jQuery Mobile Alpha Release

jQuery Mobile alpha has just been released. It certainly has borrowed from jqTouch (literally) which is not a bad thing, and there will be more confidence in adopting this given the momentum behind jQuery.
Documentation is slim at the moment so we're working off a single demo application for guidance. Looks good so far, although there needs to be support for live/delegate handlers to facilitate DOM manipulation: right now dynamic content injected will not be processed automatically by the parser (you can do it manually).
Nevertheless, loads of controls, transition and styling support. A remarkable achievement for the few months that they have been at it.

Refactoring CSS

SASS and LESS are CSS preprocessors which offer a fantastic way into more structural CSS.
They provide the ability to use variables, mixins, arithmetic and inheritance to create CSS rules, which are then parsed to produce valid CSS. The real benefit of this is that it allows refactoring of CSS, so you can take whatever you've written, and extract commonly-used values / repeated sections, and assign them to variables which can be referenced throughout the CSS. Variables can be given semantic names to make the CSS more readable. Additionally, with nested rules, you can see the cascading hierarchy directly in the code, making it easier to identify redundant rules and repeating patterns.
SASS is a little more advanced in terms of features, but LESS offers a javascript processor, for easier testing and integration. You choose, but either way this is a great step forward. This stuff should be in the CSS spec from the start.

Chrome Frame - no longer beta

Google announces that Chrome Frame is now on the Stable channel.


Great news for those still struggling with IE6. At least it offers an improved chance of getting customers to adopt CF now. Spread the message: standards compliance means faster rendering, reduced markup, improved network performance, simpler code development and maintenance, future proofing and accessibility.

State Pattern

So an RIA page needs its state to be driven by a server side engine, lots of if/else statements are going to happen for sure. The State pattern is your friend here. It allows a server class to have a set of state objects, of which one is current at any time. Each state controls the behavior of the class for a certain command, and determines the next state to transition to.
Any changes to the system behavior can be made just by modifying the states. Saved me a lot of messy code.

The UI SelectMenu from the Filament Group solves a lot of issues with styling of select controls. It allows formatting of individual options and content-agnostic control of the width, amongst other things.
These guys are doing great work with progressive enhancement. Looking forward to reading the book.

jQuery for Mobile

Just heard that jQuery is extending out to the mobile platform [http://jquerymobile.com/].
It will be interesting to see how this plays along with the existing pack (jqTouch, Titanium, Sencha Touch etc.). Also in the running is Dojo mobile, early in development, but I've greater confidence in their widget set.