Ryan Morr

To harness the most out of CSS classes is to take advantage of what truly is the unsung hero of advanced RIA development as it relates to the presentation layer. When we observe our markup, we find that various portions of the DOM may require styling influences on the initial page load as well as interaction events or cues to adjust its structure, positioning, visibility, state, and skin. For this, classes are the clear suitor as it brings flexibility, modularity, inheritance, and a dynamic and unobtrusive nature to the table.

CSS tends to be in a constant phase of transition as new specifications are continuously proposed, drafted, and then left to the browsers for implementation. How and when a new feature is implemented is determined by the browser, often including their vendor prefix (-moz-, -webkit-, -o-, -ms-) to further dilute the feature. In fact, sometimes the W3C will define an official specification for a feature after one or more browsers have already implemented it. Despite the emergence of CSS3 in both support and usage over the last couple years, it is still very much in the early stages of standardization and implementation which is often changing and debated over. To help combat the confusion, the following article will focus on methods of determining support not just for styles but also their supported assignable values.

JavaScript’s implementation of scope and context is a unique feature of the language, in part because it is so flexible. Functions can be adopted for various contexts and scope can be encapsulated and preserved. These concepts lend to some of the most powerful design patterns JavaScript has to offer. However, this is also a tremendous source of confusion amongst developers, and for good reason. The following is a comprehensive explanation of scope and context, the difference between them, and how various design patterns make use of them.