djsipe.com | Web Development

From time to time at work, I feel like the only person in the world who doesn’t have a big soft spot in their heart for ExtJS.  Each time it’s vaunted as the Swiss Army Knife of UI development I can’t help but object.  I will say that ExtJS is a top-notch library with tons of amazing features, but what I take issue with is when it’s implemented as a replacement for traditional UI design and markup.

When you are writing your UI entirely in JavaScript, something is wrong.  Not only are you pushing the browser to generate a daunting amount of HTML through code, you’re also completely depending on JavaScript for anything to work on your site.  It’s Progressive Enhancement cryptonite.

To be fair, there are some reasons why you might use ExtJS for your UI:  You can get projects up and running much faster and in some groups where there isn’t a strong designer you can actually improve the consistency and look and feel of your applications.  Outside of these scenarios, I much prefer libraries like jQuery that focus on building upon the existing markup of the page rather than writing the markup for the page.

After a few posts where I wanted to include code examples, I quickly became frustrated with the standard <pre> display that the folks at WordPress recommend. I looked for a plugin that worked well, but didn’t like what I was seeing. So at the prodding of my colleague, Pat Doran, I decided to roll my own plugin.

The result is my “Code Face” plugin. It uses the YUI JavaScript framework to scan your posts and replace specially tagged <pre> blocks with rich code syntax highlighting via the syntaxhighlighter utility. Ninety-nine percent of the plugin is written in JavaScript using the concept of progressive enhancement. That means that even if your readers have JavaScript turned off or are using a screen reader, the content of your post is still highly accessible.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your comments.

Update: This version of Code Face is now on Github.  Hope to have an easier to use version update soon.