Hi Friends, This week I’m announcing the v1.0 open source release of spinnerComponent.js, a small Javascript that creates a versatile and customizable “wait spinner” and adds it to the DOM as an inline HTML element.
This is a side project to my main work in research and data analysis, but it scratches the itch to finally be done with the limitations of graphic images as spinners on web pages. I put a link below, but my reason for this message is to say how much I appreciate BBEdit for the several ways it assisted in this and most of my projects. No question being posed - I just wanted a place to say this where people would know what I’m going on about… So happy to use: - Obviously, all the BBEdit text editing and processing tools; - Language servers - what a great addition! - HTML & Markdown previews - Run… - Scripting and Text Factories - Worksheets - For my dozens of scripts and routines for data analysis, each one has its own worksheet or sheets, allowing me to maintain and adjust configs, save a durable record of output messages, more; - Projects - I can organize all of a software project’s files in one on-screen place, including both working copies and their associated git repositories (all still in their respective locations on disk), plus in-the-box scratchpad, unix worksheet, & chat worksheet; Now, lemme talk about BBEdit's new Chat Worksheets, and share a few suggestions: I decided to dig into Chat Worksheet capabilities with this spinner project. Part way along my own learning curve in how to get the most out of them, I find chat sheets very helpful. For this project, I needed to delve into HTML’s Shadow DOM and templates, and Javascript's class constructor, all of which I’d been ignoring, and brush up on my ARIA chops. I have found that the ai bots, especially Claude, can be like having a non-judgemental coding instructor always available and usually able to help me find a solution. I learn just by having to formulate my question, and then by having to understand the suggestions or feedback the chat provides. In some cases, I’m asking “What’s the best way to … in [programming language]?” In others, I paste in a batch of code - sometimes hundreds of lines - and say “How can this be optimized?” or “Why do I never see xx expected output?” or “How could I now add capability for yy?" If I don’t see obvious errors in the response right away, I try the suggestions; many times it takes several iterations of going back when it didn't work; the bot always apologizes and returns with another suggestion. Sort of a stochastic socratic method that circles in on the optimal code. Doesn’t always work. On this spinner project, there was one affordance I wanted the spinners to have, but the chat bot gave me four different answers, none of which worked, then it repeated one, so I gave up on it. A few days later the solution came to me, now “obvious” as such things are, with no help from Claude. Working in languages I’m more deeply conversant with, I ask fewer “How do I …?” questions, but I do find chat worksheets helpful in writing tests - “can I be sure my tests for this subroutine cover input edge cases or bad/missing input?" The chat sheet also remembers what’s been said from its beginning, so I can copy in a whole script at the start and then ask a series of questions about it without repeating the code. Sometimes it’s clarifying to check how recent the bot’s knowledge base is. Some of the ChatGPT bots know nothing about software releases since 2021, when they were trained. I could go on, but I especially urge BBEdit users to check out the chat worksheets for all kinds of questions. As long as you think of it as a source whose answers need to be verified or tested, and as an opportunity to learn as you do so, you’re good. I’ve also asked about things like latitude-longitude alternatives, and gardening tips for transplanting a tree that sprouted in one of my containers. It suggested the word I adopted for the moving part of the spinner: ‘rotor’. Oh yeah, <https://bvadata.com/html_spinner_examples.html> Keep (us) moving forward Barebones! Many thanks, — Bruce _bruce__van_allen__santa_cruz_ca_ -- This is the BBEdit Talk public discussion group. If you have a feature request or believe that the application isn't working correctly, please email "[email protected]" rather than posting here. Follow @bbedit on Mastodon: <https://mastodon.social/@bbedit> --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BBEdit Talk" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bbedit/EA58D422-224B-4E53-B1BC-D65F5F0B438F%40cruzio.com.
