All the tutorials out there teach JS by having the user write a file, and load it into the browser.

I was thinking a bit about the JS co-learning thing, and discovered that services, APIs and libraries really change the game, or have changed the game.

Sketching out a possible class for learning Javascript / learning to learn Javascript / learning to teach Javascript.

Prelims:
HTML and DOM
CSS and DOM

The attached file is a rudimentary demonstration of persistent local storage in the browser. You can click on it to see the page in action, and do a view source on that page.

I was reading the code at iworkfortheinternet.org and learned how to do this "scrolling forever wall" effect. It's clever.

HTML 5 is a marketing term (kind of like "cloud computing") that has a somewhat imprecise technical meaning, but was created so that products and people could easily sum up their compatibility or know

A ten second calculation to deter comment spam. It's an old technique called "hash cash" and has nothing to do with drugs.

It's hard to concentrate when you're tired and cranky, so I wasted some time writing a simple calculator in several different languages.

So I was puzzling over how to make the "Well" style layout in Tumblr without Javascript.

So I'm working on a small "speech bubble" library, and needed to delay hiding of the bubble. It's not that it was required, but it was a pain in the butt figuring out how to arrange the event handlers on the different elements so that you don't end up with a situation where you get a flickering bubble because you hide the bubble, and that fires a mouseover event that, in turn, displays the bubble again. That fires a mouseout event that causes the bubble to be hidden.

For the past few months I've been working on web apps. The first was a mobile site based on jQuery Mobile. While it was "cool", it quickly dawned on me that it wouldn't get any significant usership. For one, it was like a clone of 4square and Scvngr - and who really uses that? I'd peer into the lists of checkins, and it wasn't looking too encouraging. People use it when they're bored and alone, and my scenario didn't involve either of those situations.

Javascript Module Pattern In Depth at Adequately Good is a very good article about how to make JS modules that don't pollute the global namespace.

I wrote this before I practiced with the module pattern and with adding methods to prototypes. So this article doesn't explain a best practice. Still, it's a pretty good pattern. See also the Javascript Patterns book.

Xopus is an XML editor, written in Javascript and HTML5. It's not just JS, but it's licensed software for your desktop. I'm blown away. This is Google Docs, Angry Birds, Yahoo Pipes level blown away. Check it out.