Darryl Lyons' Blog

KTable SWT Control

Darryl Lyons — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:51:41 +0000

One of the guys at work found this cool SWT control that allows you to create dynamic grids/tables. It is called KTable, and is pretty much the de facto standard when you need to construct tables with variable row sizes and spanning columns/rows.

Quote of the year

Darryl Lyons — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 07:18:35 +0000

I’ve got to share this quote from Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo, Inc. I don’t know if he said this exactly, but according to the YUI Blog:

Blank web pages are fast. Web pages become slow because you put stuff in them.

Enough said!

A change of career direction

Darryl Lyons — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 06:58:26 +0000

For quite a few years I have been a ColdFusion / Web Developer. I’ve got two weeks holidays, and then I will be going back to work to focus on Java (Eclipse) development. I must say I am pretty excited about this shift in direction, as I believe it will open many new doors in the future.

jQuery Table Sorting

Darryl Lyons — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:14:33 +0000

I just saw a great post over at Ajaxian. It details a new jQuery plugin to easily enable sorting on a table. The features look awesome - multiple column sorting being one of them! Definately worth checking out.

When AJAX aint right for the job

Darryl Lyons — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:12:51 +0000

JavaScript/AJAX isn’t always the best tool for the job. Over the last 2 years, I’ve been the principal developer on the CRM project at work. For most of that time, it has primarily been a Javscript, Web-enabled application.

Recently, we have realised that we’ve hit the wall with what is possible with JavaScript and HTML (especially when the target platform is IE6+). We are now moving to the Java-based RCP (Rich Client Platform), which is part of the Eclipse framework.

I believe that JavaScript frameworks have a place, but I do not think it is within enterprise-critical applications. When the environment is controlled and scalability and performance is a factor, you should carefully consider your options before joining the AJAX bandwagon.

What have I been doing?

Darryl Lyons — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:39:19 +0000

Well, I’ve been extremely busy building the next version of our internal CRM application. It’s built on top of Ext (primary used for utility classes) and our own “JCP” framework (Javascript Client Platform). I’ll be doing a few posts in the coming days/weeks about that, as I have got a few nuggets of wisdom to share about JScript development on IE.

And… I’ve got to upgrade my version of wordpress!

Ext 1.0 JavaScript framework released

Darryl Lyons — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:20:22 +0000

I have been using the Ext (formally yui-ext) JavaScript framework for some time now, and just recently they released a major new version. It is jam packed with goodness, including the best grid I have seen, tree, dialogs, layouts, forms, and more… If you are looking for a serious cross-browser user interface lib, then I strongly suggest you give these guys a go. Oh, and it’s FREE.

Your company not moving to IE7 in a hurry?

Darryl Lyons — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 00:10:27 +0000

The sysadmin type people at my work donâ€™t want to move to IE7 probably until there is an SP1 release. While I understand their reluctance, it is frustrating developing for IE6 knowing that a better corporate SOE alternative exists! A lot of the leak issues we experience now will be minimised, and the speed improvements alone are a compelling reason to upgrade.

I hope Microsoft release a SP1 release soon.. What if they never do, and we have to wait until IE8!?

However, there are other issues.. Other internal/external web applications, that the organisation relies upon, will need to work with the new version, and I don’t think we will upgrade until that can be guaranteed.

Running AJAX as a HTML Application (HTA)

Darryl Lyons — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:38:53 +0000

Ever thought about using Microsoftâ€™s HTML Application (HTA) technology? If you are developing AJAX applications for internal customers and have standardized on Internet Explorer, then I would highly recommend this route.

Basically, a HTA only uses the Internet Explorer rendering engine, so you donâ€™t get any of the browser add-ons such as the toolbar, status bar, and address bar. The back button is not available. You get a blank canvas on which to work.

The other benefits include:

Complete access to local machine
Smaller memory footprint
A bit quicker than using the browser
No back button
No context menu

Disadvantages:

Only runs on Windows machines
Uses IE rendering engine
User is prompted to RUN the application (because of security)

One of the less obvious benefits is that a HTA pretty much eliminates some of the closure memory leak problems with IE. Basically, whenever you destroy DOM elements (and leave/refresh a page), expando properties that reference JavaScript objects are not cleaned up. This in turn means that memory allocated to the DOM element is not freed.

When you close a HTA (there is no concept of refreshing the page other than F5), you destroy the entire process â€“ hence the memory leaks are not an issue. If you create and destroy DOM elements within the application however, then you will still have to handle these appropriately.

Anyone else play with HTAs?

Iâ€™ve been very busyâ€¦

Darryl Lyons — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:31:23 +0000

At last, the project I have been working on for the last 3 to 4 months has come to a close (just in time for Christmas). Iâ€™ve been working on version 2 of our internal AJAX CRM application, and it went into production last month.

I did the release out of hours, so it would disrupt the least amount of people. Around 2 Â½ hours later it was on the production servers with minimal fuss. The most rewarding thing for me after so much work is hearing praise from users. A few even emailed the project sponsors stating how much they loved the upgrade. I havenâ€™t heard any negative comments as of yet (you canâ€™t please everyone)…

A lot of my previous posts have been based on lessons learned during v1.0.0 development, and my up and coming posts will no doubt contain similar content.

I’m busily managing the development of the 2.1 release…