Seamless Content Changing

Optimization in JavaScript is a very important task for every developer to observe in building a client side application. Developers can easily build applications with this programming language since frameworks and libraries can be used for free and will work with optimal security.

Even browser incompatibility is no longer a challenge since the libraries have been built to ensure they can work with different browsers. However, the speed of the application when the client side finally interacts with the user is not automatic. Developers still need to optimize the coding of their application. This could mean manual change in the coding to ensure that the application will work as expected.

A good practice often observed by developers to improve the performance of their application is to implement unobtrusive functions in JavaScript. In gist, an unobtrusive function can work in an application without dragging other functions. This technique is very applicable for small applications (widgets, APIs) since it can directly connect with another application and interact without having to asking for additional processes from other functions. It's even easy to implement unobtrusive Ajax in these platforms since they can be manually inspected without requiring too much time from developers.

But there are times that unobtrusive JavaScript is required in larger applications. For example, a developer may need to implement a stable function in the application which will allow users to stay logged -in so that the right information can be provided.

This is very challenging for unobtrusive JavaScript. The data in most (if not all) JavaScript based application is constantly changing and the dynamic content will never work well with unobtrusive JavaScript. Dynamic content has to make some changes with unobtrusive JavaScript or else the data will never synch.

The "Live" Trick

If you've ran into this problem before, you might have already bumped into this small but very efficient solution. Unobtrusive JavaScript is basically a function that only allows limited access to its function. This means, other functions in the JavaScript application can only monitor the unobtrusive function.

To make the function available for other JavaScript functions, developers have to change its behavior. Developers have to "open" the unobtrusive JavaScript function so that the developers will allow communication between functions. To do this, developers have to add the "live" command instead of the action command. For example, instead of "onclick," developers can change the function to "live".

The only challenge of this change is that the unobtrusive function becomes a live function as soon as the application is launched. Developers will no longer have to require user action before the function will be implemented. In this scenario, changing the "onclick" will greatly change the function of the application.

But when done right, or when the developers plan carefully how to use unobtrusive JavaScript, optimization can be easily achieved. Of course, you can always consider other forms of optimization in your application but if you really want to use unobtrusive JavaScript functions in your application, this small trick can really get your application going.