December 2011
19 posts
2 tags
HTML5 Web Dev Reading List →
A list of tons of resources. Some of these are sites I often link to; others are new to me. Nice list.
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A Little Fun →
Sent to me by my cousin. Love it!
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Exploring JavaScript's Logical OR Operator →
Comparisons and truthiness/falsiness are notoriously a little wonky in JavaScript, and I pretty much jump at any opportunity to learn a little more about them.
In other news, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good holiday weekend. A word of advice: try not to let expectations, your own or those of others, consume you. Try hard (and it is hard work, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise)...
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Polyglot Persistence (or, really, Database Thaw) →
This is a really good article on the rise of NoSQL, and the effects of transitioning. It also notes, as it should, that there are cases when the relational model is still the right one. This will hopefully serve as a reminder to me to pick my coworker’s brain on our new NoSQL architecture that he’s implementing for a specific section of our application.
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You Don't Know JavaScript revisited →
I thought I would revisit this, since I’ve written a lot of JavaScript this year and I still somehow feel confused by it. Despite the volume of it that I’ve dealt with, I’m still much more at ease server-side. Most of my server-side experience is in PHP, but I’ve never had any great difficulty trying something new, because the concepts are all basically the same, and I...
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The Developer's Guide to Conflict-Free JavaScript... →
If you do use Wordpress for anything, this is definitely worth knowing: specifically, that jQuery is in there but in no conflict mode - meaning of course that if you want to use jQuery in Wordpress, it is not aliased, and instead of $(), you need to explicitly call jQuery(). The rest of this is good info too, but I was really more hoping to help folks avoid tearing their hair out trying to figure...
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Polyglot Persistence →
The database edition. In the near future, the project I work on is going to have a mix of RDMS & NoSQL, non-relational solutions, which is pretty cool.
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Creating Sites Optimized for Google's Panda... →
An SEO post! I rarely deal with SEO any more because of the nature of my work, but it’s one of the most sought-after skills for anyone designing public sites for a business. This article has some good tips for bumping up your site in Google’s results. Two other things to remember: (1) good SEO has a lot in common with good accessibility practices, and (2) good SEO requires work and...
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The Last PHP PDO Library You Will Ever Need →
I really like this idea. Having used CakePHP for a while now, I sometimes like the built-in system, but more than a few times, I’ve found it difficult, restrictive, or just irritating to build a query that I could easily write by hand. Voila.
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Scaling Isomorphic JavaScript →
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The Guardian: How a Javascript upgrade brought... →
Another “there but for the grace of god” moment for all of us. Moral of the story: read the release notes!
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Useful Coding Tools and JavaScript Libraries For... →
I poked around with a few of these; some of them are fun or useful. It’s worth a look to see if anything pertains to your own work.
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Beyond jQuery: JavaScript Tools for the HTML5... →
All kinds of fun stuff.
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Demystifying jQuery 1.7's $.Callbacks →
Addy Osmani again.
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Terse JavaScript 101 - Part 1 →
Tons of good stuff in here.
1 tag
Truthy & Falsey →
Probably just as good as Truth, Equality and JavaScript; definitely a nice companion to it.
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jQuery and AJAX Error Detection and Handling →
A lot of this is stuff that I use literally every day, but the error code status bit was new to me & could prove very useful.
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So You Want to Write JavaScript for a Living →
This is a great article for both interviewers and interviewees about what skills are necessary for good JavaScript development work.
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Using HTML5's PageVisibility API →
This is pretty cool.
November 2011
18 posts
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Wanton Acts of Debuggery →
First of all, best title ever. Secondly, I learned real quick not to get cute with debug messages; it only comes back to bite you in the ass, sometimes instantaneously.
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Quiz - How Well Do You Know HTML5? →
About 2/3rds well, it turns out …
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10 Online HTML5 Tools for Designers →
almost makes me wish i had a shred of design skill.
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40 Addictive HTML5-Powered Games →
happy friday.
