NYCPHP Meetup

[tedd]

At 11:48 AM -0400 4/1/08, John Campbell wrote:
>  >  http://www.webbytedd.com/b/ajax/
>>
>Your code is fine for trivial example pages, but would be a disaster
>for a production application.
>1) The use of the global 'http' is sloppy and limiting.
>2) You need to highlight the selected menu after the callback
>completes.  Your coding style will quickly become a mess of
>document.getElementByIds().
>3) You use browser detection... you should use object detection.  A
>try/catch block is a good idea in your case.
>4) Your implementation breaks the back button.
>5) Clicking the currently selected navigation element causes
>unnecessary requests.
>
>With a library, I can fix all of these issues and cut the amount of
>code down from 50 lines to 10 lines.  If you were to fix these issues
>yourself, your code would grow to more than 250 lines.
>
>-John C.

-John C.:

I didn't say I just the sharpest crayon in the box.  :-)

You said:

>1) The use of the global 'http' is sloppy and limiting.

Please explain.

You said:
>2) You need to highlight the selected menu after the callback
>completes.  Your coding style will quickly become a mess of
>document.getElementByIds().

That was just a simple example, here's a bit more complicated template:

http://webbytedd.com/a/ajax-site/

But, to add another page is trivial -- so, I think production for a 
typical site would hold up.

You said:

>3) You use browser detection... you should use object detection.  A
>try/catch block is a good idea in your case.

Open to be shown.  :-)

You said:

>4) Your implementation breaks the back button.

Only because there's no history. If you access it via here:

http://webbytedd.com/a.php  (last item on the right)

You'll have back history.

You said:

>5) Clicking the currently selected navigation element causes
>unnecessary requests.

Yeah, that's one of my pet peeves too. I just didn't fix it. It's 
easy enough via:

http://sperling.com/examples/smart-menu/

Cheers,

tedd

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