Archive for January, 2008

I was helping someone today with their javascript and they asked me about how and when I manage errors in the classes and functions that I write. I wrote him back an email which I think actually could be useful to others, so here it is.

There are three types of error handling that I use:

• Graceful: if possible, just ignore the error and continue with some default state or without a meaningful value
• Debug: throw a warning to the dbug.log method but continue otherwise
• Break: Either explicitly throw an error or (more often) just let the error that is thrown at runtime be thrown

| Read the rest »

New date picker, Date extentions, Auto-ajax indicator, and Input text hovers

So I just finished pushing out and testing my latest batch of additions to the CNET Libraries and you can download them in our svn. Here's a brief roundup with links to demos and stuff:

• DatePicker got a lot of love including the ability to output a custom format for the date and the ability to choose ranges and enter times
• Extended the Native Date object to add lots and lots of neat-o methods including date comparison, fancy parsing, and about 2 dozen other useful features and methods
• OverText - a new Class that hovers text over inputs until the user clicks into them and changes them
• Waiter - an ajax indicator class that automatically greys out a dom element with a spinner image (you can customize these things) while your Ajax is requesting new HTML for it. Can be used stand alone (i.e. if you need to show a waiting indicator even if it's not Ajax you're using), but it's integrated nicely into Ajax if you are using it.
• Our default DHTML popup html (stickyWinHTML) got an option to add a drag handle to the window

The Waiter class is probably my favorite, but all the Date love is really nice, too. Check it out and play around with it.