While working on a project, I wanted to test whether a variable was undefined in Javascript. Because Firebug displayed ‘undefined’ in the console, I assumed that I could treat it as a string.

if (variable == 'undefined') {
// do something
}

Now I knew that this wouldn’t work, but I tried it anyway. ‘undefined’ an object, not a string, so I could not treat it as a string.

After a minute of searching, I found the undefined solution:

if (typeof(variable) == 'undefined') {
// do something
}

Using the typeof operator, Javascript is able to determine whether a variable/object is ‘undefined’.

For some reason that I still have not been able to determine, I can no longer open Aptana Studio on my Ubuntu box. The splash screen displays, then nothing. Aptana closes. No error. No nothing. I think it has something to do with the JRE and/or XULRunner versions. Not sure. I used it one day, but couldn’t use it the next.

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I was trying to find the version of XULRunner on my Ubuntu box.

sudo apt-cache showpkg xulrunner | less

This command will give you version and other relevant information about a package installed on Ubuntu.

I recently had to update my imGoogleMaps JQuery Plugin due to problems that arose from the Geocode request rate limitations. As I researched the problem, I delved even more into the Google Maps API. Although this is a minor release, I decided to add custom marker icons to this version. Now you should be able to easily add custom markers to your Google Maps without having to worry about creating the underlying Google Maps API code – JQuery and the imGoogleMaps plugin helps you create a customized map in the fraction of the time. I also added the ability to display a phone number and a description for each address in the infoWindow.

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While working on the imGoogleMaps upgrade, I realized that I had to add a progress bar. Rather than creating the progress bar functionality in imGoogleMaps, I decided to create a separate JQuery plugin – imProgressBar. It was simple to develop and easy to use – and I even took the time to create over 20 bar graphics.

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