Jeremy Jones, writing for O’Reilly states [”I was compelled enough to give
TurboGears a spin. Why? I watched the TurboGears
video.”](http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7869). As much as it pains me to
admit it, that’s largely what got me to try TurboGears too.
I’ve already written about searching for a Web application framework, and
last weekend I spent most of Friday night and all of Saturday (much to my
wife’s consternation) searching for a really good platform I could build
on. I wanted to build on JSP because of the really cool tag library support
(I still think this is a critical addition to something like TurboGears),
but there was no way I could ever justify (or probably afford) a hosting
account that allowed me to run JSPs.
Read If It Doesn’t Buzz »
I’ve been exploring [TurboGears](http://www.turbogears.org) since Saturday when I first ran across it.
It’s amazing just how quick it is to create a small Web application. I haven’t yet expanded my scope beyond small samples, but I can easily see how this framework (or [mega-framework as it’s being called by others](http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7835)) will be invaluable for a project I’m working on.
It’s great to be excited about developing a Web application again.
I just finished watching the [20 minute screen cast of TurboGears](http://www.turbogears.org/docs/wiki20/20MinuteWiki.mov). Now I’m eager to download it and try it out.
I actually spent most of this weekend looking for a decent Web development environment — I don’t do Perl or PHP (I think they’re both craptacular languages) — and although I’d rather use JavaScript on the server side, I think Python will be an interesting twist.
And whatever happened to AxKit? It looked good enough to make me interested in learning a little Perl, but then there’s been no development since 2003…
Typing out `document.getElementById` can get a little tedious after a while. One of the best alternatives I’ve seen takes advantage of a little known feature of Javascript (and oddly enough C/C++ and possible Java): the dollar sign ($) is a valid identifier character.
Consider the following code:
function searchWasSubmitted()
{
var e= $(”searchField”);
// launch Ajaxy search using value of search field
var url= this.searchUrl + “?search=” + escape(e.value);
this.request= openRequest( url, searchDidComplete.bindToObject(this) );
return false;
}
Libraries like [Prototype](http://prototype.conio.net/) provide this functionality — and a whole lot more — but you can take advantage of it in your code without these libraries.
function $( elementId )
{
return document.getElementById( elementId );
}
Of course, Prototype’s version allows you to also request multiple elements, which it returns in an array. But this is good enough for my needs.
In a recent article on his Web site, [Derek Powazek recommends embracing the bottom of the page](http://www.powazek.com/2005/09/000540.html). I’ve whipped up a redesigned version of this site taking these ideas to heart.
I’m afraid I’ve plagiarised a little too freely: I doubt anyone would really want to send us anything by snail-mail. And I had to work in what’s becoming the trademark of newburyportion: the Ajaxy search.
All in all, I *really* like it. I like it better than the current design.
Were I to replace the current design, that would make an all-time record for shortest design lifetime of any site I’ve built. Hmm… tempting.
