Monday, July 21st, 2008
Category: Debugging
, Plugins
Adam DuVander over at WebMonkey has compiled a list of their five favorite Firebug extensions. The ever-popular YSlow tops the list, but to that they add:
- Firecookie for easy access to cookie information
- FirePHP to integrating server-provided PHP debugging information with the Firebug UI
- Pixel Perfect for overlaying mock-ups on top of the real thing to ensure you’ve got a good implementation
- Rainbow for JavaScript syntax highlighting
Nice list!
Category: Plugins, jQuery
Edward Tufte has long had a following of fans in the field of information visualizations. Among his interesting taxonomy of visualization types is the “Sparkline“, which he describes as “data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics”.
While Tufte originally suggested that computer displays are too low-resolution to effectively make use of Sparklines (vs. printed page), James Dempster pointed us to some work the folks at Splunk have done to join a long line of folks who have given it a go anyway.
The resulting jQuery plug-in is really nice. Now if only they had the ability to overlay two line graphs over the same area using a transparent fill… ;-)
(Oh, and there’s also a simple Sparkline generator for Google Charts over at style.org.)
Friday, October 19th, 2007
Category: Library, Plugins, Tip, jQuery
Dominic Mitchell has created a mini jQuery logging plugin that ties Firebug to the call chain.
This means that if you are debugging something you can quickly add a .log("....") in the chain:
JAVASCRIPT:
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jQuery.fn.log = function (msg) {
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console.log("%s: %o", msg, this);
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return this;
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};
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Now, I can just stuff a call to .log() in the middle of what I’m doing to see what I’m currently addressing. e.g.
JAVASCRIPT:
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$(root).find('li.source> input:checkbox').log("sources to uncheck").removeAttr("checked");
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The nice thing about logging to firebug is that each node becomes clickable in the console, so you can immediately see the context.
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
Category: Ajax, Plugins, Roundup
AjaxRain.com, the site dedicated to aggregating Ajax, JavaScript and RIA controls & libraries, has gotten a cool facelift and some much needed features. On top of that, they continue to post controls at an amazing rate with 638 submissions at last count.
Some of the new nuggets include:
- Storing favorites
- Comments
- Voting on entries
- Date that a submission was posted
- Enhanced search
- Expansion into posting RIA components based on SilverLight & Flex
MiniAjax.com, a site that was doing the same thing and started off with a bang, has since gone stale and it looks like AjaxRain now leads the pack. Are there other sites like these? If so, post the links in the comments.
Monday, August 7th, 2006
Category: Editorial, Plugins
Overuse a term and it becomes meaningless. How much meaning is still in the term 'Ajax?' Media Machines tries to wring a little more buzz out of it -- first take an X3D and VRML browser plugin with ECMAScript bindings (Flux), combine it with XMLHttpRequest and voila! You've got Ajax3D. At least that's what you have according to their latest press release.
Media Machines, Inc., a leading provider of open source, real time 3D communications on the web, today announced Ajax3Dâ„¢, a Javascript-based software library and development paradigm for deploying online virtual worlds and 3D web applications based on Ajax and X3D. The company also issued an open call for participation in an industry forum at www.ajax3D.org, dedicated to the research and development of online virtual worlds using 3D open standards and Ajax best practices.
A quick look at www.ajax3D.org reveals a somewhat anemic collection of forums and 'tutorials.' You have to view source and download the javascript files to figure out what's going on.
JAVASCRIPT:
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//ajax3d.js
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var browser = null; var context = null; var listener = null; var listenersSetup = false;
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function initAjax3d(filename)
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{
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browser = null; context = null; listenersSetup = false;
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browser = document.FLUX.getBrowser();
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if (browser != null) {
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listener = new Object();
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listener.browserChanged = browserChanged;
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browser.addBrowserListener(listener);
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if (filename != null)
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browser.loadUrlS (filename);
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else
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context = browser.getExecutionContext();
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}
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}
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// [snip]
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function createX3DFromString(str) {
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var scene = browser.createX3DFromString(str); var rootnodes = scene.getRootNodes(); var i;
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// Do a bit of work to deal with the quirky X3D add/remove root node paradigm
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for (i = 0; i <rootnodes.length; i++) {
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node = rootnodes[i];
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scene.removeRootNode(node);
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context.addRootNode(node);
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}
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}
There's no documentation to speak of, unless you head over to www.web3d.org and read through their obtuse standards documents. To Media Machines' credit, they did just release the source of their plugin to open source, so you could crawl through the code to figure out all of the bindings. Even so, how much is the 'Ajax' involved with '3D'? Not a whole lot. Certainly not enough to warrant the coining of a new term and the issuing of a press release.
Update 1: The ajax3d.org site now does have some text to go with the tutorials. Was I too harsh in my assessment of Ajax3D as an excercise in hype? I don't have anything against the 3D or VRML folks, but unless you can show me 3D without a plugin, I'm still a skeptic.
