A few days ago I was speaking with Ben Nadel and Rey Bango about a problem I had with jQuery Selectors. I've only recently become a bit comfortable with them, but they can still be a bit confusing to use. I wondered if there was a way to create a test script. Currently I'll write my selector and do hide() (for those of you who don't use jQuery, you can probably guess that will hide the matched items) or apply a class that adds a border. I'll do a bunch of "edit/save/alt-tab/reload" tests which isn't always fun.

With that in mind, I built a simple testing application with jQuery and AIR. When it launches, you are presented with a simple UI:

You can then enter some code:

and switch to the render tab:

Now comes the fun part. You can type a selector value in the form above. As you do, jQuery will attempt to find, and match, the items in your page.

For example, I knew I could match li:first, but wasn't sure about li:last. Yep, it works:

You can install it here - and hopefully this badge thing will work.

Please upgrade your Flash Player This is the content that would be shown if the user does not have Flash Player 6.0.65 or higher installed.

(The badge isn't working on my blog preview. Folks, if you read this entry immediately after I post it, give me a few if the badge is broken. FYI - badge is definitely wonkey. Use the download link below. Update 7:39PM - badge works now.)

I used Aptana's AIR support plugin. It is nice, but has a few issues. I was never able to get it to run the AIR application. It wouldn't error - it just refused to do anything. I used the command line so it wasn't too bad. It did do a real nice job of laying down the files for a new project. I really appreciate that. It also handled creating the certs/.air file nicely as well.

I'm planning another modification to this soon, based on a suggestion Ben had. I'd also like to allow people to change the 'highlight' CSS in case a red border doesn't make sense.

Shoot, I don't know if this is useful or not, but, enjoy. :)

p.s. Download the app using the link below. It is a zipped version of the air file. The badge is just not working. Maybe I need to bug the Aptana folks more. :)

Download attached file.