Gut Reaction
jQuery is fast to learn, easy to use, and passes the ‘thinking’ to the framework. It allows you to do incredibly powerful client side stuff without knowing too much of the inner workings, worrying about being specific and explicit about your syntax or organization, and most importantly lets you get this stuff done quickly.

Mootools on the other hand requires you to be explicit. You want to create a node with 4 children and easy of them have a bunch of inline attributes? Cool, do it manually, instead of specifying a string of html which the engine will parse and DOM-inize for you (jQuery can do this). Most prominent for me: jQuery is very smart and very easy to use, but lacks a certain elegance due it’s lack of explicit control; Mootools requires more work and overhead to get something done, but is very organized and beyond the learning curve, more meaningful.

Example
To create a series of nodes in jQuery, it’s as easy as this:

var html = ‘<div id=”div-one”><span id=”span-one”>yo yo</span></div>’;
$(html).prependTo($(’#random-node’));

In Moo, it’d be something like this:

var first = new Element(’div’,{’id’:'div-one’});
var two = new Element(’span’,{’id’:’span-one’});
first.adopt(two);
$(’body’).shift().adopt(first);

One is easier/more implicit than the other. However the other is much more explicit, and easier to follow for a foreigner who isn’t too familiar with the jQuery syntax, rules and behaviors.

Optimization/Speed
I don’t know too much about jQuery’s speed. I believe that at this point we’ve got to the point where an extra 10 milliseconds isn’t a do or die or decision maker for what framework/library to use. But with that in mind, one of the great things for Moo is the ability to compartmentalize only what is needed for client side behavior. Everything is kept as a separate stand alone, window based class, where as jQuery seems to throw in a lot of other code into one batch which is mutually dependent.

This goes back to my gut reaction though. For a new comer, I don’t want to try to determine what classes/objects I’ll need. I want a script tag that has almost everything that I need. No playing with downloader apps to pick and choose what my project will need. Mootools therefore introduces a higher level of (initial) complexity, but brings with it greater than control, and again, explicitness.

Community
Up until this point, I’ve more or less tried giving opinions for and against both libraries, but in this category (Community), there is a winner hands down: jQuery. I don’t really know what the reason for this is. I would say that jQuery has been more organized in their community/developer evangelism, which is completely true, but I don’t think that’s the real reason.

While Mootools is still trying to get it’s community plugin system up and rung (MooForge, I believe), I think a core reason it’s the direct and simplicity of jQuery. I think it was able to garner such a strong following because the barrier to entry is to incredibly tiny. I don’t need to understand JavaScript syntax, programming syntax, or the inner workings of client side development. The very syntax that I love about Moo (e.g. new Element(’div’).addClass(’oliver’).addEvent….) is also probably what turns people off. The fact that I need to be so direct about what I want done is something that many people probably don’t want to deal with.

Conclusion
But away from my tangent, the jQuery community is amazing. So many plugins, organized horizontally and vertically by jQuery themselves. So many resources to learn the syntax, deconstruct plugins to understand the code, etc. While my obsessive compulsiveness when it comes to coding syntax and practices would never allow me to fully embrace and adopt jQuery personally and independently of where I work full time, I can understand fully it’s benefits. I’ll always evangelize Mootools whenever I can, but after this exposure to jQuery, I’ll understand where it’s most useful and for whom Mootools would really be welcome to.

Mootools has 3 native methods for accessing an attribute/property for a node (which in the DOM, often overlaps). .get(’name’), .retrieve(’name’), and getProperty(’name’). While they are all meant to do things a little differently (eg. set an attribute for a node, store a data object in an existing object (which could be a DOM node) or store a property in an object (which again, could be a DOM node), they seem to overlap a lot.

So I have this anchor, and when I tried accessing it (grabbing the href) using the accessors I have, here at the results for FF (mac) vs. IE6 (windows):

.[name]
FF: full path including host
IE6: full path including host

.get
FF: request path (excluding host)
IE6: full path including host

.retrieve
FF: null
IE6: null

.getProperty
FF: request path (excluding host)
IE6: full path including host

Now it’s hard to say what is the correct expectation. I’m sure I could figure it out in the eyes of the W3C, but rather, here’s what I’ve noticed. Both browsers take whatever path is specified and render it internally with the host. I understand this since it’s what the browser would need to actually make a full request.

The 2nd and 4th accessors, though, are inconsistent and cause problems since their expected results different. IE6 includes the full path & host each time which is most likely an issue with how it accesses it. When the browser defines the href in memory it must overwrite the local pointer which then can’t be accessed properly.

