Development with MKWS consists primarily of defining new types of widgets. These can interact with the core functionality is several defined ways. You cleare a new widget ttpe this 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
will be widgets of this type. The function promotes a bare widget object (passed 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. Widgets have *no* behaviours that they have to provide: you can make a doesn't-do-anything-at-all widget if you like: 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 appends the logged message to its node, as follows: mkws.registerWidgetType('Log', function() { var that = this; this.team.queue("log").subscribe(function(teamName, timestamp, message) { $(that.node).append(teamName + ": " + timestamp + message + "
"); }); }); This simple widget illustrates several important points: * The base widget object (`this') has several baked-in properties and methods that are available to individual widgets. These include this.team (the team that this widget is a part of) and this.node (the DOM element of the widget). * The team object (`this.team') also has baked-in properties and methods. These include the queue function, which takes an event-name as its argument. It's possible to subscribe 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.