Rey Bango

One of the things I hate about using CDNs is remembering the path for the latest version of my favorite JavaScript library. I end up having to pull a search engine, search for the site, find my library, copy & paste the link and then drop it into my app. I know, it sounds trivial, but it’s just one of those “trivial annoyances” that bugs me.

I stumbled onto a site that makes all of that much easier. Scriptsrc.net provides a dead simple way to bypass all of that because it clearly lists the most popular libraries on one page along with a copy & info button. You click on the “copy” button and you now have the full path to the most recent version on Google’s Ajax API CDN.

Here’s a screenshot:

Clicking on the copy button will provide this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

It’s a neat tool to add to your arsenal and a time saver, at least for me. It supports:

jQuery
jQuery UI
YUI
Dojo
Prototype
Script.aculo.us
MooTools
Ext JS

Last Friday I got a chance to visit the Yahoo! campus and meet with the YUI team. I have to say I felt pretty special because these guys usually work remotely on Friday’s and they took the time to come into the office to chat with me. I really appreciated that and I’m glad that this video will help put a face to the name of these JavaScript ninjas. A very special thanks to Eric Miraglia and Gonzalo Cordero for setting this up.

** NOTE: If for any reason you can’t see the video via the embedded player, just click the link below it to jump over to Vimeo.

Interview with the YUI Team from Rey Bango on Vimeo.

The YUI team spent some time with me to chat about the good stuff happening with YUI

I'm re-submitting this post since I had to blow away the original one when I had the HTTP compression issues. The original, posted on August 19, 2007, can be found via Google cache:

With RIA's becoming so pervasive and developers just going full tilt in embracing toolkits that help build these wonderful apps, its still extremely important to take into consideration site optimizations that actually make your site usable.

Take for example the age old adage of the “files are cached on the user's computer”. Well, Yahoo seems to have done a good job of dispelling that thinking by doing some research that shows that:

• 40-60% of Yahoo's users have an empty cache experience
• ~20% of all page views are done with an empty cache

Holy crap! 40-60%!!! Yahoo's audience is so distinct that these figures really are compelling and should be considered when designing your site. Here's the link for the full article:

Performance Research, Part 2: Browser Cache Usage – Exposed!

It really is enlightening.

Jack Slocum, who is a HUGE Yahoo User Interface Library fan has created a VERY cool Ajax frontend to the popular messageboard software phpBB. You can see it here:

http://www.jackslocum.com/forum2/

As pointed out in the Ajaxian posting, it looks VERY similar to Yahoo's new email UI and IMO, improves the readability of the messageboard.