Prototype’s Element.on with MooTools

By  on  

Prototype 1.7RC1 was released on Monday. While the big news with this release appears to be the implementation of John Resig's Sizzle selector engine, what caught my eye was the new on method. This new Element.on method is very similar to Prototype's Element.observe method but with a few enhancements (event relaying, event stop). While I don't necessarily care about the enhancements, I simply love that the event method is called "on." Using "on" as the method name makes it sound more like the event itself. Here's how easy it is to use "on" instead of "addEvent" for your events.

The MooTools JavaScript

/* the directive */
Element.alias('addEvent','on');

/* the usage */
$('myElement').on('click',fn);

Using on instead of addEvent is as easy as a quick MooTools Element.alias directive.

It's weird that I like "on" so much considering a generally don't like jQuery's css and attr methods. Oh well. Congrats to the Prototype team for their impending release.

Recent Features

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Selection Styling

    The goal of CSS is to allow styling of content and structure within a web page.  We all know that, right?  As CSS revisions arrive, we're provided more opportunity to control.  One of the little known styling option available within the browser is text selection styling.

  • By
    HTML5 Placeholder Styling with CSS

    Last week I showed you how you could style selected text with CSS. I've searched for more interesting CSS style properties and found another: INPUT placeholder styling. Let me show you how to style placeholder text within INPUTelements with some unique CSS code. The CSS Firefox...

Discussion

  1. Lorenzo S.

    Hi David. Nice idea. I like also css() and other jQuery methods’ name (for their simplicity), but I prefer Mootools core. So, why not:

    Element.alias('addEvent','on'); 
    Element.implement({
      'css': function(p, v) {
        if (v == undefined) return this.getStyle(p);
        else return this.setStyle(p, v);
      },
      'attr': function(a, v) {
        if (v == undefined) return this.getProperty(a);
        else return this.setProperty(a, v);
      },
      'html': function(h) {
        if (h == undefined) return this.get('html');
        else return this.set('html', h);
    });
    

    What do you think?

  2. @Lorenzo S.: I’ve done posts like that in the past. I can’t stand .css and .attr for MooTools, but what you have would work.

  3. Arian

    @Lorenzo S.: If you want jQuery syntax in MooTools, have a look at this repository: http://github.com/cheeaun/mooj/blob/master/mooj.js

  4. Nikolaj

    @David

    Fully agree with “on” seems acceptable, whereas .css, .attr etc. doesn’t :)

    I guess the reason you might like “on” – when not other jQuery shortcuts – might be due to we’re used to “on” in “onClick” etc. for regular JavaScript, which probably makes the mind having positive thoughts.

  5. Great advice, thanks a lot.

    However, how much slower will this be? I mean, will on() trigger addEvent() and that in turn will trigger whatever internal functions are used?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!