On the credibility of JavaScript
Considering the four factors free availability, elegance, usefulness and tools, JavaScript is doing remarkably well. It certainly is not perfect, but right now (as opposed to in some hypothetical future), it is hard to beat. Thus, JavaScript can be described similarly to how Churchill described democracy: the worst programming language except for all the others. I see JavaScript’s glass as half full. You get something versatile, but have to put up with a few quirks. In the future, there will be fewer quirks. And its elegance, its usefulness and the number of its tools will all increase.A great post arguing for the credibility of JavaScript.
— Alex Rauschma
Author In ES6, Transpile To ES5 As A Build-step: A Workflow For Grunt
Today I used a Grunt task called grunt-traceur by Aaron Frost to author code in ES6 (maximally minimal classes, modules, rest params, spread operators) and transpile back to ES5 as a build-step. It felt fantastic and the final product now runs in all modern browsers.
—Addy Osmani
Check out the tutorial: Author In ES6, Transpile To ES5 As A Build-step: A Workflow For Grunt
CSS Generated Content And Counters
What can you do with CSS generated content and counters?
Find out with this article by Gabriele Romanato: How To Benefit From CSS Generated Content And Counters
Demystifying Regular Expressions
From Fluent 2012 Quick, what does this do: /(\/\*?\/)|\/\/.*?(\r?\n|$)/g? If you’re like many developers, you just averted your eyes…
— Lea Verou
A solid whirlwind introduction to the world of regular expressions replete with interactive challenges to complete.
Watch Best of Fluent 2012: /Reg(exp){2}lained/: Demystifying Regular Expressions
Making accessible icon buttons
Do you know the best way to make a <button> that just has an icon accessible?
— @pamelafox
Worth reading to see how different screen readers process markup.
IRC is Back: Here’s Your Starter Guide
How of many of you remember Compuserve? What about Prodigy? I’m asking because, back in the good ‘ole days, they were popular services that allowed you to communicate with other people from all over the world.
— Rey Bango
This article includes a nice overview of the available networks, some of the more interesting channels and available IRC clients.
MIHTool, the iOS web debugger
If you are a web developer, the strangely named MIHTool (MIH for “make it happen”) will make you happy. If you mostly work on mobile web applications, this will change your life. It’s the missing developer tool you wanted for so long, and Apple didn’t give you.
— Paul Bakaus
I finally got around to testing MIHTool and it is wonderfully simple to get started. Download the iphone/ipad app, open it up, go to the url you want to debug, the app will give you a url to visit from Chrome on the desktop — visit it and test to your heart’s content with Developer Tools.
Read more about MIHTool.
On Developing new metrics for measuring browser speed and user perception.
There’s an elephant in the room that we’ve been ignoring for years:
window.onload is not the best metric for measuring website speed
We haven’t actually been “ignoring” this issue. We’ve acknowledged it, but we haven’t coordinated our efforts to come up with a better replacement. Let’s do that now.
— Steve Souders
Firefox OS: Making your HTML5 efforts worthwhile
What happened? When did we give up on the idea of nice and responsive web products that use what is available to them? It can not be about the tools we have. Browsers have amazing developer tools built into them these days – all of them, really. Using these tools we have very fine-grained control over what happens in a browser.
— Christian Heilmann
An interesting look at Firefox OS, why it exists and its app ecosystem.
Making your HTML5 efforts worthwhile – notes of the #sotb3 talk
Optimizing website performance: One less JPG
People often build beautiful sites with multiple easy-to-use JavaScript libraries. Then, when it comes to addressing frontend performance, suddenly those libraries are an enormous download that the users are forced to bear.
— Chris Ruppel
A well-founded argument (that i have found true in my own experience) with supporting data that images not Javascript or CSS will make the quickest impact on site performance.
