Develop Reference

Why can't you call outerHTML on $(this)?

When you want to get the HTML of an entire DOM element (wrapper included), you can do the following (as explained here):
$('#myElementId')[0].outerHTML
But what you can't do is call outerHTML on $(this) inside e.g. a click listener or selector function body scope:
$(this).outerHTML //Doesn't complete in IntelliSense, returns undefined in browser
or
$(this)[0].outerHTML //Correction, this DOES work, but it doesn't complete in IntelliSense
because IntelliSense won't show innerHTML or outerHTML in those circumstances, although with vanilla JavaScript you can do:
document.getElementById($(this).attr('id')).outerHTML
So... what's up with that?

outerHTML is a DOM property; jQuery doesn't expose all DOM properties.
If you have a jQuery object, you can only directly access those properties and methods that jQuery exposes, and vice versa for DOM objects.
In object-oriented terms, jQuery objects don't inherit from DOM objects, they contain them.
Saying $x[0] gets you the DOM object for the first element represented by a jQuery object.

You can use directly this to access outerHTML of the current object instead of indirectly going through $(this) as this represents the DOM object (which has outerHTML property) whereas $(this) represents jQuery object.
this.outerHTML

jQuery selector returns an array-like jQuery object which has no outerHTML property.
However, the jQuery resulting array contains DOM elements.
It means that you can actually access it this way.
$(".someClass")[0].outerHTML // it works for me
Update:
It works for me in every browser.
I can access array-like jQuery object in a click event handler as well.
$(".someClass").click(function()
{
alert($(this)[0].outerHTML); // it works me too
});
Here is my JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/13btf60p/
Update 2:
OK, now I get your question. It should have worked.
Do you really need an IntelliSense to complete such a plain and simple construction?

I will add what I found to be the correct solution to what ended up being a simple flaw in the default Visual Studio settings for future reference.
Since I didn't want to let this go, I searched further and found out that, by default, jQuery IntelliSense is somewhat deplorable out of the box in Visual Studio 2013.
Under
Tools > Options > Text Editor > Javascript > IntelliSense > References
I set
Reference Group: "Implicit (Web)"
and added an existing jQuery file. This solved all issues of my question and IntelliSense now suggests all members and methods correctly, although this should have simply worked out of the box instead of costing everyone a bunch of time.

this.outerHTML is enough.
If you use getElementById maybe you can use:
var table = document.getElementById('blablabla');

EmberJS - Adding a binding after creation of object

I am trying to bind a property of an object to a property that's bound in an ArrayController. I want all of this to occur after the object has already been created and added to the ArrayController.
Here is a fiddle with a simplified example of what I'm trying to achieve.
I am wondering if I'm having problems with scope - I've already tried to bind to the global path (i.e. 'App.objectTwoController.objectOne.param3') to set the binding to. I've also tried to bind directly to the objectOneController (which is not what I want to do, but tried it just to see if it worked) and that still didn't work.
Any ideas on what I'm doing incorrectly? Thanks in advance for taking the time to look at this post.

So in the example below (I simplified it a little bit, but same principles apply)... The method below ends up looking for "objectOne" on "objectTwo" instead of on the "objectTwoController".
var objectTwoController: Em.Object.create({
objectOneBinding: 'App.objectOne',
objectTwoBinding: 'App.objectTwo',
_onSomething: function() {
var objectTwo = this.get('objectTwo');
objectTwo.bind('param2', Em.Binding.from('objectOne.param3'));
}.observes('something')
});
The problem is that you can't bind between two none relative objects. If you look in the "connect" method in ember you will see that it only takes one reference object (this) in which to observe both paths (this is true for 9.8.1 from your example and the ember-pre-1.0 release).
You have few options (that I can think of at least).
First: You can tell the objects about each other and in turn the relative paths will start working. This will actually give "objectTwo" an object to reference when binding paths.
....
objectTwo.set('objectOne', this.get('objectOne');
....
Second: You could add your own observer/computed property that will just keep the two in sync (but it is a little more verbose). You might be able to pull off something really slick but it maybe difficult. Even go so far as writing your own binding (like Transforms) to allow you to bind two non-related objects as long as you have paths to both.
_param3: function(){
this.setPath('objectTwo.param2', this.getPath('objectOne.param3');
}.observes('objectOne.param3')
You can make these dynamically and not need to pre-define them...
Third: Simply make them global paths; "App.objectOneController.content.param3" should work as your binding "_from" path (but not sure how much this helps you in your real application, because with larger applications I personally don't like everything global).
EDIT: When setting the full paths. Make sure you wait until end of the current cycle before fetching the value because bindings don't always update until everything is flushed. Meaning, your alert message needs to be wrapped in Ember.run.next or you will not see the change.

