jquery vs dojo vs yui etc
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From: David Mark on 22 Jul 2010 04:10 On Jul 22, 2:18 am, RobG <rg...(a)iinet.net.au> wrote: [...] > > In the typing tutor, the first button after "Press these keys" is > nested inside 5 span elements inside 27 div elements, 14 of which are > inside the tab. Dear God. All in the name of making everything look identical to the pixel in every browser/platform. Of course, that's impossible to do, not to mention a backwards strategy (see CSS resets). > You think that isn't inefficient? Each div has a large > amount of inline styling, a lot using -moz so there's some browser > detection going on here. > Oh brother. That sounds like some frameworks I know. It's bad enough that these zealots create massive, slow, complicated blobs of script that step all over the browser, but they invariably deliver "replacements" that are so mind-bogglingly incompetent they insult the user's sensibilities (assuming they have any). I suppose the people behind these things understand that their prospective users will likely "test" their demos in one of the latest versions of major desktop browsers on a newer PC with a very fast broadband connection. They preach the message that things change so fast with browsers that it's required to constantly rewrite, re- download and re-test and re-deploy large blobs of complicated JS. And, as for older versions or browsers they've never heard of (or dismissed), the answer is apparently to pretend they don't exist (or call for their them to be banned). And, of course, browser sniffing doesn't just hinder end-users; it makes it virtually impossible to stress-test scripts off the beaten path (which is usually characterized as "wasting time" or trying to be "perfect"). But clearly such concerns are mostly dismissed by Web developers as evidenced by the fact that many sites (even major concerns like Google) throw exceptions (or fail to work properly) in the latest versions of the handful of browsers they do "spend time" observing. Given such a carefree attitude, such futile results are predictable.
From: Kenneth Tilton on 22 Jul 2010 12:46 Matt Kruse wrote: > On Jul 21, 12:55 pm, David Mark <dmark.cins...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> made easier with prudent use of libraries. >> Unless you are referring to my library, how backwards can you get? >> The "major" libraries are notorious for their failures in IE6, so how >> can they possibly help? > > All these years, and you still haven't grasped the simple point... > > A library may work well in IE6 for, let's say, 80% of problems that > the library may try to solve. It may work only partially on 15%, and > fail miserably on the remaining 5%. > > Take advantage of the 80% of features that work just fine, and use the > library. Don't try to use the library on the remaining 20% of features > that they have coded incorrectly or that, for whatever reason, don't > work. > > Any reasonable person would understand that strategy, IMO. Because we > do it all the time with other things. Almost no tool gets everything > right. Successful people know how to identify which parts of which > tools should be used, and then use them. Not throw them out because > they fail to solve 100% of all conceivable problems that they may > encounter. Right. You can always tell people Actually Using Computers from people just spouting on Usenet. The former balance what a library offers against what it costs and make a decision and get on with building their apps, dealing with problems as they come up without much fuss, including even just not using some problematic bit. A good example was qooxdoo. My evaluation involved using a datagrid, a component we would be using for everything it seems. The qooxdoo one had a flaw (since cured) causing it to ask the server the same question so many times (for no reason) it killed performance. But I already like qooxdoo so I dug into the code to see what was up, and the code was really nice, making the thing easy to fix. Then I had a datagrid faster than even bare-bones ones I had tried as well as a lot of confidence in qooxdoo. Keep the eye on the prize: building the app. kt -- http://www.stuckonalgebra.com "The best Algebra tutorial program I have seen... in a class by itself." Macworld
