JavaScript

I jump out of bed in the morning to write JavaScript. I'm serious.

If I am not writing JavaScript code, I am thinking about JavaScript. If I am not thinking about JavaScript, I'm probably asleep. If you need help optimizing your code, custom components such as a slide-show / photo gallery, or JavaScript training, I can help.

Object-Oriented JavaScript

Object-Oriented JavaScript is very simply the way to go. This does not mean that it is always required. But as soon as your JavaScript exceeds a few lines or several trivial functions, it's time to get organized; let's keep the global name space clean and tighten-up our code within one object. I'm particularly passionate about exposing a minimal number of public methods and only allowing access to properties via getters and setters. Any other approach guarantees endless headaches and spaghetti.

jQuery

jQuery is awesome. The only bad thing I can say about it is that it abstracts away so many cross-browser issues, and makes DOM manipulation so easy that one's native JavaScript chops can get rusty quickly. That said, unless you need a library that is made to be used as a framework, such as Dojo, jQuery is a no-brainer.

JSON

In case you've been living under a rock, JSON is a lightweight data-interchange format that kicks booty. It is super-easy to consume and makes for a data format that we can all love and tuck under our pillow each night. If you find your are storing data in some hard-to-manage format, it's time to open your heart and let JSON into your life...all the cool kids are doin' it!

AJAX

Remember back in the '80s how everyone wanted a fax machine, but they weren't quite sure what to do with it? Same for AJAX. If you are not sure why you need it, you don't need it. But, if you find that you are trying to serve up data in pages on user-driven events such as mouse-over, AJAX might just breathe some life into your oh-so-1997 web page. There are some considerations with regards to SEO, but if we take a moment to think things through, we can implement AJAX-driven components in your web site that keep the full page refreshes to a minimum, satisfy the SEO gods, and turn visitors into customers.