Posts tagged development
NetBeans, jQuery, and MS Intellisinse
Apr 12th
I recently abandoned Aptana as my IDE of choice (for a variety of reasons, not just an incredibly confusing process…). Recommended to me was NetBeans, currently in version 6.8, and though I’m still learning my way around, so far, so great.
As if I wasn’t already keen on intellisense – or as the rest of the non-Microsoft world calls it, code hinting – you can now find vsdoc.js files on the jQuery download page for some of its libraries (as of this writing there’s one for 1.4.1 but not 1.4.2). Why mention this? Well, it just so happens that the aforementioned IDE NetBeans knows how to work with these Visual Studio documents so long as they are in the same directory as the included library. Nice.
Well, almost. Unless I’m doing something very wrong (happens a lot) I can’t get the jQuery intellisense to work past the first link in a chained expression. For example:
// works - brings up intellisense
$("#test_p").cs
// not so much
$("#test_p").css("color", "#FF0000").ht
Another drawback of this combo is that the automatic reference of the intellisense doesn’t seem to work if you are including a library located in a folder above the current one, e.g. a “common” folder in your localhost. I tried to move the NetBeans metadata to another location as well, to no avail.
Until I can get this working more smoothly, I’ll continue to use the online jQuery API – perhaps a better resource anyway…
jQuery Cookbook – A Must Read
Jan 17th
Firstly – it’s an ermine.
Secondly, this book is a hands-down essential part of your collection if you are at all interested in / develop with the jQuery library. Authored by no less than 19 “jQuery Community Experts” including heavy hitters like Cory Lindley, Remy Sharp, and Mike Hostetler, The jQuery Cookbook compliments nicely other jQuery staples, such as Learning jQuery 1.3 and jQuery in Action.
If you are a front-end developer and have yet to use jQuery at all, it’s well worth trying out – it’s powerful, intuitive, extremely stable and, as this book so skillfully helps to demonstrate, very useful.
“…you’ll learn patterns and practices from a dozen of the leading developers who use jQuery for everything from integrating simple components into websites and applications to developing complex, high performance user interfaces.” – back cover, jQuery Cookbook.