target="_blank" for XHTML Strict

admin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:35:04 +0000

For better or for worse, it's a widespread convention for offsite links to open in a new window. This is usually achieved by setting the attribute target="_blank" on the link in question.

Of course, the target attribute is illegal in XHTML Strict—so this bit of functionality of will invalidate your pages.

I whipped up a simple fix to this problem. Here's the demo and download page.

JavaScript Standard Library 1.8+

admin — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:50:59 +0000

I just came across Andrea Giammarchi's JavaScript Standard Library, a ≈2.7KB library which transparently adds JavaScript 1.6 methods (mostly the new Array stuff) to browsers which don't support them natively.

Surprisingly, this is the first library I've seen whose sole purpose is JavaScript version compatibility. Andrea says it provides "a quite totally standard environment", and offers some unit tests.

I haven't used it yet, but it's a cool idea.

Note that JSL does not include the JavaScript 1.8 methods Array.reduce() and Array.reduceRight(). If you need those, try the compatibility code offered by Mozilla, here and here.

Travis Miller » JavaScript

target="_blank" for XHTML Strict

JavaScript Standard Library 1.8+