The JavaScript, XHR, AJAX and general UI playground.
Less is more, but enough is perfect.
Over the past few years, I’ve come across projects that require rather specific pieces of functionality, ranging from the simplest JavaScript driven carousels to DOM pop-ups that load data dynamically via XMLHTTPRequests. But as fate may have it, after spending 2 hours searching the internet for the right tool to do the job, and only finding a tool to do part of the job with the added ability to make coffee for me also, I’ve reverted to rolling up the sleeves and creating my own ‘tool’ for the job...and here is some of the stuff I’ve come up with.
LazyJS
There is no easier way to optimise the download speed of a website than by lazy loading JavaScript files into the page as they are needed. This is even more useful when creating AJAX driven websites that load user defined data into a page.
But the drawback of using lazy loading is that as the website gets bigger, so the maintenance of the scripts becomes harder and can get very messy. So what we have here is something that I hope a lot of people would find very handy. It’s a very simple JavaScript object that ‘automates’ the process and keeps everything clean, organized and separate from the presentation layer.
PopMeUp - Simple JavaScript pop-up
This was by far one of the most enjoyable and yet easiest creations of mine. It’s a very simple piece of JavaScript code that turns any link on a page into a really simple lightbox pop-up.
The reason for creating this rather than just using a MooTools or jQuery plug-in was simple.
Why have a separate plug-in for each framework, when you can have one object that is small, quick and easy to implement, works, isn’t dependant on any framework and still maintains link integrity when JavaScript is disabled.