Introducing DED|Chain JavaScript Library
This started off as a plane ride project, then blew up into something much larger. Today I’m proud to announce a JavaScript library I’m calling DED|Chain the Web Developers JavaScript kit (less cruft, more fun). It sits on top of Yahoo! UI, with a bit of jQuery spice. Also a big thanks to Jack Slocum for providing DOMQuery which is the base of all “chains” in DED|Chain. The goals (among other things) are mentioned on the project page which will hopefully give you a clearer understanding of its conception.
Please keep in mind that this is the very first beta release which contains no documentation plenty of documentation, however being a big stickler for documentation myself, I can guarantee there will be some API docs finding there way to the website in very short time.
Other than that, feel free to send me feedback personally at dustin [<at>] dustindiaz (dot) com. Your thoughts will be much appreciated.
March 20th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Dustin,
Looks like you put a lot of hard work into this! Your goals for the project speak to me.
I am a HUGE fan of Y!UI even though I haven’t had a chance to put it into anything real yet. And I have been interested in learning about jQuery. I am also on the verge of at least one major user interface, with a few smaller ones on the horizon as well.
I hope to get the time to dig in and mess with this in order to learn it and, in due turn, learn jQuery and get to know Y!UI better.
Sometimes I wish I had the time on my hands that you are able to dedicate to this stuff!
Cheers,
Jim
March 20th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Looks interesting! I’m a little amused, though, because I’ve been watching Douglas Crockford’s brilliant JavaScript lectures at the YUI theatre page, and one of the things he advises against is prefixing symbol names with dollar-signs or underscores. He’s Yahoo!’s chief JavaScript architect, so presumably he’s at least partly responsible for the design of the $-free YUI API — and here comes a YUI wrapper that uses “_$” as its default namespace and as the first two characters of its first example…
Still, I can’t wait to take it for a spin.
March 20th, 2007 at 5:38 am
Gah, just when I settle on one library, you give me reason to look a 3rd (4th?) time at using YUI. Looks like it could be a lotta fun, thanks Dustin!
March 20th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Thanks for the hard work on the library Dustin.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:10 am
[…] Dustin Diaz releases DED|Chain, a JQuery-a-like library based on the Yahoo UI library. Apart from winning this week’s “Most Ridiculous Name For A Software Project” award (previous winners include Ning), it looks pretty cool. Nice work, Dustin. […]
March 20th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Fascinating.
I’m a jQuery guy, but I’ve always wanted to take a look at Y!UI, mostly because you write so much about it. It’s neat to see you’re bringing some of the fun from jQuery to Y!UI.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:40 am
For anyone checking out the API webpage (dedchain.dustindiaz.com/api/docs). It’s not there yet. It will show up sometime this week.
Otherwise, thanks for your kind words so far. I would encourage everyone to check out Stuart Langridge’s feedback which tells you a bit of the good and the bad with very straight forward and honest feedback.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Very cool, looking forward to seeing some API docs on it.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Would it be possible to throw up something like a svn? I’m sure there are more code changes to come since this is a 0.1 beta.
Very much looking forward for this. Good work!
March 21st, 2007 at 7:41 am
[…] Link […]
March 21st, 2007 at 11:09 am
Dustin, would be nice to Tetris moving around with the DED Chain. I think the name is very rock’n roll. It has the Dude factor. Anyway, you were born cool perhaps, that would be no incubators.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:46 pm
@Elliot: there is some partial documentation as of today, I would encourage you to check it out.
@alvin: I will consider an svn repository if enough people begin to use it and request it.
@johan: I’ll leave tetris as it was… no need to rehash that now. I’ve got to finish up some documentation :)
March 23rd, 2007 at 3:18 am
You know that sentence kinda makes it seem like jQuery is not reliable. Is that your intention?
March 23rd, 2007 at 6:45 pm
@Dean: You get the reliability of Yahoo! UI simply because it’s built on it. You do not get the reliability of jQuery because it doesn’t use jQuery. If it were built on jQuery, then I would pitch in its reliability statement as well…
You know, if you twist your statement around even further, you could argue that I said Yahoo! UI is not developer friendly ;) But clearly, neither is the case. Btw, congrats on releasing your library this week too :)
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Being born and bred as a php developer, is this the Javascript library for me?
Thanks
March 24th, 2007 at 12:25 am
@Dustin: Yes, yes it is. As a Dustin, you are obligated to use this. Plus, I was primarily bred as a php developer too (which might the probably with the both of us). Check out some of the documentation and read a few forum posts, you’ll get the idea fairly quick.
March 26th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
This begs for a long overdue screencast. No wonder you weren’t posting new stuff anymore about using YUI, because you were busy creating something around it. Thanks for this great lib.
March 27th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
[…] Then another guy named Dustin Diaz released his library called DED|Chain. (rolls off the tongue. Is it pronounced Dead-Chain?) The funny thing is that I just used a Dustin technique to fix min-width in my css. It was exactly what I needed. Thanks Dustin! […]
March 28th, 2007 at 6:32 am
[…] Dustin Diaz has released his DED|Chain JavaScript Library. I’m excited to give it a try in future projects. It sits on top of YUI and is supposed to have the ease of use of JQuery. I’m also a big fan of Jack Slocum’s work, and this library makes use of his DOMQuery functionality. […]
March 28th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Thanks, Dustin. I can’t wait to dive in!
March 28th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Dustin, would you mind contacting me at paul at aptana dot com? I’d like to ask a private question, thanks.
May 1st, 2007 at 6:19 am
Great work Dustin.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I just downloaded your library. I’m not a javascript pro, but this thing looks very impressive. Nice work, Dustin! Looking forward to see more of it ;)
October 31st, 2007 at 1:29 am
Hi Dustin,
Great work on the library. Since I am already using yui across the board, this seems like a perfect fit.
However, I have a comment regarding how you serve the library.
You have removed everything related to drag and drop from the yui utilities.js.
This would be fine for me, but since you also serve the query functionality in the yui utilities.js file, this means I have to replace my already existing yui utilities.js file with the one you serve, and then I also have to include a reference to the standalone drag and drop file.
Would it not be possible to instead put the query functionality in the ded-chain.js file, and let the developer choose the utilities.js file themselves?
Not a huge problem since I can simply move things around a little bit, just a thought :-)