"My 2 cents"
Craig Fitzpatrick

What's great about Javascript?
Devshop is pixel for pixel in IE and Mozilla

Q: Is the time for that worth it?
A: yes, it's worth it ... makes the app more 'slick'

Super easy to learn the basics of Javascript
- a lot of people don't get more advanced

Adoption on lots of devices
Swiss army of web development
-- rich behaviour, flash, etc

Unlike CSS, Javascript supports User Agent abstraction
-- made his own DOM API to abstract it between browser
-- made his own widget library

Source code is available for the world to see and learn from
-- double edged sword: stealing

Q: licensing?
A: none yet
-- doesn't mind giving away widgets
-- but doesn't want to expose business logic

Interpreted code is always going to be slower
-- he's spent a lot of time optimizing custom GUI widgets

Q: did the code get more complex when you optimized?
A: often yes
-- complexity is also a deterrent for copying
-- but "localized" complex code to make them easier to use

Mutable objects are more trouble than they are worth
-- flexibility: too much rope to hang yourself with
-- no mandatory type declarations: problems with typos, etc
[ed. I don't think he's talking about mutable objects but dynamically typed objects]

Lack of mandatory typing "hamstrings" tool vendors
-- every variable is a variant
-- can't use Intellisense-like features (ie. Visual Studio) and he doesn't like that

Lack of commonly accepted libraries hinders re-use
-- exceptions: moo, prototype aren't common yet

A lot of people don't make the effort to be cross-browser
-- browser loyalty tends to cloud judgement
-- the business person in him says that's terrible
-- Firefox's increasing percentage gets his attention
-- to him, it's economics
-- doesn't pay attention to browsers with less than 10% (ie. Safari, Opera)

Q: do you use Firefox debugger
A: yes, a lot ... better than IE's

Created a collection of collections
-- list, sorted dictionary, etc

Created private libraries for low-level behaviour
-- drag/drop, inline editing

Created public libraries for page code to use
-- user controls: table, boxes, separator bar, etc

Created a thread object to manage asynchronous operations
-- like animations, that improve usability

Created a Page object that manages the entire page lifecycle
-- like a "root" object for all of the page objects
-- another abstraction over the DOM [ed. nice!]
-- easier to deal with page objects without having to deal with (XML) "elements"
-- window events are disparched to other libraries by Page

Cracked nut: pixel by pixel between browsers (IE and Firefox)

Stages of enlightenment (7 of them...)
-- see slides?

#6 plug and play for libraries in the framework
-- so libraries can co-exist
-- namespaces?

#7 framework and dev studio are integrated
-- to support intellisense-like features
-- again, doesn't like dynamic typing

A neat open source project would have challenges:
-- requires an extreme knowledge of javascript
-- patience to make it cross-platform
-- performance!
-- strong leadership

Speed improvements take "obscure" knowledge
-- [ed. not so sure about that ... just a knowledge of O notation and how dynamic languages work]
-- lazy instantiation: don't create boxes until the user mouses over
-- then when clicked, it opens

my notes:
-- advanced javascript is the exception rather than the rule; a lot of badly hacked code out there