Time can be a funny thing. I still remember discovering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript coding. I still remember my first college programming course. I still remember my first day at my first coding job, then my first day at my second coding job, and then my first day at Mozilla. I still remember my first day coding for MetaMask. This year marks my 20th year as a professional software engineer and it’s happened in the blink of an eye.
Every once in a while I will make an old programming reference to a much younger engineer and then realize they have no idea what I’m talking about.
I’m so old…
- Webpage layouts were being done with
s and this new "CSS
float
" property was becoming the new standard- Rounded corners were achieved via images and VML hacks for Internet Explorer
- FTP was the best way to upload websites changes
- SVN and copying its
trunk
was the best versioning toolalert
andconfirm
were the standard for "modals"- Firebug was the best debugging tool available
- The "standard" for getting videos to play properly was finding the right codec to install
- ActionScript knowledge was as valuable as JavaScript knowledge
- Dreamweaver was best in class text editor and design tool
- XML was the future of data structures
- Mobile-first? Mobile didn't exist
- Reactive navigation? How about Java Applets...
- ...or even different
uponmouseover
andmouseleave
!- Want to code a desktop app with web tech? Try Adobe Air!
- NPM stood for "not performant, man"
- Voting on a poll meant the page would refresh
- "Social media" meant HotOrNot.com
- The love sound of the web was a 56k modem connection purrrrr
- Disabling right-click enforced image security
- Bitmap (
.bmp
) was a viable image format- JavaScript had a competitor called
JScript
- SpyJax'ing let you detect where your user had been
- Cookies were the pinnacle of user tracking
- Social media wall? It's called a "guestbook"...
- ...and a friends list? It's called a "web ring'
- Search engine optimization was spamming the
with keywords=Whew, those where the days. How old are you in web?
Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools
MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does. Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up. I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own. In any event...
Record Text Selections Using MooTools or jQuery AJAX
One technique I'm seeing more and more these days (CNNSI.com, for example) is AJAX recording of selected text. It makes sense -- if you detect users selecting the terms over and over again, you can probably assume your visitors are searching that term on Google...