There's a module for that! Drupal architecture and module development

One of the most enjoyable aspects of maintaining Sheetnode is getting to practice more JavaScript. Douglas Crockford called it the World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language and that's certainly how it's been for me until I decided to put a concerted effort in finding out more about it.

Sheetnode's underlying spreadsheet engine, SocialCalc, is entirely client-side, JavaScript-based.

One of my tenacious ideas is to create a TV-like experience using Web video. In spite of great players such as Boxee, I still feel there's more that can be done.

For one, my ideal player should be Web-based, not a desktop application. That's why I liked YouTube XL and like YouTube Leanback even more.

Secondly, the player should present a simple UI that allows the viewer to surf the enormous amount of existing Web video with minimal interaction. The UI should favour discovery over explicit search.

I'm no fan of Flash. Even the name annoys me :-) But I feel that recreating its capabilities using the trio HTML/CSS/JavaScript (isn't there an acronym for these 3 interrelated technologies?) is often non-trivial.

A case in point: I recently added to Sheetnode the feature of editing the spreadsheet fullscreen. While every Flash component has a fullscreen option, I couldn't even find a jQuery component that implements this functionality.