Window.Open Causes Browser Compatibilty Issues

One minute - May 21, 2014
#internet-explorer#javascript#chrome#firefox

One of the things that always annoys me as a web developer is when native browser functions that are accesible from JavaScript do not share the same function signature. One perfect example of this is the window.open function. When you are using non-Microsoft browsers such as Firefox and Chrome, you are able to make a call something like this window.open(url, 'window name', 'dimensions or other settings');. The window name parameter is important because it allows you to open multiple links in the same external window/tab. However, when using Internet Explorer, especially Internet Explorer 8 and older, you can only use window.open(url);. If you try to use the first type of function call, you get a very ambiguous error message in the browser that doesn’t tend to show exactly where the error occurred.

It is safe to say that I will remember that there is something to be wary of when using window.open when multiple browser support is required.

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Apr 30, 2014

2 minutes

Always Namespace Variable Names in JavaScript

After running into a few issues with variable naming collisions over the past few days, it drives home how much we all should be namespacing our variable names in JavaScript. When writing JavaScript code that is only in use on your own website, you should still always namespace your variables. If you are writting a JavaScript library that will be in use on any website a user puts it on, namespacing your variable names is a minimum requirement.

#javascript #design-patterns

May 19, 2014

4 minutes

Google Analytics Site Speed is a bit Unreliable

Google Analytics will now allow site owners to track the performance of their websites with real live traffic. This is a nice feature that lets you understand just how long it takes for the average visitor to your site to see the fully complete version of your website. While this sounds like a great tool that will give you an accurate view of yoru website’s performance, it does not tell the full story. You can access the Site Speed section of Google Analyics under the Behavior>Site Speed>Overview section. Please be aware that not all visitors will send this information, so you will have to have a certain amount of traffic to your site before you will get any information in this section at all.

#internet-explorer #performance #chrome

Mar 31, 2014

2 minutes

JavaScript Templating

Many times it becomes useful to be able to make an AJAX request for some data, insert it into some HTML that is already on the client, and then display it to the user. There are a few ways to implement this, each approach has its benefits and drawbacks.

String Concatenation

Possibly the simplest way to accomplish the templating in JavaScript is to use simple string concatenation with ‘+’. This is the approach that I see many newcomers to JavaScript use in their code, as it is the simplest to implement. However, it does have a major drawback in that this method has the worst performance of all, especially in older versions of Internet Explorer. This could be implemented as below:

#javascript