Trying to minimize in-page Javascript

An overstatement, but a funny one. When everything on the web was new, we put all our JS code into the page itself, because there wasn't much other choice. We put our triggers into our tags and in script blocks at the top of the page, as we did with our CSS in style blocks.

Eventually, we decided that this is bad. In part, consistency across several pages requires each page to have access, so we pulled our style into CSS files and our code into JS files, and it was good.

And then came tablesorter.

In my lab, I deal with data a lot, and I create many web pages where the data is put in tabular form. This is the use of tables that Zeldman wouldn't yell at me about. We use tablesorter to allow us to do cool things with the tables, and if we were doing it vanilla, we could just make tablestarter.js that reads something like $(function() { $('.sorted').tablesorter() } ), but instead, we parse dates into sortable form and set widget options and all sorts of stuff, which isn't necessarily going to transfer between tables. So, I have a script block that's ever-growing, mostly with config. I've set up a tablesorter_tools library that'll allow me to start pulling code out of the pages, but the config? I will have to find a better solution.