A mea culpa, and a launch date, for Really Simple History 0.8

Brian Dillard, Monday, September 15, 2008 @ 2:47 pm

Time to come clean: I've been a terrible project lead on Really Simple History since version 0.6 launched last fall. The problem has been twofold:

1. lack of documentation
2. lack of time

The essential functionality of RSH works well in most supported browsers, but there are several special cases that have to be coded around in your actual application. Even basic usage, however, is documented mostly through example, not through tutorial-style, narrative prose. This has resulted in lots of noise in the issue tracker from folks seeking guidance on how to use the library. For all the folks whose questions and bug reports have gone unanswered, I offer a sincere and heartfelt apology. And to the more experienced users who stepped up to answer questions and help out, I offer heartfelt thanks.

The launch of Safari 3 caused some serious problems because code created to work around Safari 2's deficiencies caused things to break in Safari 3. I should have accepted suggested patches from some gallant RSH users and pushed out a new version months ago. But to be honest, I was so swamped with paid client work for Pathfinder that I couldn't find the time. I've learned my lesson about brittle, browser-specific workarounds. The next version of the library will fail far more gracefully.

Speaking of the next release: RSH 0.8 is nearing completion. I expect to publish an alpha version to coincide with my presentation October 1 at The Ajax Experience. My talk covers lots of interesting developments in Ajax history management, and I figured I should, you know, deliver the goods to my users before getting up on that stage.

I'll post soon with some information about the new technical direction RSH has taken, but here's a taste of what's to come. RSH 0.8 will offer the following:

• a smaller footprint
• a new API
• easier configurability
• less complexity for mainstream use cases
• explicit support for IE8, Safari 3, Firefox 3, Flock and Chrome
• more modularity and pluggability thanks to functional programming patterns espoused by Douglas Crockford
• easier integration with popular Ajax toolkits
• bug fixes

My vision for 1.0 centers around a full test suite, configurable downloads, expansive documentation and better mobilization of the RSH community. By the time we get to 1.0, I want to make sure there's no longer a single bottleneck for continuing development. I look forward to getting on with it starting at The Ajax Experience.

agile ajax

Comments: 14 so far

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1. 

   This is great news, I’ll look forward to the new release. I had a history nightmare on http://laurelandhardyarchive.com and ended up using a jQuery plugin.

   Comment by Jamie Hill, Monday, September 15, 2008 @ 7:17 pm

2. 

   That’s fantastic to hear. We use RSH on http://bouldr.net, so having this work properly for all modern browsers will be fantastic!

   Comment by Matt, Wednesday, September 17, 2008 @ 11:29 am

3. [...] Pathfinder Development » A mea culpa, and a launch date, for Really Simple History 0.8 (tags: javascript history management) [...]

   Pingback by links for 2008-09-20 | NeXt, Saturday, September 20, 2008 @ 9:40 am

4. 

   hi, first i’d like to thank you for RSH, it’s amazing how simple it is.

   I’ve been struggling with tinyMCE editor and RSH to work together and it seems not to work. At this point I get this kind of result: on tinyMCE load, it picks up rsh json string: {”DhtmlHistory_pageLoaded”:true} and outputs it somewhere in completly new tinyMCE editor… any help ?

   Comment by Ante Aljinovic, Tuesday, September 23, 2008 @ 10:01 am

5. 

   ok, after 3 days I’ve solved the problem, so if anyone is having the same problem, solution is:
   editing rsh, making it use some other form element (like input type=”text”) instead of textarea (because tinyMCE replaces textareas by default) or making tinyMCE not use textarea.

   Comment by Ante Aljinovic, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 @ 8:32 am

6. 

   Those are really good news, finally!!
   Keep up the good work!!
   RSH is great, even if I use a JS framework that already has a history manager, I still use RSH for history management.

   Comment by Tubal Martin, Tuesday, September 30, 2008 @ 5:20 am

7. 

   We’re already in November… is there an expected date for the 0.8 release. Appreciate what you’re doing just wanted to ping for an update.

   Thanks

   Comment by Tal, Monday, November 3, 2008 @ 7:17 pm

8. 

   I am currently doing some research in RSH and looking at implementing it within our application.

   The 0.8 version sounds very interesting and i would like to know if the alpha version was ever released for public use?

   Comment by Phunky, Friday, November 7, 2008 @ 5:34 am

9. 

   +1 on “Appreciate what you’re doing.. just wanted to ping for an update”

   

   Comment by f, Friday, November 14, 2008 @ 8:53 am

10. [...] did not meet my goal of releasing an alpha of Really Simple History 0.8 in conjunction with the conference. But I did accomplish a ton of work on the library during the build-up to my talk. I’m now hard at [...]

    Pingback by Pathfinder Development » HTML5, Ajax history management, and The Ajax Experience 2008 Boston, Tuesday, December 16, 2008 @ 12:24 pm

11. 

    just wanna say that your right menu looks horrible under ie
    (round corner bug?)

    Comment by yo, Friday, December 19, 2008 @ 4:37 am

12. 

    Did this ever happen, I don’t see 0.8 on the site.

    m

    Comment by marc, Thursday, December 25, 2008 @ 6:04 am

13. 

    How about an update on this, is an update to RSH ever going to happen ?

    Comment by Tony Steele, Friday, February 20, 2009 @ 3:05 am

14. 

    Examples of various different usages would be extremely helpful. I’ve been combing all over the rshTestPage.html but I really cannot see how this would work more generally… it *looks* like it ought to just be able to save a “snapshot” with the way it’s set up, but this seems not to be true…so does that mean hand coding and passing thru the historyData all the various bits of data? In which case, that level of instrumentation doesn’t seem a particular win. Basic questions like that, that could be resolved with a few more examples…!?

    It looks interesting…if I understood how to use it better…

    Thanks…

    Comment by cindy, Friday, May 1, 2009 @ 3:37 pm

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