Home ›

At the Forge - Unobtrusive JavaScript

Issue 174

From Issue #174
October 2008

Oct 01, 2008  By Reuven M. Lerner
 in
Remove JavaScript event handlers from HTML files using Prototype and Lowpro.
Conclusion

Unobtrusive JavaScript is an increasingly popular style for working with JavaScript, particularly when it comes to defining event handlers. Prototype makes it easier to work with events than with raw JavaScript, but the Lowpro library makes it even easier than that. With Lowpro, it becomes quite simple to assign event handlers to any combination of elements in our document, without having to clutter up our HTML page or worry about when the page has loaded.

Resources

David Flanagan's JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is an excellent resource for JavaScript programmers, including both a tutorial and a reference section. Douglas Crockford's recent book, JavaScript: The Good Parts, is much shorter, but it's also excellent and provides useful advice on which parts of JavaScript we should avoid. Both books are published by O'Reilly. My opinion (and use) of JavaScript has improved dramatically since reading Crockford's writing, letting me concentrate more on writing code and less on problems associated with the specification or implementation of JavaScript.

You can read more about Prototype at its home page, www.prototypejs.org. I also enjoyed the book Prototype and Scriptaculous, written by Christophe Porteneuve and published by the Pragmatic Programmers.

Finally, the Lowpro library is written and distributed by Dan Webb, and it's best described on his blog, www.danwebb.net/2006/9/3/low-pro-unobtrusive-scripting-for-prototype. And, a Google group for discussing Lowpro is at groups.google.co.uk/group/low-pro.

Reuven M. Lerner, a longtime Web/database developer and consultant, is a PhD candidate in learning sciences at Northwestern University, studying on-line learning communities. He recently returned (with his wife and three children) to their home in Modi'in, Israel, after four years in the Chicago area.

______________________

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

So interresting...

Arimbourg's picture
Submitted by Arimbourg (not verified) on Sat, 02/07/2009 - 07:40.

Thanks for this article. Clear and so usefull...

White Paper
More Resources
Fabric-Based Computing Enables Optimized Hyperscale Data Centers

Today’s modular x86 servers are compute-centric, designed as a least common denominator to support a wide range of IT workloads. Those generic, virtualized IT workloads have much different resource optimization requirements than hyperscale and cloud applications. They have resulted in a “one size fits all” enterprise IT architecture that is not optimized for a specific set of IT workloads, and especially not emerging hyperscale workloads, such as web applications, big data, and object storage. In this report, you will learn how shifting the focus from traditional compute-centric IT architectures to an innovative disaggregated fabric-based architecture can optimize and scale your data center.

Learn More

Sponsored by AMD

White Paper
More Resources
Red Hat White Paper: Using an Open Source Framework to Catch the Bad Guy

Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6

Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.

Learn More

Sponsored by DLT Solutions