A.D

I have a content management system I developed a little while back. When I first made it I was extremely pleased with the results, it had some shiny new features not seen that widely on the web, let alone in the back end management tool, things such as drag and drop, pop up fading alert boxes, save via ajax etc.

To achieve these things I did what I always have, I wrote the code from scratch. This involved hours of head-scratching, cross browser compatibility testing, scouring the web for fixes to mind bending browser ‘quirks’, if you have ever done any JavaScript development, you will know exactly what I mean.

Soon after deploying the app, I noticed that more and more websites seemed be using similar slick techniques and that JQuery was taking off as one of the two main JavaScript libraries that was powering these sites.

I have always been allergic to code libraries, maybe it’s the fact I like to push things in directions others wouldn’t take them. I have hit a brick wall too often in the past either through their limitations or their bugs. Relying on a 3rd party to fix your code is scary, as is delving into somebody else’s complex code.

I had a small problem with one of my drag and drop list sorter routine that actually caused a major problem with functionality. One that would take a lot of extra work to fix, especially as being a position error, the problem had to be solved in a different way in each browser. This was the tipping point, something made me take the plunge into what I though was going to be a huge rewrite, after all there was thousands of lines of JavaScript doing all sorts.

I didn’t have much knowledge of JQuery before I started, I had put a date picker on a page and that was about it, so I was surpried when I had finished less than 8 hours later. I only read two short pages of documentation before I felt I had enough knowledge to get going, It really was that simple! It was removing the legacy code that was the hardest bit. JQuery makes things so easy that if you write good semantic HTML in the first place, you shouldn’t need to do much work.

Now I have started giving updated version to my client’s, its time to move forwards and add some new functionality that will keep my system on the cutting edge. Next up is a new file uploading system with image editing tools using JQuery plugins such as this amazing basis for a cropping tool. I’ll be posting my experiences.

So take the plunge, trust the library, it has thousands of users and is well tested and gives you an amazing set of tools for you backend.