JavaScript

Recently, I needed to create a small JavaScript that would make links for documents and outside web sites open the links in a new window. However, any link from the web site that held the links needed to open in the same window. This was made a bit more complicated by the fact that the system that was holding the links (a third party web content management system) did not allow for the user to decide if they wanted the link to open in a new window when they created a new link.

Because I could edit the JavaScript that loaded when the page was loaded, the solution that I came up with was to call the below function in a function that was called onload. What this JavaScript does is go through all of the links on the page and any link that matches the criteria is changed to have a target of blank.

function AddTarget(){
	var TargetTag2 = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
	
	for(var a=0; a

Sometimes a simple JavaScript can save the day.

I found interesting tutorial today about using JavaScript with Gzip:

The main problem when we are using ajax framework is because of their big size. Of course, it will extremely slow down the sites load time. For example, if we use the standard jQuery, it’s almost 100Kb. It’s even more if we use the complete Prototype and Scriptaculous that will cost around 150Kb.Compress JavaScript with Gzip | Ajax Tutorial, Nov 2008

Read the whole tutorial here.

The new Visual WebGui Web Applications Framework version which was released today offers upgraded performance, scalability and complete developer and designer freedom to design and customize Web 2.0 UIs. Visual WebGui 6.4 beta 1 incorporates about 1,000 complete features either added or fixed from 6.3, including increased customizability with the new control level designer, theme designer and jQuery integration. The new version also includes 4 out-of-the-box skins for simple personalization of the UI look and feel. The new version improves WinForms compatibility and provides a much comprehensive set of events with upgrades to the DataGrid and ListView.

6.4 also presents runtime enhancements with improved performance, memory consumption and CPU usage as well as scalability. The improvement in 6.4 reaches the compatibility areas with greater browser support which covers almost the entire spectrum of prominent browsers in the market.

Visual WebGui SDK with integration into Visual Studio 2010 will be available by the time that a 6.4 release version is out.

As announced before a revised documentation and a new task oriented kit will be soon available for Visual WebGui developers. The kit which will demonstrate all of Visual WebGui's controls, features and concepts will allow a quick live view of all of the platform's components as well as a deep dive for more advanced developers in their work.

Free beta downloads are available here.

You may have seen the Google Product Search and may have thought that it would be useful to include a customized version of the search into a website or application. Unfortunately, you can't just create a custom search engine based on the Product Search using Google's custom search creator.

So, how would you incorporate the Product Search into an application? The answer is to use the Google Base API. The API allows for you to call a feed and if you use the [item type:products] option it will use the Product Search data.

The API allows you to receive the feed in Atom, RSS and JSON formats. Google has also made it very easy by making a feed URL builder (you can access the builder here).

So, if you want to make an application using the Products Search now you can.

Gizmox released today a new version of the Visual WebGui Platform for Rich .NET AJAX applications.

Visual WebGui 6.3.7 is a further stabilization to the 6.3 pre-release version which adds support for wrapping of AJAX based controls into the Visual WebGui framework as well as support for additional languages.

The platform is available in free open source and free trial (commercial Professional Studio) versions.
All downloads are available for free here!

This is the Change log for 6.3.7:

Breaking Changes
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VWG-4746- Support for wrapping AJAX based controls added.

Bugs fix
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VWG-3930 - No control causes the designer window to open dirty - with a star marking changes.
VWG-4763 - VB form designer allows to edit ContextMenu items
VWG-4256 - Button with 21x21 image used tocrop image in a button with size of 25x25.
VWG-4204 - ListView RTL view fixed.
VWG-2599 - When browser is in offline mode a message is shown when the connection to the server is lost.
VWG-2976 - Focus indication on Checked list box focus.
VWG-4751 - Problem deleting SplitContainer contro from designer fixed.
VWG-4355 - Opening a TableLayoutPanel in designer used to automatically add rows.
VWG-4753 - Splitcontainer did not preserve splitter panels order.
VWG-4359 - When setting the CheckBoxes property to TRUE, the selection text used to disappear.
VWG-4309 - Casting safetly tests added in the resource browser dialog classes.
VWG-4344 - Support added for Iceland-Icelandic.
VWG-4403 - Support added for Brazil-Portuguese .
VWG-4311 - Support added for Portugal-Portuguese.
VWG-3792 - UniqueIdExtender renders CUID attribute at run-time - and it's now available in generated HTML code.
VWG-4211 - FCKEditor fixed .
VWG-4243 - TableLayOutPanel render problems fixed fixed.
VWG-4120 - TabControl should re-render on KeepConnceted requests fixed.
VWG-4752 - SplitterDistance property is now saved for the SplitContainer control.
VWG-4390 - TableLayoutPanel fixed to not corrupt layout when saving and reloading
VWG-4662 - Form.DockPadding fixed and wont make controls move on open+save form.
VWG-4483 - Buttons with Flat style text retain's it's location on mouse hover.
VWG-4260 - DateTimePicker with custom format will not change day part to undefined on second tabbing through the DTP control.
VWG-4246 - DataGridViewCell - allows placing typing cursor using mouse to edit contents
VWG-4371 - Tabbing through controls on a form tabstop on buttons with FlatStyle=Flat.
VWG-4244 - IE8 - Dialogs & MessageBoxes showing content.
VWG-4172 - IE8 - Rendering of labels fixed to look the same as in IE7 and FF3.
VWG-4340 - IE8 - Combobox rendering fixed.

