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Domain: joehewitt.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to joehewitt.com.

Comments · 8

  1. ChomeOS isn't any different by chrysalis · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Apple's Trend Away From Tinkering

    How come nobody realizes that ChromeOS isn't any different?

    For the sake of security, I highly doubt that resources editors and hex editors (in order to patch executable files) would run on ChromeOS.

    It's a tradeoff worth making.

    Joe Hewitt's post about the iPad is worth a read: http://joehewitt.com/post/ipad/

  2. A great Javascript debugger... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative · on Should JavaScript Get More Respect?

    Beside the lack of a good way to debug your javascript code

    Ahem.
    FireBug.

  3. Re:Apparently by harmic · · Score: 1 · on Firefox Accepting Feature Suggestions for Version 3
    2. An interative javascript debugger, that includes the ability to run scripts in a 'step mode', override/block the execution of specific js statements (or force conditional branches), and change the contents of variables.

    Have you tried Firebug? The best JS debugger out there in my opinion. There is also Venkman, which I used to use a lot, but it seems a lot more bloated than Firebug.

    If you mean that a JS debugger should be part of the base install then I disagree: why bloat the browser with something less than 10% of users would even know how to use, let alone use on a frequent basis.

  4. Re:Apparently by Excors · · Score: 1 · on Firefox Accepting Feature Suggestions for Version 3
    An interative javascript debugger, that includes the ability to run scripts in a 'step mode', override/block the execution of specific js statements (or force conditional branches), and change the contents of variables.

    Have you tried Venkman? That does stepping and lets you change variables, though I don't think it helps with your second point. There's also FireBug, as a lighter-weight way to set breakpoints and step through code.

  5. Re:So How Do You Code an AJAX Web Page? by fforw · · Score: 1 · on So How Do You Code an AJAX Web Page?
    1. Not all all js libs are that large. (shameless plug: my ff javascript library is below 7k)
    2. Use Javascript compression
    3. Use gzip compression / gzip precompression ( ff javascript libray shrinks to below 3kb )
    4. Use Firebug
  6. Re:I would say IDEs by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1 · on Should Students Be Taught With or Without an IDE?
    i've had a number of candidates who can't talk about refactoring (in spite of its IDE support), can't talk about design patterns beyond "Singleton" (I make that an exception to the "Describe a design pattern" question), can't even write simple pseudo-code on a markerboard to draw a "tree" or write (or even just *use*) an iterator from a collection. to the work they've done they are very "productive" with an IDE, and are probably ok programmers.

    but they've gotten so slaved by the IDE they've really lost the ability to think about programming to the level I need to see. these are "senior" developer candidates who don't know what i would consider to be the basic minimums of software development and the level of programming skills it requires.

    they can use the IDE but they have no clue why it works.


    While agree about the quality of candidates out there, I will say this: in the modern programming language world, those that can't even talk about refactoring generally aren't even jr level programmers - I don't care what their "resume" says.

    That design pattern question being limited to "Singleton" (or Command Pattern) screams "procedural programmer" to me at best, and immediately lowers them to at most jr level with most likely heavy mentoring required to make them even moderately useful.

    If they don't know a tree, see above. In the Java realm, depending upon domain, Iterators should either be carefully and barely tolerated or not used at all. I can understand why some wouldn't use them, but they should know why. If you wonder about this statement, review concurrent access (lack of) guarantees regarding iterators and the backdoor into synchronized code they allow. But that's another whole story that I don't have time to delve into.

    I tend to disagree with your base premise that these are probably ok programmers slaved to their IDEs. I hold the position that these folks are able to do some "programming" (the basic working with code) due to the IDE existance, but in no way are "real" programmers or software developers. I agree that there are lots of these types of folks out there.

    In my mind, a SR dev can take a set of requirements, validate and create an estimate for meeting those requirements. They can also be handed a mess of code and understand it in relatively short periods of time. They might even have flashes of insight into how to create better code for a particular problem domain than general best practices, which they are familiar with.

    Lastly, on the JSP/JSF/Spring/Ajax/JS/HTML/etc front - worry, worry a lot. There's new toolkits/frameworks coming out for these almost daily. ;) Some are good, and will help those who understand the problem domain be excessively productive. It will allow those who don't to badly hack code. As for CSS - that's mostly outside my realm as my experience with it has been minor, but there seem to be some neat tools for messing with it available for Firefox/Mozilla. Same goes for JS/Ajax. Check out Bookmarklets, a better Error Console, and Firebug, not to forget the venerable Web Dev. I have yet to check out Google's GWT.
  7. Re:Can someone fix the damn javascript console by tobinibot · · Score: 2, Informative · on Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 Released

    You should be using Firebug https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/. More information here http://www.joehewitt.com/software/firebug/. And coming soon in the next version, a Javascript debugger. I'm been using it, and it works great.

  8. Re:Ordinary users don't know what web standards ar by Bogtha · · Score: 1 · on Firefox Community, Sickly Out of Control

    Please be a bit more careful with your terminology. There's a big difference between an HTML attribute and a Javascript property, and a big difference between an HTML tag and an HTML element.

    is there any good reason why Firefox can get and set the .src attribute of an imageButton (an image with a tagName of input)

    I'm going to interpret that as "why Firefox can get and set the src property of an HTMLInputElement corresponding to an <input> element with a type attribute of image.

    The reason that Firefox can do this is because DOM 2 HTML defines a src property for this interface, and the Gecko developers attempt to conform to this specification.

    but can't read its .complete attribute?

    I'm going to interpret that as "but can't read its complete property?". Firefox can't read that property because this is a proprietary Microsoft property, and the Gecko developers only reverse engineer and emulate proprietary Microsoft properties when there's significant compatibility advantages (i.e. when lots of sites use the proprietary property with degraded behaviour or errors when it isn't available).

    I don't like the way it dumps CSS and program errors to the javascript console without separating them from the javascript errors.

    Take the Firebug extension for a spin, you'll probably find it useful.