Why should y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML; be avoided?

Let's say that we have a DIV x on the page and we want to duplicate ("copy-paste") the contents of that DIV into another DIV y. We could do this like so:
y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML;
or with jQuery:
$(y).html( $(x).html() );
However, it appears that this method is not a good idea, and that it should be avoided.
(1) Why should this method be avoided?
(2) How should this be done instead?
Update:
For the sake of this question let's assume that there are no elements with ID's inside the DIV x.
(Sorry I forgot to cover this case in my original question.)
Conclusion:
I have posted my own answer to this question below (as I originally intended). Now, I also planed to accept my own answer :P, but lonesomeday's answer is so amazing that I have to accept it instead.

This method of "copying" HTML elements from one place to another is the result of a misapprehension of what a browser does. Browsers don't keep an HTML document in memory somewhere and repeatedly modify the HTML based on commands from JavaScript.
When a browser first loads a page, it parses the HTML document and turns it into a DOM structure. This is a relationship of objects following a W3C standard (well, mostly...). The original HTML is from then on completely redundant. The browser doesn't care what the original HTML structure was; its understanding of the web page is the DOM structure that was created from it. If your HTML markup was incorrect/invalid, it will be corrected in some way by the web browser; the DOM structure will not contain the invalid code in any way.
Basically, HTML should be treated as a way of serialising a DOM structure to be passed over the internet or stored in a file locally.
It should not, therefore, be used for modifying an existing web page. The DOM (Document Object Model) has a system for changing the content of a page. This is based on the relationship of nodes, not on the HTML serialisation. So when you add an li to a ul, you have these two options (assuming ul is the list element):
// option 1: innerHTML
ul.innerHTML += '<li>foobar</li>';
// option 2: DOM manipulation
var li = document.createElement('li');
li.appendChild(document.createTextNode('foobar'));
ul.appendChild(li);
Now, the first option looks a lot simpler, but this is only because the browser has abstracted a lot away for you: internally, the browser has to convert the element's children to a string, then append some content, then convert the string back to a DOM structure. The second option corresponds to the browser's native understanding of what's going on.
The second major consideration is to think about the limitations of HTML. When you think about a webpage, not everything relevant to the element can be serialised to HTML. For instance, event handlers bound with x.onclick = function(); or x.addEventListener(...) won't be replicated in innerHTML, so they won't be copied across. So the new elements in y won't have the event listeners. This probably isn't what you want.
So the way around this is to work with the native DOM methods:
for (var i = 0; i < x.childNodes.length; i++) {
y.appendChild(x.childNodes[i].cloneNode(true));
}
Reading the MDN documentation will probably help to understand this way of doing things:
appendChild
cloneNode
childNodes
Now the problem with this (as with option 2 in the code example above) is that it is very verbose, far longer than the innerHTML option would be. This is when you appreciate having a JavaScript library that does this kind of thing for you. For example, in jQuery:
$('#y').html($('#x').clone(true, true).contents());
This is a lot more explicit about what you want to happen. As well as having various performance benefits and preserving event handlers, for example, it also helps you to understand what your code is doing. This is good for your soul as a JavaScript programmer and makes bizarre errors significantly less likely!

