Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label xhtml

Real MVC for the web

I recently read an article which talks about writing MVC for the web using jQuery ( http://welcome.totheinter.net/2008/08/05/mvc-pattern-for-the-web/ ). In any case, the author proposes building a full MVC controller in JavaScript (the example article is still in progress), which is interesting, but I think in some ways it is a little misguided, for I believe that the front end of the web is already MVC. Model = HTML (provided it is written semantically and not structurally) View = CSS (updating the style) Controller = JavaScript As long as you follow the principles of Unobtrusive JavaScript and keep your (X)HTML clean then you have MVC built in. XHTML is a form of XML after all (and XML is used to represent data/model). Just a thought...

Unobtrusive JavaScript and href="#"

Back in the old days of inline JavaScript, people would often attach JavaScript functionality to links either by using: <a href="#" onclick="doSomeJavaScript()">Click Here</a> or by using <a href="javascript:doSomeJavaScript()">Click Here</a> Anyways, there are problems with both. In the first instance, the user will get booted up to the top of the page in some browsers (that's what href="#" basically does). The second instance is better, but it is inline and that is something we want to avoid. In the Unobtrusive JavaScript world we would basically have to use the first instance because the "a" tag will not display as underlined in some browsers without an "href" attribute. Or would we? I am not really sure where the metaphor for using links as actions came from, but as long as it is there and people are used to it we will often get designs from UI designers using them as such. Links are really supp...