Podcast 52: Javascript Libraries
Posted in Podcast on: Monday, October 2, 2006 by Paul Boag
This week on boagworld.com we talk to Dustin Diaz about Javascript libraries, discuss other web design podcasts, launch our web design forum and help you get started with Microformats.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (30.1MB)
To subscribe directly within itunes click here
In the news
Microformats
If you are interested in getting started with Microformats then check out the excellent ebook on Microformats by
Brian Suda
. He has also been kind enough to share a Microformats cheat sheet for free.
Microsoft and the BBC
This week saw an announcement by Microsoft and the BBC that they are exploring ways of developing [the BBCs] digital services
. As you can see the announcement is somewhat lacking in details. However, this is potentially a huge development and could lead to some interesting online services.
Searching rich media
This year’s demo conference saw pluggd announce an amazing new feature that allows you to search inside of podcasts. This is symptomatic of a growing movement to ensure that rich media content is searchable. Other players in this space include Veotag and Podzinger.
Questions and comments
This week’s show included two excellent audio questions from listeners.
The first was about the open source forum software I mentioned a few weeks back called Vanilla. This led to a discussion about running online communities, the integration of Vanilla and my hopes for the new boagworld forum.
The second question was about what other podcasts I would recommend. Below are the list of the one’s I mentioned on the show. However, you can find a more comprehensive list of web design podcasts by going here.
Main feature
The main feature today is an interview with
Dustin Diaz
about Javascript libraries. Javascript is becoming increasingly important as web designers produce ever more powerful web applications. But, how do Javascript libraries fit in? Do they enable rapid development or are they simply a crutch for those that can’t be bothered to learn the language?
Review
There are so many great website applications around these days, many of which allow you to add their functionality to your own site through web services and APIs. The problem is that it is hard to discover what exactly is available. This week on boagworld we review three sites that help you do exactly that:
17 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
Just listened to episode 52 and really enjoyed the chat with Dustin Diaz. I’m a fan of his energetic and sometimes pretty scatty pod/screen-casts. Muchly entertaining, so thank you :)
Towards the end you briefly touched on the discussion that whilst JavaScript libraries are incredibly powerful, they really aren’t a replacement for getting dirty in understanding how JavaScript works, its shortfalls, its strengths and its syntax. For a more in-depth discussion on this, then I can’t recommend JavaScript Libraries: Friend Or Foe? highly enough. A hugely entertaining panel discussion from some of the web’s most experienced scripters.
They discuss what libraries are, what they aren’t, the main libraries people are using, and best practices.
Hi Paul i have just caught up with you podcast i joined the team of listeners you had a podcast 48 and downloaded the lot as i was so impressed to find something i like. I am 14 and own a website http://www.grantmc.co.uk. (p.s. tell me what you think even give it a shout in your podcast if you want to help the adults of tomorrow) I have been coding for 6 months and have really got into web design.
Hi Paul,
I really like your podcast and love the way you and Marcus keep to make it funny.
Maybe you should really get a .is domain name, as Brian does use a .co.uk ^,~
I do like what you did with your Vanilla.
I’ll also be sending you an Email on tagging your podcasts.
Keep up the good work!
Friendly Greetings,
Martijn
Fab show :D
Good show – although I did get a bit zoned out during the Dustin interview. I do find that any other podcasts I have listened to (not many) are a bit drab and monotone. So no matter how good the advice is that they are giving, I zone out and don’t listen, and basically crack on with my work and don’t even realise the podcast is on.
The content of the whole show was good, but the interaction of Paul and Marcus definitely makes it. I loved it when Marcus ripped into Paul’s new photos. And he’s got a very good point!
Paul: I’m embarrassed for you. :o|
Diaz was hard to listen to, he was obviously proud of himself and it was hard to get concrete answers. Ohh well im sure he will come around.
Keep up the good work Paul.
