Ternary Operation in JavaScript

Ternary operations in JavaScript are really awesome.
It's essentially an if/then block, but on one line.

An example would be:

In this example, y would be "howdy".

You can read ternary operations as

y = ( comparison ) ? if it's true, use this value : otherwise, use this value ;


This is a very simple example, but you can see the power behind this.

An example in jQuery could be...

Again, this is a very simple example, but you get the point.

One word of advice, though: never use ternary operations if the values to be set are true/false:

Instead, just use the comparison:

jQuery 1.4 and native JSON support

I was reading a post by Yehuda Katz (http://www.twitter.com/wycats), and saw how jQuery 1.4 now uses native JSON support, which is available in a lot of more current browsers (IE8, FF 3.5, Chrome 2), and when JSON support is not available, it falls back on its previous JSON parsing.

In a video by Paul Irish (http://www.twitter.com/paul_irish), he states that jQuery 1.4 will now validate the JSON (if native JSON support is not available) and throw errors if the JSON response is not valid JSON, just as native JSON parse would throw errors.

Both of these things are awesome. I am pretty excited about that.

I have been guilty of using malformed JSON simply because I could get away with it.

Now, a great standard is being pushed to the forefront!

I am going to be taking it a step further and ensure that all the JSON I use throughout my apps are valid JSON (even objects I'm passing to jQuery functions).

I'm doing this for a few reasons. One reason is consistency. I like having consistent organization and standards in my applications. This is a must at my job because different members of the team may have to go in and edit my code. If I have a consistent style of programming, they'll be able to easily go in and make changes.

Another reason is, it's just good practice. If I do ALL my JSON in valid JSON format, then I won't even have to go "oh, this is an AJAX call, my response should be valid JSON", I'll just be doing ALL my JSON in valid format, and not have to worry about it.

What are your thoughts about this?

JavaScript console

At my company, I am required to support different browsers because a lot of employees here like to use their preferred browser; we support IE6+, FF2+, and Chrome. Let me start by saying I love Chrome and I love FireFox. They both have different aspects about them that are amazing.

I love Chrome because it's just really good quality. Google has never really produced any bad products to my knowledge. They're always working to be on the cutting edge and they do a damn good job at it. The V8 engine in Chrome is fan-effing-tastic.

Firefox is a well-rounded browser that has the ability to be customized out the ying-yang. It's Firebug plugin is absolutely amazing. There are also some other plugins I use that are really cool.

One thing that make Chrome and Firefox even better is the fact that they both adhere to web standards! What a concept, right? Haha.

Another thing I love about them is the fact that they have a JavaScript console, which has proved to be a priceless commodity.

IE, however, does not...unless you install something like debugbar (which is a very heavy IE plugin).

I took some time and actually created a console (written completely in JavaScript) that works across all browsers. I can throw different commands at the console, and even have a mode set up to take and interpret JavaScript commands. I use this console in a newer application I'm going to release as an actual event log for my app. It's pretty light weight, and I have added the ability for it to email my team a timestamped log of all events/responses from the application.

I have it self-truncating at 500 rows currently, just to ensure the log doesn't get overly massive.

I just bought my own website (www.matthewcmaxwell.com) and will be setting that up in the near future. When I do, I'll be putting my JavaScript console up there for you to download and try out.

Here's a small pic (bad quality, I know)