So what do I do about this? Nothing really. I have this documented now so that if there is a pre-dom-ready source that I need to inspect (for example, href values written but no rendered after the dom has been loaded), I should be using the .[name] accessor, and make adjustments accordingly based on what is being accessed (in this case the href which has the host prepended).

These differences really suck since they introduce inconsistencies in places where you wouldn’t expect them and thus break applications/scripts (like what drove me to discover this). I would hope a framework/library would help mitigate this kind of thing, but alas, they can’t do everything, and I’m just happy for what they do bring to the table.

Then I ran into IE6, whereby I got a nice “This command is not supported.”. It took me a while to figure this out. At first I thought the node didn’t have mootools ’set’ method for some reason (didn’t access it right?), but once I found out the reason, I looked for workarounds. None really. Other resolutions that attempted completely different code, but no workaround for IE6 specific to change the type. It seemed microsoft had decided that an input field’s type should not be able to change after it’d been loaded. I’ll get to that in a second

My Resolution
Spit out password fields on the page for when it gets sent back to the client. When the DOM has loaded, iterate over the input[type=password] fields (I did this via the mootools selector node.getElements(’input[type=password’)), make them hidden (via add a class or adjusting it’s style property), and make a new node that has an input type with the text value. I added the same classes to it as the password node had. When a user focused on the field (the text one that was originally a password field), I destroyed it, and removed the hidden class.

What really bothered me
“This is an expected behavior. One can’t change the type of an INPUT element once it is already created and became part of the DOM. The behavior is documented below in the Remarsk Section:”
That was microsoft’s response in their developer forums. That was last year, and instead of addressing it as an issue and complying with a standard, they were stubborn and basically refuted the claim as a bug. I’m not sure how I feel about the standard. I understand why an input type is set after the DOM has been loaded. I can’t change a tag type from div to span after the fact (or at least I shouldn’t be able to). Ideally, in my own head that is, every input type should have a separate tag value. <button />, <select />, <file />, <text />, <textarea /> and <password />. I think that’d be ideal, and save a lot of confusion.

Either way, that’s my resolution. M$ response is kind of sucky, but what can ya do.

Methods (not classes) can be defined as static (eg. not static class Oliver{} but rather static function talk()) in order to call them without going through an instantiated object. From my perspective, it makes code cleaner and less messy by wrapping related functions in a class wrapper instead of defining them globally. It should be noted though, that classes with static methods CAN be instantiated, and those methods can be called either statically (via the :: double colon notation, or via the -> right arrow notation on the instantiated object).

That takes us to abstract classes. Abstract classes CANNOT be instantiated. They can be the parent of a class which can be instantiated, but they themselves cannot be. So for example, if I have two types of users, RegularUser and AdminUser, I could create an abstract class User which defines method signatures (via the abstract keyword) like abstract function login($username,$password){} or I can define static functions which can be called (via the same rules as above). A new User object can never be created directly though.

So what does that mean in terms of real-world usage? Personally, if I don’t want a class every to be instantiated, such as a class that has utility functions or string manipulation functions, I will define it as abstract, and define all it’s methods to be static. If I have a parent object which should never be instantiated, I’ll do the same, but leave the method declarations to the child classes for the most part.

So then when do I use a normal class that happens to have static methods? I haven’t really. I’m sure there can be uses for it, but I’ve never found myself in a situation where I need to access an object’s method without the context of the object’s instantiation. Maybe it’ll come up one day, but as I’m moving closer and closer to a full mvc based coding life style, I have a feeling that I won’t find myself in that situation anytime soon.

print_r($_SERVER);
exit();
Run that code in a php script; then check the source in both safari and in firefox. For the path, try something like index.php?name=what’sup

The weird thing comes in with the fact that in Safari, the apostrophe isn’t converted/encoded, where as in Firefox, it is. I’m not really sure how I can explain this, and if I’m missing something, but it’s caused me a great deal of frustration and debugging. The only thing I can think of is that safari sends along different headers in the request than Firefox does, and therefore gets different results. I’ll look into it and update this post, but thought it was worth mentioning incase anyone else runs into the same type of problem.

What I mean by this is, be very very very good in a very very very specific field/discipline. Be the best out of all the people you know. If you’re a server side developer, don’t try and learn all the server side languages; rather be the best object-oriented php5 developer who knows the ins and outs of PECL and PEAR extensions. Or be the best db admin who can optimize an InnoDB mysql engine better than anyone you’ve met. That way, when anyone is looking for something specific, you’ll be the first person to come to mind.

