Aching Brain Just another WordPress weblog

What’s in a name?

For the upcoming rewrite of Coffee & Feeds (aka The Great Refactoring) I've been farming out all the visible effects wizardry to the excellent Script.aculo.us, which is a JavaScript effects library based on the likewise wonderful Prototype.

Prototype itself adds a whole bunch of useful stuff to the JavaScript language turning it into a more agile beast at the cost of a few little niggles.

One of those niggles is it's method of implementing inheritance which is teh_uglier. Enter Base which also implements inheritance but with much cleaner syntax. Justin Palmer's blog, who is writing a book on Prototype 'fesses up to using Base and Prototype together. Then the author of Prototype steps in and gives us the tantalising titbit that Base will eventually make it's way into version 2 of Prototype.

This is great, but none of this solves the immediate problems of someone trying to write a robust, readable JavaScript application with inheritance right now. So you try to Google on Base and Prototype to get an idea of the problems you will face in combining them, however they are such generic terms that it proves difficult.

For the uninitiated, base is a common term used in OO related discussions, generally referring to an ancestor class higher up the inheritance chain and in terms of JavaScript, a prototype is a property of an object that is used to add custom properties to all objects of that type. So if you are looking for discussions about Base and Prototype, you are likely to come up with discussions about base and prototype. Kapish?

No matter how hard it is to remember the URL (where do the dots go?), at least script.aculo.us is not likely to get confused for something else. Even though I thought it said scriptalicious for ages.

Ugh.

Okay, yes, JSThing is also a stupid name, but I couldn't think of anything better at the time, okay?

Popularity: 15% [?]

got API?

http://www.gotapi.com/

Neat.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Black MacBook

I've just had a look at a photo stream on Flickr of the new MacBooks.

I think this Slashdot comment says it all:

I mean, it's really not that great value for the black ones. It's quite an expensive price bump for the black finish and an extra few gigs of hard dr....OH GOD I WANT A BLACK MACBOOK!

I am weak.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Power Poop

I just went to a seminar about Power Point where the trainer said (to an audience of career PAs), "creativity cannot be taught, it is a gift, if you don't have creativity may be someone else in the office should be making your presentation." At which point I thought, a) why are you bothering with this seminar at all? and b) where is the creativity in using Power Point?

Be prepared, I am now equipped to unleash spinning exploding text on the world.

Ugh.

Oh, and Alex, can I ask two questions in a blog? Although the questions are rhetorical, so I expect it doesn't count...

Popularity: 16% [?]