Intractable Complexity

If ever you decided to fancify your JavaScript by separating it out in a clean manner, using “unobtrusive” techniques such as Behavior.js or UJS, you hopefully didn’t attempt to apply them using something like prototype’s Event.observe. Although perfectly workable for limited JS interaction, such libraries very quickly grind even the most efficient browser into the ground when applied to huge numbers of elements.

In this post I attempt to identify the most efficient method of event handling, putting all other considerations other then raw performance aside.

Incidentally, I got to experience first hand that Steve was right, Safari 3 really is the fastest browser in existence today, and Joel was wrong.

Turns out BDD involves quite a bit of switching back and forth between a spec and the relevant source file. I made a command similar to the “Go to unit” test command that ships with the Rails bundle. Same idea – hit some key combo, (I like Control + Option + Shift + S) and if you’re currently looking at a source file, you’ll be taken to it’s spec file and vice versa.

Update: A much much cleaner version of this command now lives in the official RSpec tmbundle.