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Development with MKWS consists primarily of defining new types of
-widgets. These can interact with the core functionality is several
-defined ways.
+widgets. This is done using exactly the same API as the the widgets
+that come as part of the set: they have no privileged access.
You create a new widget type by calling the `mkws.registerWidgetType`
function, passing in the widget name and a function. The name is used
to recognise HTML elements as being widgets of this type -- for
-example, if you register a `Foo` widget, elements like
-`<div class="mkwsFoo">` will be widgets of this type.
+example, if you register a `foo` widget, elements like
+`<div class="mkws-foo">` will become widgets of this type.
-The function promotes a bare widget object (passed as `this`) into a
+The function promotes a bare widget object (which is created by the
+core widget code and passed in as `this`) into a
widget of the appropriate type. MKWS doesn't use classes or explicit
prototypes: it just makes objects that have the necessary
behaviours. There are _no_ behaviours that Widgets are obliged to
provide: you can make a doesn't-do-anything-at-all widget if you like:
- mkws.registerWidgetType('Sluggard', function() {});
+ mkws.registerWidgetType('sluggard', function() {});
More commonly, widgets will subscribe to one or more events, so that
they're notified when something interesting happens. For example, the
-`Log` widget asks to be notified when a `log` event happens, and
+`log` widget asks to be notified when a `log` event happens, and
appends the logged message to its node, as follows:
- mkws.registerWidgetType('Log', function() {
+ mkws.registerWidgetType('log', function() {
var that = this;
this.team.queue("log").subscribe(function(teamName, timestamp, message) {
* You can add functionality to a widget by subscribing it to an
event's queue using `this.team.queue("EVENT").subscribe`. The
argument is a function which is called whenever the event is
- published. The arguments to the function are different for different
- events.
+ published. The arguments to the event-callback function are
+ different for different events.
* As with so much JavaScript programming, the value of the special
- variable `this` is lost inside the `subscribez` callback function,
+ variable `this` is lost inside the `subscribe` callback function,
so it must be saved if it's to be used inside that callback
(typically as a local variable named `that`).