Thanks for the mention, Paul – we are very flattered to be included in such company! I gotta tell ya, even after listening to every single show, you and Marcus still crack me up – keep up the great show.
Great show – I thought the interview with Dustin Diaz was fantastic. I very much like how he talks about using large function libraries for something which would only require a handful of lines of your own code to do the same, but integrate into your site better and you would have learned something. Education is the way forward…
Hello Paul,
Really like the new site and the forum. How about putting an image on the Odeo Player.
I found it a contradiction that Dustin Diaz admitted to not having a grasp of the design-y, aesthetic side of things (also evidenced by a look at his site), yet he seemed to expect web designers to implement all their own javascript, rather than piggy-backing on the various libraries that are out there.
Hi there Paul!
I’ve found out about you podcast from local magazine. I’ve decided to download all episodes and listen to them carefully. So far I’m somewhere at the beginning but even from that point I can see that information you provide is priceless.
Anyway, I want just to mention one thing. Naming of mp3 files and ID3 tags. It is soooo damn hard to maintain order in files which name format is so bad. Please – if it is possible – provide date in ID3 tab for every file and try to name files that they will be ordered. For example it would be good to follow such rule:
YY-mm-dd_TrackNo_Artist_Title_otherinfo.mp3
This way every episode will be ordered by date and show number when using any file browser on any system. Date format which is being used now makes such a mess in file ordering.
Let’s consider this as a step towards usability ;)
Bye,
grocal
Wow Paul,
Your listeners are too kind ;).
Dustin reiterated a lot of the straw men about JS libraries that really stem from an ignorance of the field. Unfortunately, Paul’s uncritical acceptance of his arguments made some really questionable statements seem insightful.
1) They’re really big and bloated: While that *might* be said about YUI, take a look at jQuery. The entire library, when packed, is 16k. Most sites would balk at using a title graphic double that size. And jQuery packs in a lot of functionality.
2) Why not roll your own for the functions you need? While that might work fine for a tooltip, that doesn’t make much sense when doing routine AJAX. There’s quite a bit of repeatable stuff you’ll need to do, but is non-trivial cross-browser. Not having to think about how, exactly, you’re going to get the height of an element (and it’s really, really non-trivial), or how you’re going to add, remove, or swap a class from an element is quite a boost in productivity.
And Dustin missed perhaps the best thing about Javascript libraries (and jQuery in particular). You can layer functionality on top of the framework, because you know the *pieces* will work. And there’s quite a bit of layering that can be done (check out http://jquery.com/plugins for some clever things people have done).
Bottom line: While it doesn’t make sense to use Prototype for Element.fade, that’s quite a straw-man argument against using frameworks at all.
I fancy myself a fairly good Javascript developer, and it just makes no sense for me to roll my own when a perfectly good library already exists.
To me, that’s akin to a C or Java developer refusing to use libraries because they’d rather roll their own. It makes no sense. Why be saddled with the built-in limitations of a language when perfectly good extensions, by perfectly smart people, exist.
And that’s a lot of why frameworks are so appealing: smart people spend the better part of every day figuring out solutions to complicated problems (think: determining the height of an element cross-browser regardless of positioning) that would just cause any sane person to give up in frustration. It’s not embarrassing to use libraries. People do so in every single other language. There’s no reason for Javascript to be different.
jQuery only really seems packed because the internal functionality is tag soup (almost qualifies as obfuscated). My thoughts toward YUI can’t seem anything else but biased however I truly think they’ve done the best job than any other JavaScript library. The fact that each utility is broken up into separate sets of tasks makes it all the more powerful. When gZipped and minified, each utility will average about 2.5k each
I loved this interview. I have followed Dustin for some time now, and learned a lot from his stuff. Dustin – please keep up the great tuts!Great to see two of my faves together on one show.
While it doesn’t make sense to use Prototype for Element? Fade, that’s quite a straw-man argument against using frameworks at all.
Thanks from Germany
Nice site. I love the interview. My favorit. Thanks and best regards