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Animatable →
Awesome CSS3 animations :) Happy Thanksgiving!
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Pusher: Real-Time Events for Apps →
Yes, it was a sponsored link, but still, it looks kinda cool.
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Coding Guidelines: Finding the Art in the Science →
More best practices stuff, but a little bit less amusing than the one I posted earlier.
I do love the title, though. I’ve been thinking lately about the two things I really love to do - cooking, and writing code. Cooking is perceived as an art and is actually way more of a science than people think; coding is the opposite - it’s perceived as a science and is actually way more of an...
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moment.js →
A lightweight javascript date library for parsing, manipulating, and formatting dates.
Having just had to write something that orders by date created, needs to convert MySQL timestamps to UNIX-type dates, compare them in PHP, spit the result back out, and make it pretty for display, this was kind of timely.
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web/null: /dev/null for the web →
i eat ur requests.
web/null is /dev/null for the Web. It silently agrees with and eats up any request being VERBd to it, and keeps statistics of it.
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HTML Parsing with JavaScript →
The chronicles & lessons learned from a successful attempt to build an HTML parser in JavaScript. Cool!
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Modern Web Application Architecture →
This post was meant to go up November 10, but apparently something happened with my queue. So, bonus link today!
The title of this is just a little misleading; what it actually provides is a nice list of some of the pros and cons of using a RESTful API in combination with an AJAX front end for your entire application; you use your own API, and you can choose to extend it to others. It’s a...
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Testling - Automated Cross-Browser JavaScript... →
Haven’t taken a close look, but if it takes some of the agony out of cross-browser JS testing, I’m all for it.
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tangle.js →
Very cool; playing with the examples is really fun. I’ll keep this in my back pocket, because someday I bet it will be exactly what I want.
Tangle is a JavaScript library for creating reactive documents. Your readers can interactively explore possibilities, play with parameters, and see the document update immediately. Tangle is super-simple and easy to learn.
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Web Typography 101 →
Or, “Fonts for Dummies”. Best to start the week off with something not too strenuous.
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Lessons from a JavaScript Code Review →
This article provides a nice list of what to address in a code review, where to get folks to review your code (if you don’t have coworkers nitpicking over your shoulder extreme-coding-style the way I do), and some “case studies”.
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The Number One Trait of a Great Developer →
Spoiler: it’s judgement. I definitely agree with the assessment here; there’s a temptation to go with whatever is new and shiny, or most scalable, or most elegant … but the fact is, that’s not always right for the situation.
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How One Missing var Ruined Our Launch →
Well, it looks like I forgot how long my queue was and accidentally had quite a break there! Also I’ve been working like a crazy person. Anyway, today we have a great article sent along by my cousin, which made me laugh and cringe at the same time.
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Writing JavaScript for Size →
October 2011
21 posts
3 tags
Cucumber-JS →
Cucumber for JavaScript. Not sure what state of doneness it’s in at the moment.
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What Is Wrong about 17259 Lines of Code →
Hating On Dart: Part 2.
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Dart: Or, Why JavaScript Has Already Won →
Hating On Dart: Part 1
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The First Thing That Should Be Shown in... →
Done using the D3 library. Amazing.
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Design Patterns in JavaScript by Example →
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Beautiful JS →
I especially like the loops.
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IT Inferno: The Nine Circles of IT Hell →
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JSON Parser Online →
We all know we need it.
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How to Write Unmaintainable Code →
Three words: LEARN TO SPELL.
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Ten Things I Hate about Object-Oriented... →
Well, not me - this guy.
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Staying Passionate and Motivated as a Web Designer →
Applies to developers too, I promise ;)
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The Coding Interview →
A great outline of good coding practices.
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The Agile Upside of XML →
After trashing XML in favor of JSON during a recent rant at work, I felt the need to provide, ahem, balanced coverage, and to acknowledge that both have their uses. XML is really a necessity for communicating structured data with lots of metadata, as much as I hate to admit it.