The "MUST HAVE" for JS developers

[Ux]

Hi I'm a newbie at JS and I'd like to know, from the expert JS-er, which
are the "things" they consider a *must have* (or known/visited/read...)
for a professional JS developer.
This will help me and others newbie to start with the right foot and to
catch the propers tools.

Thanx to all
Marco

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

Hi I'm a newbie at JS and I'd like to know, from the expert JS-er,

Well, I don't know if I qualify, but ... hell, that's not going to
stop me from voicing my opinion

which are the "things" they consider a *must have* (or
known/visited/read...) for a professional JS developer.

Must have: All available browsers. I'm not a professional Javascript
developer, so I only have ~20 browsers installed. There are lots of
subtle differences between different browsers, and different versions
of browsers. You should at least have access to the ones that are
most used for testing your pages in.

Must read: All relevant standards and specifications. The base of
Javascript development is still the web page, so you should be fluent
in valid HTML and CSS and know the quirks of the most used browsers.

For scripting, the language standard is ECMA 262 v3 (ECMAscript).
When used in a browser, the environment is specified by the W3C DOM
specifications, but here browser quirks and incomplete implementation
is even worse than with CSS. That makes cross browser scripting quite
a lot harder than most people thing

I keep my references to all this information on a web page for quick
access: <URL: http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/references.html>

Ofcourse, you can't be expected to just read all these, not always
very readable, specifications. Instead, you should use them as lookup
when you try to do something new.

And remember to read the newsgroup FAQ (first link under Javascript).
It has references too.

This will help me and others newbie to start with the right foot and
to catch the propers tools.

What I did was to first learn HTML, then CSS, and then the logical
progression was to scripting. I found this group, and started reading.
When I saw a question where I thought I knew the answer, then I
double checked the relevant specification first (well, at least some
times), and then tried to answer. Ofcourse I wasn't always right, but
in this group, as in most, wrong answers will get corrected. It's
quite educational.

/L 'and read the FAQ!'

 

[Ux]

Thanx for answer.
Which editor/debugger/3rd-parts-tools do you use (and suggest) in your
developing process?

Marco

 

[Mick White]

Hi I'm a newbie at JS and I'd like to know, from the expert JS-er, which
are the "things" they consider a *must have* (or known/visited/read...)
for a professional JS developer.
This will help me and others newbie to start with the right foot and to
catch the propers tools.

Thanx to all
Marco

I would say one "must have" is a computer.
Mick

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

Which editor/debugger/3rd-parts-tools do you use (and suggest) in your
developing process?

Any text editor will do. I use Emacs.

I also use a web page where I can enter Javascript and have it executed
quickly, for easy testing. It's just a loop that reads input, uses
the eval function on it and outputs the result again, but it makes
it easy to do a quick test without having to write a new page to embed
the test code in.
<URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/javascript/jstest5.html>
(doesn't work in older browsers, I have simpler versions for that).

Good luck
/L

 

[Richard Cornford]

Any text editor will do. I use Emacs.

<snip>

Surly not any text editor? A syntax-highlighting, automatically
indenting (programmers) editor at least. You wouldn't want to be left
using Notepad for anything serious.

Richard.

 

[Richard Cornford]

Mick White wrote:

I would say one "must have" is a computer.

With which a suitable electricity supply is essential. Can't at least
some things be taken for granted (or self-evident) in the context of
this question?

Richard.

 

[Mick White]

Mick White wrote:



With which a suitable electricity supply is essential. Can't at least
some things be taken for granted (or self-evident) in the context of
this question?

.....like a sense of humour?
Mick

 

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

<snip>

Surly not any text editor? A syntax-highlighting, automatically
indenting (programmers) editor at least.

I'm sure Emacs can do both of these, but I rarely bother to turn them
on (I never agree with an editor's indentation anyway .

An easy to use, preferably incremental, search and a usable macro
function is more important to me.

You wouldn't want to be left using Notepad for anything serious.

No, but if, by some accident of nature, Notepad happened to be your
favorite editor, you *could* use it. I guess my suggestion is to use
the editor one prefers ... and try a new one out from time to time.

/L

 

[Jim Ley]

I'm sure Emacs can do both of these, but I rarely bother to turn them
on (I never agree with an editor's indentation anyway .

but it's emacs, surely you've got to spend a week configuring it. The
default in the X-Emacs Javascript mode appears to be { on the same
line single tab on each block, so matches jslint's format fine. So
probably no tweaking necessary (other than setting the tab-stop to 1)

An easy to use, preferably incremental, search and a usable macro
function is more important to me.

M-/ is great in emacs too for script...

Jim.

 

[Jeff Papineau]

Hi I'm a newbie at JS and I'd like to know, from the expert JS-er, which
are the "things" they consider a *must have* (or known/visited/read...)
for a professional JS developer.
This will help me and others newbie to start with the right foot and to
catch the propers tools.

Thanx to all
Marco

Javascript DEBUG TOOLS !!!!

http://www.mandala.com/javascript/debug_javascript.html

I've written up a page explaining how to use the MS Script Editor for
Javascript debugging in IE. It's a great debugging environment and has
allowed my group to do much more with Javascript in IE with JSP files
than we would have attempted without it. This is NOT THE MS SCRIPT
DEBUGGER but a great editor/debugger included with Office XP/2000.
Very robust, and works great with JSP (and ASP), unlike the usual MS
tools like Visual Studio.

Please pass this around, as I think JSP developers especially need
this tool if they are using IE for development with complex
Javascript.

Of course, if you are using Netscape or Mozilla, Venkman is a good
debugger as well.

Cheers,
Jeff Papineau
San Jose, CA

 

[Matt Kruse]

Please pass this around, as I think JSP developers especially need
this tool if they are using IE for development with complex
Javascript.

You keep mentioning JSP. Why? Javascript has nothing to do with JSP, and
debugging javascript has nothing to do with which environment the javascript
was generated in. Whether it was JSP, ASP, PHP, Perl, Cold Fusion, etc, etc,
debugging javascript is completely separated from all those technologies.