Musings From Mars 

by Leland Scott

http://www.musingsfrommars.org/

Anyone Can Develop A Dashboard Widget (And They Probably Will)

Wow! This project really took me back a few years... 

and forward a few years as well.  

The "back a few years" part is a reflection of how long 

it s been since I worked on a major JavaScript/CSS 

(dynamic HTML) project. I had forgotten how 

frustrating it could be to debug JavaScript. When I was 

doing this nearly full time earlier in the century 

(doesn t that sound odd?), the frustration stemmed partly 

from trying to build to two totally different "document 

object models" (DOM)   Netscape s and Internet 

Explorer s. Because Microsoft trounced Netscape in the 

browser wars, the IE DOM won out, and today it s pretty 

much the standard, as defined by the W3C. Developers 

who remember trying to build dynamic HTML that would 

work 

in both browsers are simply relieved that you no longer have to deal 

with the 

"Netscape 4 problem," though some  like me  mourn the good ideas that went down with that 

model. Now, with Firefox and Safari ascendant and IE waving from the sidelines (anybody 

remember the Tortoise and the Hare story?), even Microsoft s proprietary extensions to 

JavaScript will hopefully be abandoned by everyone who hasn t already done so. 

That s the good news. Today, the frustration I felt programming JavaScript stemmed mostly from 

the fact that I hadn t put together a good development toolkit for Safari. In other words, I needed 

some tools that could show the JavaScript errors clearly to help me debug them. Once I had 

these, I wasn t trying to code in total darkness anymore. 

The project took me forward a few years as well, since I got a clear glimpse of what life beyond 

browser based HTML will be like a few years from now. I was skeptical at first, but because of 

both the explosion of Dashboard widgets since May 1 and the amazing usefulness of many of 

  MPN, LLC 2005 macCompanion 

Page 11 

August 2005, Volume 3 Issue 8