I’m too obsessive to follow this though. I would hate being really good at one thing, and then just having to depend on someone else to help me out with the other. Because of that, I’m not very very very good in one area, rather I’m pretty good in a bunch of them. But this is actually still making me fall into a very specific niche; namely, if someone is looking for one guy who can configure a linux/apache box, set up and admin a db, set up a server side dev env., do designs in photoshop, turn them into html/css/js, and add in ajax/js techniques to make a more interactive application/website, I’m that guy. If I were to work in a company with other developers, I probably wouldn’t be better than anyone in any specific area. I wouldn’t be the best JS guy, or CSS guy, or DB guy, and because of that I’m probably not suited for a lot of companies, but for my current contract, they needed one guy who can wear 5 or 6 different hats.

So ironically, the fact that I don’t specialize in one specific area, rather 5 or 6 of them, makes me specialized. It makes me the specific person to go to when you need one person who is pretty good in a bunch of areas.

If you read the title, you might wonder what this has to do with it; it’s a segway into my point. On my current project, I’m having to do both client and server side dev., and it’s making me realize something. The server is way more flexible than the client.

—
Here’s why.
—

The server is usually a linux/unix box. It’s role in a web application/site is to fulfill client side requests, push out data, yadda yadda. It normally doesn’t do anything visual. The client, however, is intrinsically visual. It’s supposed to represent a server architecture in a cohesive, logical way. Now when doing client side dev., you have to normally worry about ie6, ie7, ie8, ff3, sf, opera and chrome (not always this, but thats the goal). At times you’ll run into things you can’t do in the others (CSS3, certain types of ajax callbacks, etc.); sometimes they’ll be things that aren’t worth the time, but other times, it just can’t be done. There is no hack or way around it, it just can’t be done. It’s frustrating to say the least, but it’s making me really value and respect the entire web paradigm and the server’s role in it all.

—
How does this relate to my introduction?
—

I find that there is a lot of ego involved in the web industry. A lot of butting heads in terms of how important people/disciplines are in the grand schemes of things. There are the executives/bus.dev. guys, marketing dudes/gals, client side developers, server side developers, operations/db dudes, and creative/design people. That’s generally how I break it down, and with some exceptions, everyone thinks their role is one of the most important ones. They’ll pretend and put on a face that they don’t believe it, but at their core, there is a lot of pretense about their own positions. I suppose that’s normal considering that’s their professional role.

I’ve always maintained (and have a post that should be coming soon) that one of the most important roles, which I’m terrible at and in no way consider myself part of, is in fact the creative/design ones. I’ll leave my reasoning here for another post. My understanding of the flexibility of client vs server side therefore comes from the fact that I don’t specialize in any one area. If I were a operations/db guy, I’d think the db was the most flexible. If I was a pure server side guy, I’d think it was the most flexible, and the same for the client side.

The point I tried to make with my introduction and the conclusion of the server side being the most flexible is that because of my lack of specialization (and therefore abstract specialization) in the full life cycle of a web application, I think I’m in a unique situation to make that judgment. It’s not right or infallible or anything, but I come at it from a unique perspective. My career/financial stability doesn’t hinge on any one area of the cycle. I could find a job doing client side, or server side, or db/operations, maybe even some mild graphic/creative design stuff. Even as far as more on the management and marketing stance, I think I’d be alright. And because of this, I think I’m in a convenient location to sit back, analyze where any bottle necks are in flexibility, and make a call on what makes the most sense and is most accommodating.

And my conclusion? The server side is way more flexible. There is never a point/time when I can’t do something. It might take more time than I’d hope, require more resources (memory, developers, etc.), but at no point do I have to create ‘hacks’. It’s logical and follows procedures and standards. I think this is mainly because it’s been around longer. The server side env. is really just a programming environment. It’s been around, and perfected, since the 50’s. The web client-side has been around, for the most part, for less than 15 years.

That being said, the client side is getting better. With Flash, Adobe Air, Google Gears, and some really cool plugins (Rhino, for one) the client side is trying real hard, and milding succeeding, in become less of a bottle neck for an application. I think with time it will succeed, but as it stands right now, the server side is where it’s at. Fewer headaches, and more logic, make it one of the most time-satisfying parts of the projects I’m doing lately.