Go to Downloads page...

Visual WebGui 6.4 Preview 1 is here and available to download for free!

The 6.4 Preview allows to experience the revolutionary web design tool providing ease of designing DHTML or Silverlight UI with no HTML, CSS or XAML coding, while using your design software of choice such as Photoshop and Expression Blend. This cutting-edge Point & Click Web Design Tool provides, for the first time, a complete coding-free cycle for the creation of complex, enterprise-grade web applications. 6.4 also allows to fully customize application themes using the new designer and by downloading and sharing complete VWG Themes.

Web Design Tools page...

“Microsoft is pleased to work with Visual WebGui to deliver the best computing experience to our customers,” said Joe Marini, Director, Platform & Tools Ecosystem at Microsoft Corp. “The newly added features in Visual WebGui 6.4 preview offer developers a flexible way to brand and differentiate their UIs for internal and customer-facing applications.”

The 6.4 Preview version is offered for free and available for evaluation in either Express Studio or Professional Studio. In the future the new design tools will be offered in the Express edition for free, under LGPL license, and in the Professional Studio version.

6.4 also presents new scalability extensions for redundancy and mulit-user SaaS/Cloud Computing level with performance enhancement and memory optimization.

A new interesting tool which allows forms, reports and charts to be created using a powerful WYSIWYG visual editor was developed atop the Visual WebGui .NET AJAX platform.

The tool is an automated environment (IDE) for developing web systems using the methodology DDD (Domain-Driven Development). Automato allows the creation of complex systems like ERP and CRM on a powerful Web applications platform for using the same concepts of desktop applications. This model maximizes the interactivity with the end-user and makes the systems more robust.

Unlike the current models of creating Web applications that require prior knowledge of various technologies (DHTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc.), creating rich interface applications (RIA) in Automato™ are automatically managed by a powerful platform which provides a harmonic development experience using a single technology. This dramatically reduces the time of creation, costs and learning curve.

Features Integrated :

1. Powerful Form Editor (WYSIWYG).
2. Multiple Database Support
3. Modeling Database from E/R Diagrams
4. Compare & Merge Databases Model
5. Unique Compare and Merge Applications
6. Source Control Management
7. Issue Tracking System / Project Management System

Learn about Automato...

Also known as ECMAScript 5th Edition, the new JavaScript standard has entered final draft stage. Among the goodies: a formal getter and setter syntax for object properties, language reflection features, support for the JSON data format, additional Array methods, and a strict mode that improves error checking.

Function.bind

Function.prototype.bind(self, args...). A bind function wraps a function in a closure, storing references to the context arguments from the surrounding scope. This is somewhat equivalent to the following:

Function.prototype.bind = function(context) {
  var fun = this;
  return function(){
    return fun.apply(context, arguments);
  };
};

Applications include partial application of arguments to a function and currying. Though you can custom-roll one today, a native bind function in 3.1 should outperform any equivalent user-defined function.

Array

The additional Array methods in ECMAScript 3.1 are identical to methods introduced in JavaScript 1.6-1.8, but were never present in any official ECMAScript specification. They are currently implemented in Firefox 3.x. Of course, having them in ECMAScript 3.1 means that now you will be able to actually use them (provided, of course, that all browsers implement the standard...). These methods are: indexOf, lastIndexOf, filter, forEach, every, map, some, reduce, and reduceRight. There's a good description of each method here.

ECMAScript 3.1, also known as JavaScript Harmony, is the less ambitious version of what was to be JavaScript 2/ECMAScript 4, a plan scuttled when some members of ECMA balked at the large additions to the language.

The new specification is available here.

The 1.3 version of the Dojo toolkit is finally out. The main focus of this release has been browser compatibility (particularly IE 8 and Chrome) and speed. According to Dojo-reported numbers on the TaskSpeed benchmark, Dojo is the fastest JavaScript toolkit on common DOM operations, at least twice as fast as other JavaScript toolkits. Of course, all the usual caveats about micro-benchmarking apply, but the speed increase is nevertheless quite impressive.

Simultaneous with the Dojo 1.3 release is the release of the PlugD, a library allows Dojo developers to mimic some of the popular aspects of jQuery (method chaining, as well as many similarly-named convenience methods).

The full release notes can be found here. You can download the new release here.

Douglas Crockford, author of the JSON data format, has written that JavaScript as a language is like a "Lisp in C's clothing":

JavaScript's C-like syntax, including curly braces and the clunky for statement, makes it appear to be an ordinary procedural language. This is misleading because JavaScript has more in common with functional languages like Lisp or Scheme than with C or Java.

This is a really interesting statement, especially if you are used to looking at JavaScript code like this:

var myGlobal = ...;
function myProceduralFunction() {
     // ...
}

Don't laugh...you've probably written JavaScript like this at one time or another. I certainly did, before I really understood JavaScript. For a long time, this is how most people grokked JavaScript, as a kind of dynamically typed C/C++. There are also those who try to make JavaScript behave as a Java-style OOP language (a natural tendency, given the misnomer): using nested objects as package-style "namespaces", trying to make prototypical inheritance look like static class inheritance, etc. It's all a bit of a stretch, but since JavaScript does actually borrow many OOP concepts, it can be done. I would argue, though, that Crockford is right and JavaScript is more naturally used as a functional language. In this article I am going to briefly examine some of the similarities between JavaScript and functional programming languages, and how the JavaScript programmer can use them to his/her advantage.