You can duplicate IDs which need to be unique.
jQuery's clone method call like, $(element).clone(true); will clone data and event listeners, but ID's will still also be cloned. So to avoid duplicate IDs, don't use IDs for items that need to be cloned.

It should be avoided because then you lose any handlers that may have been on that
DOM element.
You can try to get around that by appending clones of the DOM elements instead of completely overwriting them.

First, let's define the task that has to be accomplished here:
All child nodes of DIV x have to be "copied" (together with all its descendants = deep copy) and "pasted" into the DIV y. If any of the descendants of x has one or more event handlers bound to it, we would presumably want those handlers to continue working on the copies (once they have been placed inside y).
Now, this is not a trivial task. Luckily, the jQuery library (and all the other popular libraries as well I assume) offers a convenient method to accomplish this task: .clone(). Using this method, the solution could be written like so:
$( x ).contents().clone( true ).appendTo( y );
The above solution is the answer to question (2). Now, let's tackle question (1):
This
y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML;
is not just a bad idea - it's an awful one. Let me explain...
The above statement can be broken down into two steps.
The expression x.innerHTML is evaluated,
That return value of that expression (which is a string) is assigned to y.innerHTML.
The nodes that we want to copy (the child nodes of x) are DOM nodes. They are objects that exist in the browser's memory. When evaluating x.innerHTML, the browser serializes (stringifies) those DOM nodes into a string (HTML source code string).
Now, if we needed such a string (to store it in a database, for instance), then this serialization would be understandable. However, we do not need such a string (at least not as an end-product).
In step 2, we are assigning this string to y.innerHTML. The browser evaluates this by parsing the string which results in a set of DOM nodes which are then inserted into DIV y (as child nodes).
So, to sum up:
Child nodes of x --> stringifying --> HTML source code string --> parsing --> Nodes (copies)
So, what's the problem with this approach? Well, DOM nodes may contain properties and functionality which cannot and therefore won't be serialized. The most important such functionality are event handlers that are bound to descendants of x - the copies of those elements won't have any event handlers bound to them. The handlers got lost in the process.
An interesting analogy can be made here:
Digital signal --> D/A conversion --> Analog signal --> A/D conversion --> Digital signal
As you probably know, the resulting digital signal is not an exact copy of the original digital signal - some information got lost in the process.
I hope you understand now why y.innerHTML = x.innerHTML should be avoided.

I wouldn't do it simply because you're asking the browser to re-parse HTML markup that has already been parsed.
I'd be more inclined to use the native cloneNode(true) to duplicate the existing DOM elements.
var node, i=0;
while( node = x.childNodes[ i++ ] ) {
y.appendChild( node.cloneNode( true ) );
}

Well it really depends. There is a possibility of creating duplicate elements with the same ID, which is never a good thing.
jQuery also has methods that can do this for you.

Using $.data() in jQuery to store flag on element

I am authoring a simple jQuery plugin that turns an input tag into a time-formatted element (on blur it will change 245p into 2:45 pm).
Since I do not want to apply the time format events to the same element twice, I need a way to detect that the specific element in the list provided has not already had the format applied.
This is the relevant part of the code:
var methods = {
init : function(sel) {
var $this = $(sel);
return $this.each(function(){
var data = $(this).data('time_formatted');
if (data) {
return;
} else {
$(this).data('time_formatted', true);
I have heard that using $(sel).data() in a plugin is not a good idea; instead, use $.data(). I don't know why, that's just what I've heard; honestly, I don't know what the difference is.
So my question is, is this the way to accomplish checking if a specific element has had the time formatter applied to it in a plugin?
If you care to see the plugin in it's current development state, see http://jsfiddle.net/userdude/xhXCR/.
Thanks!
Jared

Where have you heard that using .data() is not good? jQuery's plugin autoring page says:
Often times in plugin development, you may need to maintain state or check if your plugin has already been initialized on a given element. Using jQuery's data method is a great way to keep track of variables on a per element basis. However, rather than keeping track of a bunch of separate data calls with different names, it's best to use a single object literal to house all of your variables, and access that object by a single data namespace.
So it should be perfectly fine.

