Announcing Elementals.js Version 0.95 RC1

That's right, my JavaScript library has hit the first release candidate. The beta was feature complete, but buggy -- what BETA actually means. This RC has been debugged, fixed and extensively tested, but still may have a few edge cases I've not encountered with my test suite.

... so if anyone wants to try it out and give me feedback:
http://www.elementalsjs.com

For those of you who didn't see my earlier thread (which was more concept before I even had a name for this) the whole idea of this is to be a class and method library with some polyfills, NOT a framework. To me "framework" has too many negative connotations attached to it, as it implies having the scripting to the work for you, preventing you from grasping the concepts of the underlying language.

Much less that most 'frameworks' are by themselves many times larger than I'd allow an entire page template's HTML + CSS + Scripts + images (not counting content) to reach; much of that bloat comes from using JavaScript to do things that either don't belong on a website in the first place, or are CSS' job.

The functionality provided by this library is meant to simplify getting hold of elements, manipulate classes, and make working with scripting easier without obfuscating how things actually work.

It also provides polyfills for some more recent ECMAScript functions in legacy browsers, and some helper methods to make things like cross-browser AJAX or table/list sorting easier.

So... give it a whirl, tell me what you think. I still have to write some tutorials for it, the existing documentation is pretty complete and the demo's straight-forward, but it's still at the "you have to know JS first" stage of documentation.

 

Will play around with it through the week, I have my own which has a pretty similar aim so I will be interested to see your approach.

 

... and found a code regression that broke AJAX in IE8/earlier... so more work today.

-- edit -- Version 0.9.51 RC2 is now up, fixing the blocking bug for IE8. I also made a change that makes the library mostly function in "Quirks", though testing for that has NOT been fully done.

 

... and 0.9.53 RC4... typo, had && instead of & in the nodemask routine... and modified the compare functions that the table sorts use as some 'undefined' can creep into the nodes.

I may have been premature in calling 0.9.5x a RC.

 

You know what sucks? Telling a volunteer you no longer require their services... I've spent the past six hours undoing and fixing "fixes" that screwed up the whole codebase -- as evidenced by being up to RC5 now. Poor bugger just completely missed what a lot of the functions were even for...

Ah well, I don't work well with others anyways, and really need to avoid the "too many cooks" scenario anyways; there's a reason I can't use versioning software; it pisses all over every project I've ever been involved in.

 

Out of curiosity, why don't you use versioning software? For small projects free stuff like TortoiseSVN works fine if you use Windows. I personally have been using version control software in all my projects for the past 20 years...

 

I have never EVER <vince neil>ever, never EVER EVER never EVER ever ever</vince> been able to use any form of versioning software without it turning the project I'm working on into a giant mess. It's just another of those tools that people claim makes it easier; easier to work on your own, easier to work with in a group, easier to keep track of things or go back in code versions... and to be frank....

You keep on using that word...

It strikes me more as a crutch for inept project managers, and to encourage a lack of communication between people working on a project. It's just another pointlessly and needlessly complex step making things WAY more complicated than it needs to be; and the resulting code ends up reeking of "too many chiefs and not enough Indians". EVERY time I've tried to use it in a project or been forced to on a project, in under a month EVERYTHING was such a disaster it had to be thrown out and started over from scratch. I stare in wonder at how the **** anyone actually gets a blasted thing accomplished with ANY of that trash.

... though admittedly, I have a lot of "mental blocks" on allegedly useful programming "tools" -- like visual programming; cannot grasp ANY of the concepts... the illegible acid trip known as colour syntax highlighting; just makes code harder to read, follow and understand. Tabbed editing where cramming everything into one window is a colossal step backwards in functionality. How anyone can actually use software like vi/vim or eMacs, which to me are so useless cryptic I might as well go back to using Edlin. Hell, I even find most IDE's to be full of crap that just gets in the way of doing what I actually am there to do -- *SHOCK* WRITE CODE!

Much less the idiotic halfwit bull that are HTML, CSS or JS "frameworks", or pre-processors like LESS, SASS or just plain halfwit broken thinking like OOCSS; all of which just reek of ineptitude, ignorance and "should I get you a bib for that drool" stupidity.

Which after some three and a half decades of programming, I know shit when I see it. I would sooner hand assemble 4k of RCA 1802 machine language to enter it one bit at a time on toggle switches (which is where I started in programming) than use ANY of that crap! Or as I said when I first encountered C, "This is supposed to be BETTER than assembler?!? No, seriously? Really?!?"

But what do I know, I still call K&R "New kid BS"... goes with being a "Wirth" kind of guy.

Bottom line for me -- if your code is complicated enough you need some 'tool' to manage it for you, your code is too complicated! First rule of programming I ever learned; the less code you use, the less there is to break.

 

I agree with many things you said above... yet, I cannot possibly imagine how you can have 2 or more people working on the same code tree without overwriting each other's changes by accident. I guess verbal communications can work if everyone is in the same location, there are only a few developers on the project, and each has some isolated code module to work on. Yet, in my experience there are always interfaces and other common files that need to be locked when edited. Anyway, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks