too lazy for blogging

Unobtrusive JavaScript

I just stumbled upon a post by JamisBuck about unobtrusive JavaScript. And while reading the post itself and the comments afterwards, it seems as if there are people out there who do not really like the idea of unobtrusive JavaScript.

After a short time of being shocked and thinking about the argument, I think I understand - although I do not agree. Saying that the JS code should go where it is actually needed or executed seems just plain wrong. It might seem ok in the beginning, but it never is. It is the same argument which might be used when talking about the styling of arguments. But if you came from a php background, then you might know why this can be really bad. If you encourage the people to put styling, logic, or code inline, they will do it. And they will do it a lot. I have seen projects where this gets very very messy.

Back in 2005, when I came across ruby and especially rubyonrails, it was the clear structure of code which make me abandon php almost instantly. And I guess it was the same when I really understood the concept of stylesheets. This clear separation of concerns:

• Data and structure belong into the html code
• Everything related to styling is to be found in the stylesheets
• And nowadays, client side logic belongs into javascript files

I could continue the list… the beauty of the separation regarding different clients and so on, but I guess this has been discussed often enough.

Regarding the changes which all rails developers are facing with the release of rails3.pre, I would say they are more than welcome. It is another dark corner which is finally getting some well deserved love. Especially as JS-frameworks are getting easier and more powerful every day. I would encourage everyone to checkout jQuery as it improved a lot with its last iteration to version 1.4. Especially with regard to events. Much easier, much more reliable and even more powerful. I still have to check the implementation of rails.js for jQuery, but i have not had a single problem so far.