Over the past couple of months I've written a JavaScript file that weighs in at just under 3,000 lines of code and just shy of 90kb.

Knowing the file would end up this size from the outset I coded it all with the notion that it would end up being "minified"/packed to reduce the filesize.

With this in mind I wrote the code in a packer-friendly way. By that I mean I followed certain rules that meant it would be safe to minify the whole code.

Following Convention

As an example, instead of writing this:

if ( this == that )
  doThis();

I'd be sure to always write:

if ( this == that ) {
   doThis();
}

A simple example of something that's a good habit to get in to. Apart from laziness I can't see a reason to omit the curly braces.

There are other rules to follow, such as putting comments on their own line, being careful where line breaks in long strings occur are split etc etc. To get an idea of how good your JavaScript code is you can paste it in to the big box on this page for a summary of the "errors" in your ways.

Tidy As You Go

Copy/pasting between your editor and a browser window isn't a nice way to code. What you need is to be told of the badness of your code as you code it. You can do this!

If you haven't already then get the brilliant Domino plugin for Aptana Studio! If you're coding JavaScript for Domino without then you're a loon.

Now, open Aptana and open the Preferences area, like below:

Drill down to Aptana > Editors > JavaScript > Validation and tick the "JSLint JavaScript Validator" option.

Now, from the menu choose Window > Show View > Validation, as below:

You should now see the Validation pane at the bottom of the main area of the screen, as below:

To the right of the Validation area you have the option toggle warnings on and off. Make sure they're on.

Above you can see I have 19 warnings. You can work your way through each one by double clicking it in the list to be taken to the line with the issue. Or you can scroll through the editor looking for little warning icons next to each line, as below, hovering over the icons tells you what the problem is:

Code Away

So, there you go. You're all set. JSLint will now help you whilst you write code. You can now write tidy, formatted and well-crafted JavaScript directly within your NSF!!