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Message-ID: <94815c08-277a-4a8e-80bd-42e2e72f42a9@b36g2000pri.googlegroups.com>
Subject: A common loader for browser-based toolkits
From: James Burke <jrbu...@gmail.com>
To: "Prototype: Core" <prototype-core@googlegroups.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hi,

My name is James Burke, and I am usually a Dojo contributor. However,
I have been working on a standalone, non-Dojo script/module loader,
RequireJS, http://requirejs.org.

I want to see if Prototype is interested in using it, and if not the
actual implementation, at least agreeing on the format/API to allow
better interop.

While a Prototype project is capable of using RequireJS without doing
any explicit integration with the Prototype Core, there are some
things that can be done to provide a better experience, mainly making
sure dom:loaded is not fired until any inflight modules/scripts are
loaded. This could be accomplished by modifying
fireContentLoadedEvent() to know if there are require()-ed inflight
modules and to register fireContentLoadedEvent with RequireJS so it
can be called when modules are loaded.

Since RequireJS uses dynamically generated script src="" tags, loading
of scripts/modules is async in nature, and can finish after
DOMContentLoaded.

While smaller projects may not need a script/module loader, larger
ones do, and RequireJS has an optimization tool that can be run a
packaging/deployment time to combine scripts/modules together.

I also believe that browser toolkits should work together to make sure
they have a loader that works well in the browser. Otherwise, as time
goes on, we will be pressed to use a format as described by CommonJS,
which as it stands today does not work well natively in the browser.

If you are interested, I am happy to prep a fork of Prototype that
shows the integration, with unit tests. I have been able to convert
Dojo to RequireJS, and have a fork of jQuery with integration and unit
tests. The jQuery fork assumes optional integration in the JavaScript,
and I would do the same with the Prototype code, only activating the
hooks if require is present.

James