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Currently working on a project that has well defined use of “namespaces” and structured use folders for its JavaScript files. I wanted to investigate the options for combining and minifying JavaScript files. I need a tool that: can be run from command line (my team uses many different editors and IDEs) will work on both Windows and Unix based platforms does not require huge, obscure configuration files can merge sources recursively has an acceptable software license (MIT / Apache / BSD) is thorougly tested is extensible can work with any JavaScript framework I settled for trying out Juicer and Sprockets, since both tools met the requirements and were the only high-quality tools on my radar. ...

Behaviours To encapsulate complex javascript behaviour on websites, I have been using Dan Webb’s Low Pro library for several years. Low Pro allows you to create self-contained Behavior classes, which avoids polluting the global namespace with variables and makes for very easy re-use of code. I’ve previously given a little introduction to Low Pro for Prototype at a local Meetup event, where I show an example of creating your own behaviours. Textmate snippet Today, I finally got around to creating a TextMate snippet for creating new Behaviors. ...

I’ve finally managed to switch off the final remnant of the Top Sites feature in Safari 4, the automatic generation of ‘Webpage Previews’ I’ve previously written about how to Reclaim Disk Space From Safari 4, where I detailed how to set up a job to cleanup the Webpage Previews cache folder. Luckily, that exercise has now become obsolete, thanks to reports on several sites, which I can’t remember. Below are listed the Terminal commands to verify disk use and apply the changes to Safari. ...

Working with a new client and getting back to my roots of doing pure frontend development, I had to set up a virtual host for development on my MBP. When working with Rails, I usually just use script/server and/or Passenger to serve my applications… in this situation i just needed to serve some static files. I found Mark Kirby’s excellent tutorial on Setting up virtual hosts on OS X Leopard and am posting it here, so I won’t forget in the future. ...

Firefox 3.5 was recently released, and offers significant updates. If you have not upgraded yet, you should do so now. In the LowPro community, we have been tracking compatibility with the upcoming Firefox. The existing LowPro was compatible with Firefox 3.5RC2, but incompatible with the final release of Firefox 3.5. So, if you are using LowPro, you should upgrade with a new version of LowPro today. You can either go for Dan Webb’s original version or try out my minification-friendly fork (there is a minified version in dist). ...

Having a MacBook Pro that seems to be continually low on disk space, I set out to tidy up a bit using the excellent and free OmniDiskSweeper. It will help you identify where all your disk space is going. Use with caution though, and always have a recent backup. After tidying up all over the file system, I noticed that the Safari cache was enourmous … 1.2GB in my case. Further investigation revealed that most of that space was taken up by Webpage Previews, used by the top sites feature in Safari 4. As I don’t care for that feature, I have disabled it with the following command ...

Tonight I gave a lightweight introduction to Low Pro for Prototype at the Öresund JavaScript meetup. For those that missed it, or just want to study the example again, you can see the slides as a PDF, see the sample or download a zip file with everything. The meetup was very informal and there were also two other presentations: Mats Bryntse gave an overview of “What’s new in EcmaScript 3.1” and Rasmus Olausson showed us a “Hello world with Google Web Toolkit” as well as how to beat his Sudoku webapp :-) ...

Every once in awhile you come across one of those Internet Explorer 6 issues that tries it’s hardest to be really annoying. Today was one of those days with IE. Having flown out to work directly with a client’s web team yesterday, I spent some time today cursing at IE6 and trying to deal with a weird flickering of the webpage, apparently caused by hovering over a menu. After about 40 minutes, I had the palm–meets–forehead “heureka” moment, and recognised that the bug I was seeing was in fact the infamous IE6 background flicker bug, which I’ve exterminated on other sites before. ...

As a followup to my two part article about Creating Sitemaps with Comatose CMS, I wanted to share with you, how I am currently implementing Sitemaps on this blog. After taking a stab at implementing my own solution for about 10 minutes (with Webby, you get surprisingly far in 10 minutes), I used my google-fu and found an article about Easy Google/Yahoo! Sitemaps with webby. Implementation took about 5 minutes, and I have have a fully functional Sitemap. ...