Windark - Script # Controls

Saturday, April 21, 2007

I was never much of a JavaScript guy. There were probably lots of reasons why I never found the need or want to code in it. I’ll just mention a few here, chime in if they resonate with you too ;-) .

1. Tooling around JavaScript has always been comical at best

2. Difficult to debug. (kinda like #1.)

3. Difficult to maintain.

4. Drank too much Koolaid as a child (nuff said ay?).

5. Who understands this stuff any way; everyone copies online samples or does “View Source” on your favorite site?

However, my biggest impedance with it may have been the fact that I always wanted the full power of the OS (machine) behind my code, so that I could do all those cool Computer Sciency things, like OO, compilation, type safety, etc.

In either case a while back (Dec or Jan I think)I decided to play around with this great (Script #) tool. I did have to learn a bit of HTML and CSS, but I was able to build a set of controls rather quickly. I believe I had it all in done in about 2 weeks (including getting up to speed with the HMTL and CSS and DOM). Not bad for a newbie if I say so my self. I do however credit S# and Nikhil's API for that , the ability to build browser client code quickly, especially since I was able to apply the techniques I have used for years.

Now a few months past that initial proof of concept I decided to share the controls with the community. Ok, brace for the BIG Disclaimer. The first control was the Tab and probably the worst in usability, some of the others are cleaner. I will eventually refactor the whole thing, but for now they are built around a pseudo Winforms style.

I put together a couple of pages demoing some of the controls, namely ComboBox,TreeView, GridView and TabControl.

I may add some more usage samples soon or if I ever blog again. I may also share more of my original proof of concept, in the mean time enjoy the controls. You can always just rip the JavaScript and use that directly (I am a realist) :-P, the code could be used as plain ol' vanilla Java Script Controls.

Eddy