What jQuery annoyances should I be aware of as a Prototype user?

We're considering switching our site from Prototype to jQuery. Being all-too-familiar with Prototype, I'm well aware of the things about Prototype that I find limiting or annoying.
My question for jQuery users is: After working with jQuery for a while, what do you find frustrating? Are there things about jQuery that make you think about switching (back) to Prototype?

I think the only that gets me is that when I do a selection query for a single element I have to remember that it returns an array of elements even though I know there is only one. Normally, this doesn't make any difference unless you want to interact with the element directly instead of through jQuery methods.

Probably the only real issue I've ever ran into is $(this) scope problems. For example, if you're doing a nested for loop over elements and sub elements using the built in JQuery .each() function, what does $(this) refer to? In that case it refers to the inner-most scope, as it should be, but its not always expected.
The simple solution is to just cache $(this) to a variable before drilling further into a chain:
$("li").each(function() {
// cache this
var list_item = $(this);
// get all child a tags
list_item.find("a").each(function() {
// scope of this now relates to a tags
$(this).hide("slow");
});
});

My two pain points have been the bracket hell, can get very confusing
$('.myDiv').append($('<ul />').append($('<li />').text('content')));
My other common issue has to do with the use of JSON in jQuery, I always miss the last comma,
$('.myDiv').tabs({ option1:true, options2:false(, woops)});
Finally, I've been using jQuery for about 6 months now and I don't think I'll ever go back to prototypes. I absolutely love jQuery, and a lot of the tricks they use have helped me learn a lot. one cool trick that I like is using string literals for method calls, I never really did that too much with prototypes.
$('.myDiv')[(add ? 'add' : 'remove') + 'Class']('redText');

(The only thing I can think of is that this is the element instead of a jQuery object in $("...").each(function)-calls, as $(element) is more often used then just the element. And that extremly minor thing is just about it.
Example of the above (simplified and I know that there are other much better ways to do this, I just couldn't think of a better example now):
// Make all divs that has foo=bar pink.
$("div").each(function(){
if($(this).attr("foo") == "bar"){
$(this).css("background", "pink");
}
});
each is a function that takes a function as parameter, that function is called once for each matching element. In the function passed, this refers to the actual browser DOM-element, but I find that you often will want to use some jQuery function on each element, thus having to use $(this). If this had been set to what $(this) is, you'd get shorter code, and you could still access the DOM element object using this.get(0). Now I see the reason for things being as they are, namely that writing $(this) instead of this, is hardly that cumbersome, and in case you can do what you want to do with the DOM element the way it is is faster than the way it could have been, and the other way wouldn't be faster in the case you want $(this).)

I don't think there are any real gotchas, or even any lingering annoyances. The other answers here seem to confirm this - issues are caused simply by the slightly different API and different JavaScript coding style that jQuery encourages.
I started using Prototype a couple of years ago and found it a revelation. So powerful, so elegant. After a few months I tried out jQuery and discovered what power and elegance really are. I don't remember any annoyances. Now I am back working on a project using Prototype and it feels like a step back (to be fair, we're using Prototype 1.5.1).
If you reversed the question - "What Prototype annoyances should I be aware of as a jQuery user?" - you would get a lot more answers.

Nope. Nada. Nyet.

.each:
jQuery (you need Index, even if you're not using it):
$.each(collection, function(index, item) {
item.hide();
});
Prototype (you're usually using the item, so you can omit the index):
collection.each(function(item) {
item.hide();
});

This is really only an annoyance if you're doing a lot of DOM manipulation. PrototypeJs automatically adds its API to DOM Elements, so this works in prototypejs (jQuery of course doesn't do this):
var el = document.createElement("div");
el.addClassName("hello"); // addClassName is a prototypejs method implemented on the native HTMLElement
Even without running the native element through the $() function.
PS: Should note that this doesn't work in IE.