From: Kenneth Tilton on 22 Jul 2010 13:21 Frank Buss wrote: > Kenneth Tilton wrote: > >> So are the buttons appearing OK now that each typing example gets loaded >> separately? http://teamalgebra.com/ > > I've tried it with Opera. > When trying to register, I didn't fill out each > field and it says "Login error: Please fixFORM-FIELD98737". That's a very > useful information :-) Nice, eh? That's all been cleaned up and recovery now works (on my dev version). As soon as I enable the handling of simultaneous login (a no-no) I will install. > > Some other things I noticed: > > - I can't use any key above my numbers (German keyboard), e.g. "/" or "(" > doesn't work and "=" is on "*" Hmmm. I imagine there is someway to tell Windows to do "German keyboard"? And I think I see I need to work a little harder on understanding qooxdoo key events. > > - Backspace deletes always two characters > > - cut, copy and paste to and from the input field doesn't work > You mean a math input field? I do OK with the fields from the login/registration page. > - when I press repeated times the square root, the input field doesn't > size, so I see only the upper part of it anymore I need to spend prolly a full day or two on extending jsMath to announce the DOM dimensions after the html has been generated, and then I will be able to do much better on things like this. I have a hard-coded kludge in there as a stopgap, and I am thinking I never looked much at the root symbols. > > - sometimes the text for the buttons in the traing center is not readable > (e.g. "Cle..." and "O..."), but sometimes the whole text is visible Weird. > > - in the Typing Tutorial, it is a green vertical bar, not a red vertical > bar That's why I never document anything -- it never keeps up! > > In general I think it is not a good idea trying to make a GUI application > in a web browser. If you don't want the user to install a program, ....I do not, nor do I want to mess with multiple operating systems. > ...you > could use Flash, which works the same in all browsers on all platforms. > > But maybe better, if the user has no flash, would be a simple HTML > interface without JavaScript, e.g. entering expressions in basic > programming syntax, like sqrt(1/3)<10*x. > This would work even for visually > impaired users, too. I guess your current application is useless for blind > users. > > You can explain the syntax with some examples, and it has the advantage > that the user can use this syntax later for programming or spreadsheets, > too. Then you can use simple text forms, which works with all browsers, > even very old or strange ones without Flash and JavaScript, e.g. on some > mobile phones. On post, generate a nice image of the expression on server > side and send it back to the browser, if you like. > The audience is thirteen year-olds who already hate math. They will not be able to cope with ascii math. Thx for the detailed report! kt -- http://www.stuckonalgebra.com "The best Algebra tutorial program I have seen... in a class by itself." Macworld
From: David Mark on 22 Jul 2010 15:05 On Jul 22, 11:37 am, Laurent vilday <mok...(a)mokhet.com> wrote: > Kenneth Tilton : > > > 5. Enjoy. And tell your Algebra teacher friends I am looking for local > > schools interested in being guinea pigs. > > Enjoy ?!? Well, make it work for a start. And I'm not talking about the > thousands of errors or undefined properties in the javascript console. Hmmm. As bad as it was, I didn't see thousands of errors. Strict mode warnings? The one about undefined properties is a waste of log space.
From: Kenneth Tilton on 22 Jul 2010 15:29
Laurent vilday wrote: > Kenneth Tilton : > >> 5. Enjoy. And tell your Algebra teacher friends I am looking for local >> schools interested in being guinea pigs. > > Enjoy ?!? Well, make it work for a start. And I'm not talking about the > thousands of errors or undefined properties in the javascript console. > I'm talking about the "exercices", most of them are giving a totally > wrong answer. > > Let's test it, the first one I tried : > > Simplify : 45 / 2 - 5 / 10 > > Simplest form : 45 / 4 > > Really ??? Damn, I asssume I'll suck at math forever. Really ??? I got "Ah, bad luck." I tried messing up the instructions by telling it I was solving and factoring and it still rejected 45/4. That was in the Freestyle tab. I don't think you were in the training center cuz I do not see it generating that type of problem. Over in the training center when I have the tutor solve a problem it does OK. I have a regression test mechanism that does a thousand training center problems at random spread over each category and that ran three times without failing recently. > > Time for me to definitly give up on trying this algebra spam, it doesn't > deserve any more seconds of my precious time. > I feel the same about your problem reports. :) kt -- http://www.stuckonalgebra.com "The best Algebra tutorial program I have seen... in a class by itself." Macworld |