[throwaway1979]

Thx for the kind words of encouragement. There is something elegant about angular and I'm going to keep slogging on. I think you're spot on about mechanisms .. I don't grok how angular does its magic and I think that is a big problem for me. Any suggestion on how one goes about learning Angular internals sans looking at the source code?

I used Angular for two hackathons so far and didn't keep track of what didn't work. It was just a matter of ... let me try something a different way ... and poof ... it worked. Not very scientific I'm afraid.

[grogs]

Install Batarang for debugging scope issues. Don't be afraid of looking at the source, it's a great way to learn. Write some directives and then look at the ones provided by angular - and realise they're not cryptic.