JavaScript

Creating user interfaces in JavaScript can sometimes lead to a problem, especially when the interface used AJAX to load data from the server. As many actions will be event driven by the user you can find that when a user triggers lots of events all at once the browser will send out lots of AJAX requests all at once. This can easily cause bandwidth issues but can also lead to the user getting confused while they patiently await the browser to settle down and let them get on with things.

There are numerous way to get around this issue, the first being to design programs so that AJAX requests are only issued when the user has clicked on something or when they start typing

The for loop in JavaScript can be used to iterate through all items in an array or properties of an object. This makes looping through any object or array very easy. As in the following example that printing out all items in an array.

var count = '';
var numbers = new Array(3);
numbers[0] = 42;
numbers[1] = 13;
numbers[2] = 73;
for(i in numbers){
  count += numbers[i]+' ';
}
alert(count);

The three main objects to do with a JavaScript are navigator, window and document. Although window is part of navigator and document is part of window. So to print off all information to do with a browser you can do the following. Note that some items in window and document can cause JavaScript to crash in some browsers so some error detection is included here.

Creating a new Draggable object with the script.aculo.us framework is easy. You just create a new instance of the Draggable object with the element id to be made draggable as the first parameter and a set of options as the second.

<div id="dragMe"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
new Draggable('dragMe',{revert:true});
</script>

The revert option will make the draggable element move back to the position it started from. More options can be added by separating them by commas, so to enable ghosting on the element as well as revert use the following.

new Draggable('dragMe',{revert:true,ghosting:true});

Ghosting means that when the element is dragged a ghost copy of the element moves with the mouse, where the original stays where it is until the mouse is released.

Here are a few of the built in JavaScript functions available.

To get the length of a string use the length variable. This returns the number of characters in a string.

var str = 'abcdef';
str.length; // returns 6

The charAt function will return the character at the point specified in the parameter. So to get the first character of a string use:

var str = 'abcdef';
str.charAt(0); // returns a

To get the last character of a string use a combination of charAt and length.

var str = 'abcdef';
str.charAt(str.length - 1); // returns 'f'

To get the position of a character or group of characters in a string use the indexOf function. The function returns -1 if the string is not found.