A consistent theme I’m finding in the past few months has been css3/html5 posts. They talk about new effects, rules, possibilities, etc. etc. Now I try to be optimistic about web development; I try to practice valid w3c content, semantic markup, everywhere I can. But the age of css3/html5, at least for me, is still so far off. 25% (at the least) of internet users are still using ie6, another 40% are using ie7; that takes us to about 65% of internet users using subpar browsers (ie7 is a step up, but still very much sub-par) that don’t support anything close to css3 and html5.

These browsers are so terrible that I spend about 80% of my client side development time focused on fixing issues I run into there. I write code that is semantic, valid, and based on standards, and then debug it and add in browser-specific fixes for them. Now the reason for bringing up my (and obviously most client side developer’s) hatred for it is because of this sudden (last 4-6 months) pushed towards css3, but even more, html5. Put simply, we’re jumping the gun.

We’re not anywhere near the period of time whereby these standards can be used properly for the vast majority of users. Yes, graceful degradation and progressive enhancement do allow us to make use of them for those vendors that have supplied standards-based browsers, but the time being, maybe only 25-35% of users will get to experience these enhancements. So why put so much effort into transforming your sites and communities to use these standards? Is it worth it?

HTML5 is, believe-it-or-not, a pretty large step forward. While it’s simply an extension of html 4 and more than anything, introduces some different namespaces and tags, I keep coming back to thinking whether we should bother with it right now. It won’t be until IE9 or an IE8 service pack/update that the majority of users will get any use out of it, and for large companies and communities, it represents hundreds/thousands of hours of work, changing your design/style guides, and means often times having multiple code/script bases for different browsers that represent which support html5, and which don’t.

Now I’m coming at this from a freelance/contract developer. I have a task, and it’s in my best interest to make it work in the top 3 browsers (ie6, ie7, ff3) as fast as possible, and as cleanly (the fewer moving parts, the better). I might use some css3, I might use some transparent png’s, but that’s my limit. Going over board with css3 and integrating html5 is not a priority of mine, and would represent extra hours which I couldn’t work into my pricing/rates. I would rather spend my time writing semantic, standards based code, and open sourcing anything and everything I could to help out others; at least until one of the top two browsers supports html5 (ff isn’t there yet, despite many claims that it’s the number 2 browser next to ie7).

This approach by me has it’s problems. Namely, if people don’t push technologies that aren’t yet wide spread, than the major vendors won’t feel as pressured to support them. I understand this, and in many ways, it’s up to the big guys to help push new technologies. But this brings me back to the post’s title. Are we jumping the gun? We’re years away from a top two browser from supporting either css3/html5. So should we spend all this effort, time and money developing for something that most user’s won’t even experience?

There are exceptions to this; if I’m designing an app/site for an intranet where I can control the browser type. Or if it’s for a specific niche (eg. graphic designers, web developers) where I can safely assume or pressure the visitor to use a new-age browser (safari, chrome, ff3). Then maybe I’ll take the time to learn the new semantics, make the site pop like it never could. I’ll spend the extra time, effort and money to create a richer experience. But these are exceptions, not the rules.

These are thoughts/ramblings that have been going through my head for quite some time now. They aren’t polished, they aren’t definite, but they are something that I’ve thought of, and I assume other’s in the community have as well.

While these are my thoughts, and I’ll stick by them for a while, I won’t stop trying to learn about the new technologies. Progressive enhancement, ajax, json, jsonp, and whatever else comes along, I’ll jump into, just like css3/html5, but just like ajax didn’t become popular until XHR became widespread in most browsers, I won’t make use of it (with certain exceptions) until major vendors (m$) decide to give me the tools to do so.

This is no different than when you go to a restaurant. You go in, look at the menu (~development services), check out the prices (~rates). You normally learn about the restaurant from a friend (~contact/colleague), and decide ahead of time whether or not you want to eat (~work with) at the restaurant.

So you go in, look over the menu, order your food, wait for it to arrive, and then eat it. Straight forward enough. The difference comes in with the reception of the food (~service/work). If you’re in a restaurant, you’re paying for the service of them preparing the food, not for the actual cost. You don’t go in, order a salad, and they charge you how much the food costs; they charge you for the preparation of the food, and the delivery of it.

So if you go in, eat up your meal, but don’t enjoy the taste or experience, what do you do? Do you walk out without paying the bill? No, you don’t. The reason you don’t is because there is an established trust and relationship between a restaurant patron and the restaurant. When you enter the establishment, and order something from the menu, you are now contracted to pay for the food, regardless of whether or not you enjoyed it.

