Jonathan Snook has a nice write-up about using private methods in javascript.

With JavaScript, you can create private methods and properties using what Yahoo describes as the module pattern. Here’s the basic construct, including a private method:

MyObject = function(){

  var privateMethod = function(){ /* do stuff */ };

  var obj = {
    publicProperty:5,
    publicMethod:function(){ /* do stuff */ };
  };

  return obj;
}(); // run it right away

If you’re not familiar with this pattern, it’s really quite cool. It takes advantage of closures, allowing the public methods to access the private methods. I’ve been using this approach in my recent work and it feels nice and works well.

There’s a nice article over at Snook’s today on writing clean, concise, and reusable javascript.

As a JavaScript developer, you are in many ways an environmentalist. JavaScript is a language unlike most other languages. For when it comes to JavaScript development, we must consider the mantra of the environmentalist: Reduce, reuse, recycle.

It’s a short article that’s worth reading. All of these concepts are in use in our new framework, and if you’re writing javascript for yourself or for CNET or whatever, it’s always good to keep these things in mind.

Ok, so I’ve finished as much digging on this subject as I plan on doing (mostly because the pickings seem to be rather slim). Here’s jsDoc – a javadoc implementation for javascript.

Comparing this library to NaturalDocs the choice seems to me to come down to two things: syntax and presentation. NaturalDocs gives you a really nice layout and a lot of flexibility in how you write your documentation inline, while jsDoc uses the same syntax as javadoc.

Does it matter if we use the same syntax as javadoc? Do we care if the output looks pretty and has a nicer interface? Which one? Spend a few minutes reading the documentation on each of these packages and sound off here, as the work on the global framework has gotten to the point where documentation is going to start to be the next thing that needs focus.

Hi all,

It’s been a few days since I posted. I’ve been heads down on the project to create a global javascript framework for our sites (Redball, at least). I’ve finished this work (or at least gotten it to a releasable state) and I thought I’d share an update. I plan on documenting it extensively and providing a lot of examples (and teaching it) in the near future, but for those of you who are curious, you can peruse the library now. It’s mostly stable (we’re still tweaking and adding things) and you can just download them and read them if you want to see what’s in them.

They include a lot of functionality, are highly extendable, easily debuggable, and hopefully will be useful. The current framework file is about 30K, but Andy just turned me on to a more efficient javascript compressor that will bring that down to 19K. I can’t express how awesome it is to have this thing going out and it managing to pack in so much functionality in such a small package. Read the rest of this entry »

via ajaxian (surprise):

Mike West has put some time into analyzing and understanding one of the more sticky issues in Javascript: scope.

Scope is one of the foundational aspects of the JavaScript language, and probably the one I’ve struggled with the most when building complex programs. I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost track of what the this keyword refers to after passing control around from function to function, and I’ve often found myself contorting my code in all sorts of confusing ways, trying to retain some semblance of sanity in my understanding of which variables were accessible where.

He has published his explorations as an article in Digital Web Magazine. In it he deals with the basics of scope; the this keyword in method calls, constructors, function calls and event handlers; the apply() and call() methods; and Prototype’s bind() extension to Function.

The article is illustrated throughout with code examples and includes a list of useful references at the end. A good addition to the family of online Javascript resources.