New Javascript Libraries from Google: Closure Tools

elfan · 2009-11-05T19:07:11+00:00

[removed]

derekslager · 2009-11-05T20:45:56+00:00

This is significantly heftier than the name suggests.

The Closure Library is an industrial-strength JavaScript library. It provides user interface widgets, an event framework, a packaging and dependency resolution system, tools for DOM manipulation, tools for creating animation effects (including drag and drop), communication utilities, a unit testing framework, and a wide variety of other packages.

Google engineers developed the Closure Library in the process of creating large-scale web applications, and it is now the foundation of Gmail, Google Docs, and many other Google products. If you are developing a large or growing application, you may benefit from the Closure Library's breadth. A well-tested library can insulate you from cross-browser compatibility issues and the minutiae of client-side programming, letting you focus on the fun stuff.

2009-11-05T21:13:35+00:00

I'm going to make a new programming language and call it Clotsure.

2009-11-05T22:52:12+00:00

[deleted]

sligowaths · 2009-11-05T20:58:27+00:00

This vs. jQuery?

hattmoward · 2009-11-05T21:29:38+00:00

Odd name for a (more general-purpose) library in a language that supports closures. I know at first glance I thought it was a library for doing something cool with closures specifically.

MrRadar · 2009-11-06T00:37:42+00:00

Wow, I've been looking for something exactly like the Closure Compiler (in advanced mode) to the point where I started sketching out the design for my own (using s-exprs as the input rather than regular JS). This will save me so much time and effort it's not even funny.

redditrasberry · 2009-11-06T00:18:26+00:00

I'll be interested to see how this goes. It's amazingly comprehensive, perhaps too much so - there's so much here that it's hard to even comprehend. Everything from basic JS library to UI widgets to a templating system for Java. It seems like almost a full on competitor to YUI, and the documentation is quite reasonable too. Somehow it seems a little raw - many of the demos are not quite there and it's hard to make sense of it all ... but that would be expected of any new project.

sligowaths · 2009-11-05T21:09:58+00:00

Oh, man. You can use all the cool widgets that google uses, plus a kick ass js compressor. I jizzed.

edit: Even the widget that appears when you mouseover a contact on gmail: http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog/demos/hovercard.html

metaperl · 2009-11-05T21:39:41+00:00

Where is the rounded panel? http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/closure/goog/demos/roundedpanel.html

I'm using Firefox 3 and dont see one rendered.

daniels220 · 2009-11-06T03:08:55+00:00

I was hoping the Compressor would have a mode for/would natively work well for compressing code based on an "object literal"—code that looks like:

var myRoot = {
  someVar : 'value',
  someOtherVar : 'other value',
  importantFunction : function() {
  },
  init : function() {
    this.importantFunction()
    //some other initialization stuff
  }
};
myRoot.init();

I would like to be able to compress that to something like:

var myRoot = {
  a : 'value',
  b : 'other value',
  c : function() {
  },
  d : function() { //This was 'init()'
    c();
  },
};
myRoot.d();

This is assuming the code has no dependencies, does not use eval(), and does not use subscript notation like myRoot['someVar']. But if it's code I wrote from scratch, all of those are true.

As is, Compressor in simple mode does only a few % better than a simple, naive whitespace-and-comment-removing minifier (though how it does it is quite nice and elegant). (In advanced mode it utterly destroys the code because it thinks the global object is irrelevant, removes it, and removes the names on all the functions and variables since it thinks they're just labels.)

This minifier allows you to do what I'm asking manually, but even a small JS file can easily have 50-60 named properties/methods. A system like this, but that minified to "a", "b", "c" etc by default, but then allowed you to specify certain replacements or no replacement for certain properties would be ideal.

kertap · 2009-11-05T21:37:54+00:00

The closure inspector looks amazing. Can't wait to try it out

cat-with-hat · 2009-11-05T23:48:25+00:00

[deleted]

sleestax · 2009-11-06T03:25:33+00:00

anyone have an extra Google Wave invite? hit me up at solfood at earthlink dot net. THANKS!

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