[Cosmo-dev] Programmatic widgets and page reflow

[Matthew Eernisse]

Just a quick note -- if you do programmatic instantation of widgets 
without giving the widget parser a DOM node to hang it on, like so:

var w = dojo.widget.createWidget("foo:Minimal", { thisProp: 'bar' });

The parser just sticks it on document.body, which (naturally enough) 
results in the rendering engine reflowing the page.

In the cal UI, this has the side-effect of causing the scrolling 
timed-events canvas to reset scrollTop, making it to jump from 8am 
(where we deliberately set it to) to back to the top -- 12am.

This just means if you don't actually intend to append the widget to the 
document body, you may be better off either telling it as part of the 
constructor where you actually do want it to go:

var w = dojo.widget.createWidget("foo:Minimal", { thisProp: 'bar' }, 
thingie.thisAttachPoint, 'last');

Or, alternatively you can use a throwaway element that's not actually on 
the doc:

var s = document.createElement('span');
var w = dojo.widget.createWidget("foo:Minimal", { thisProp: 'bar' }, s, 
'last');
s.removeChild(w.domNode);
// Later on, stick your widget DOM somewhere
someOtherNode.appendChild(w.domNode);

I'd be interested to know if there are better ways to deal with this.


Matthew