Rails spinoffs - Sep 2005 - script.aculo.us Design Patterns

What makes script.aculo.us and Prototype so darn special?

    I was using some of the facilities of Prototype, and came around
    to understanding that it was different somehow, but I couldn''t
    figure out how exactly.
    
    I was using static methods for a while, but when I wrapped my
    functions into and object the library suddenly started to do
    some serious lifting.

    The one big thing that''s different is the bindAsEventListener.
    It removes a big cross-browser issue, and it creates a "this"
    object that is truly useful.

    My question is this...

    Am I correct in saying that this is a major difference between
    Prototype and standard JavaScript, the ability to create a
    "Controller" object that can handle events using methods that
    act as if they were members the controller, rather than members
    of the target object. This creates a consistant environment
    across browers, and creates a meaningful this object that can
    maintain the state of the control.

    Correct?

--
Alan Gutierrez - alan@engrm.com
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On Wednesday 28 September 2005 08:02, Alan Gutierrez
wrote:
>     What makes script.aculo.us and Prototype so darn special?
[snip]
>     Am I correct in saying that this is a major difference between
>     Prototype and standard JavaScript, the ability to create a
>     "Controller" object that can handle events using methods that
>     act as if they were members the controller, rather than members
>     of the target object. This creates a consistant environment
>     across browers, and creates a meaningful this object that can
>     maintain the state of the control.
I don''t really know what standard JavaScript is as I wasn''t
using
JavaScript in the old days. From some of the scripts I''ve seen in the 
wild it must have been (and still is) pretty bad. Prototype isn''t 
special in enabling the use of objects as event handlers. You can have 
the same with using closures explicitly[*] where Prototype hides them 
behind the scenes. However, closures are apparently something most 
programmers are not used to.

What does make a difference, IMHO, is that Prototype is very well 
written and enables a programming style that is comfortable to 
programmers used to common object oriented languages. Also, it is easy 
to use and raises the level of abstraction of scripts considerably.

Michael

[*] http://jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html

-- 
Michael Schuerig                      They tell you that the darkness
mailto:michael@schuerig.de                  Is a blessing in disguise
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/           --Janis Ian, From Me To You