 from outer space',
'Red Hot Chili Peppers':'Flea, Anthony, and many random others'
}

This would be quite confusing in a script, although you can read out data['my wedding'] all the same. I’d consider it harmful as part of a script, as it does not quite promote valid variable names.

How about this: Calling JSON and the OL the same thing is as misleading as calling XML and semantic markup the same thing. One is data, the other is good practice (yes, you are allowed a different opinion).

• Good comments on JSON and the Yahoo APIs can be found at Simon’s

And what about OO JavaScript then?

Now, if you want to go down and dirty with the real OO of JavaScript, then Tim Scarfe comes to your rescue with these two wonderful articles.

• JavaScript and Object Oriented Programming
• The prototype object of JavaScript

Digital Web just released the first part of a new two part article of mine entitled Seven Accessibility Mistakes .
In it I am listing mistakes I have encountered in the past (and done some of them) and give tips how to avoid them in the future.

Some of these tips might be utopic for you to achieve, but I for one am up for the challenge.

Following a thread on the evolt list about reading the next sibling element of a current element and making sure it really is an element and not a text node (line break), I decided to add a small helper object to my upcoming JavaScript book that takes care of some of these issues.

Give it a try: DOMhelp

My questions now are:

• Is that something that really can help save beginners frustration
  about different browsers and DOM oddities?
• Is it pretty bullet proof?
• can you think of other methods that should be in there?

I promise to add a greeting, should you come up with something I
forgot or find out I did wrong. I don’t get many free copies though…

:-)

I am aware that there are a lot of libraries already out there, but
most of them are just too massive to use in a beginner book.

I am the proud owner of a FujiFilm F401 digital camera which takes good pictures, is small and handy to carry around and gave me a lot of joy in the last 3 years.

I had to send it in Christmas 2004, as the main chip got buggered and got it replaced on warranty. so that was fine.

Now all the buttons on the back seem to have shifted in functionality – the zoom in button is now turn on Macro, and there is no way to choose the different flash modes.

I googled a bit about the issue and it seems that the internals are scrambled by a leaking battery. I contacted Fuji and will see tomorrow how much it’ll cost me to fix this £150 camera.

I also wanted to plan for the worst case scenario and checked what I can replace the camera with – and re-use all the SmartMedia cards I bought over the years, and realised that it seems impossible to find a camera that does support SmartMedia any longer…

What is this? Do we have to buy accessories for every item we buy these days anew? Is there no chance to re-use what you already have?
It seems that when you buy products now they are already worthless when you get them – as the reselling prices are that low that it is not worth the effort of postage and packaging.

I spend a lot of money on products – if I get quality, but I really cannot be bothered to buy things just for the sake of following a new trend and not see any support for older products…

My watch is a Mondaine which was designed in 1943 and not changed since, my vacuum cleaner is a Henry which proved to be indestructable in many an UK office in the last 50 years, why does all the digital stuff you buy these days have to be flimsy and break in a year?

Now here is my question:

• Is there a newer camera at an affordable price that still supports SmartMedia cards or will I have to ditch the lot when Fuji tells me it is going to be £££ to fix it?