The reason for this post and analogy is because of how web development services are received. When I develop a design, widget, database schema, PRD, or whatever, I have now started work. We have a contract in place (whether formal or informal) that states/infers that my work warrants monies. I deliver my work to you, and whether or not you are satisfied, you pay me for my time. If you aren’t satisfied, you don’t return, but you pay promptly without complaint about the services. You don’t negotiate, you don’t haggle, you pay.

It’s in my best interest to perform the best way possible; I don’t want you leaving the restaurant (mixing analogy terms now…) thinking the food was terrible, and the service was awful. I want you leaving happy and I want you telling everyone how great your experience was. But if it wasn’t; if you weren’t happy with the food or the service, you don’t just leave or try and argue with the restaurant owner/chef. You can choose not to leave a tip, and choose to go and tell anyone who will listen how terrible the experience was, but you do not leave without paying, and you do not delay your payment.

—

Web development is based on trust, just like a restaurant business. Your patrons approach you to enjoy your services, you perform those services, and they pay you. It’s as simple as that. Clients need to understand that they do not have the luxury of debating and argueing with the services after the fact.

If you go into a restaurant, before you order your food, you can do the following:

• Ask the waiter how good the food is (subjective, obviously)
• Check what the specials are
• Read the menu, see if there is anything you like
• Talk to friends and ask how good the food was, the service was, and how expensive it was

All this being done, you now have a clear idea whether you want to exchange their services/food for your money. Web development should be the same.

The reason’s why it’s not received with the same level of trust as a restaurant is beyond me, and perhaps due for another post, but for now, I think I’ve made a descent enough case towards the problems with clients and their perceptions of web development services (especially the paying part).

I searched high and low on the goog’s, but to no avail, I kept running into php.net bug reports about the behaviour not working. Then, I just tried something I should’ve tried a long time ago, set the write permissions properly (for testing, 777) and gave access to every user on my local machine (eg. on a mac, getinfo on the error log, and make it readable and writable by everyone), and success.

I’ve had a lot of headaches around this that usually ended up with me giving up, but I finally found a fix for my case of it

But they are not frameworks. I know this probably just seems like a semantics issue, but I want to make it clear that they are not frameworks, they are libraries. From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/framework

frame⋅work  [freym-wurk] Show IPA
–noun
1. a skeletal structure designed to support or enclose something.
2. a frame or structure composed of parts fitted and joined together.
3. the construction or sale of frames.
4. work done in, on, or with a frame.

A framework should be referenced only when your development is surrounded or incased by some structure. On the php side of things, this makes sense; an MVC based framework since every piece of code you write it part of the execution of the framework. On the client side though, it’s not so clear cut.

While you can work inside of a client side library as if you were in a framework (eg. creating new, framework-specific, classes), most of the code you write is simply using the library to help it out. As an example, you attach event handlers, create and manage JSON, make ajax calls, etc. All of this you can do natively, or you can have the library help you out. But when you use one of the library’s helpers, you’re not tied to it. You’re still writing native javascript, just short-cutting through the library’s helper methods and naming conventions.

I’m not sure why this deserved a post, such a long post at that. I suppose as I learn more about true frameworks, I’m realizing that semantics like this really do matter. When I write in CI or Cake, I have to fall in line with their file, naming and folder conventions. I need to work inside of a controller, which is triggered by the framework. I need to define the interface in view/template/layout files, which are loaded and compiled by the framework. And I need to access the data set through their ORM, which is managed by the framework.

JavaScript isn’t like that.
Now while the specific cases I’m talking about (YUI,dojo,jQuery,Moo) are in my eyes libraries, that’s not to say that there couldn’t be/aren’t client side frameworks. I imagine javascript/ajax driven applications (large ones like gmail or a few Ycombinator/startup’s) have client side frameworks.

They have these systems in place where you have to work inside of them; the work is delineated among an MVC pattern, or some sort of separation of logic. I think that’d be really cool to check out, but because of the nature of javascript, I don’t think it’s as necessary as it is on the server side. Maybe I’m just saying that because I haven’t really been exposed to one, but client side JS is more modular and sparse than server side development, and for that reason having a library to help you tap into short cuts makes tons of sense.

My last point though, is that while I’ll always consider these javascript extensions libraries, I can definitely understand how some people would call them frameworks due to the way they use them. If you constantly are creating new framework-specific classes that follow standard programming practices (eg. hierarchy, casting, separation of logic), I think it’d be fair to see you’re using the library AS a framework. I’m cool with that. Lets just be clear about how the extension is used by the general public.