Late window.onload, defer, DOMContentLoaded and multiple source files

I was cheered to see that this guy claims to have solved the problem
with onload only firing very late:

http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2005/09/busted/


[Before anybody suggests it, I'm aware of HTCs, but it's not always
possible to use them.]

However, "ash" comments on that page:

> The 'defer' attribute is a tricky little beast. Beware of
> dependencies between scripts when using the 'defer'
> attribute. i.e. if the 'onload' script in file2.js depends on
> functions defined in file1.js, you should avoid adding a 'defer'
> attribute to the script tag for file1.js.
>
> The problems caused are infrequent, but are easily summarized by
> saying you cannot guarantee functions will be available from a
> deferred script until after 'onload' fires. Which is what you were
> using 'defer' for in the first place.
>
> If everything's in one big 'defer' script, you should be fine
> though.
[...]

So, it's not possible to keep separate "behaviours" in separate
scripts? Different stuff like tab switching, tree view
expansion/contraction, etc. plus application-specific code, must all
be lumped together into on huge JS file? (OK, only the code actually
used by initialisation, but I can't immediately see how that makes
things much less painful for me.) Did I understand that right?

Somebody also seemed to suggest that this technique breaks
"registering" onload callbacks
(eg. http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/05/26/addLoadEvent), but I
haven't tried to work that one through yet.

If I do understand that right, I wonder about another approach.
Somebody else on that page suggested a timer combined with a "dummy"
element at the bottom of each page. You use a timer to poll, and when
the dummy element turns up in the DOM, that's when you do your
initialisation. Does anybody here have links to discussion /
implementation(s) of that idea?

Thanks in advance for any help,


John
.

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