This week’s update is brought to you by the words “chaos” and “over-scheduling.” Yes, that’s what I have done to myself. Nonetheless, there’s lots of great stuff to read. My highlights would include Raymond Camden’s article on how to convert your site to static without sacrificing functionality and Hyperglot which is a tool for building languages or DSL’s.
Tutorials
How to convert your dynamic site to static but keep important dynamic elements like comments, calendars and more by Raymond Camden.
Moving to Static and Keeping Your Toys
Steven Bradley explains the inner workings of z-index and understanding the stacking contexts.
What You May Not Know About the Z-Index Property
Check out some creative ideas for progress buttons by Mary Lou built with HTML and CSS.
Progress Button Styles
Frederik Dohr walks through converting a simple widget into a modular JavaScript component.
Developing Modular JavaScript Components
Keith Peters starts an interesting new video series on coding math covering math concepts with examples using JavaScript.
Announcing Coding Math Video Series
Learn how to use the User Timing API to accurately measure the performance of JavaScript code by Aurelio De Rosa.
Discovering the User Timing API
Darius Kazemi explains what uniforms are, how to use them in WebGL and how to count when you are using too many.
Counting Uniforms in WebGL
Doug Avery shows how to create a film grain effect for images in pure CSS.
Creating a Film Grain Effect with CSS3
A good overview of JavaScript objects for beginner JavaScript developers by Kirupa Chinnathambi.
A Deeper Look at Objects in JavaScript
Chris Coyier shows how to make the menu icon the actual menu, just smaller.
Line Menu Icon… That Is A Menu
Libraries and Frameworks
What are the most exciting features in the new Foundation 5? Zing Design shares their top 5 and why they’re important.
5 Most Exciting Features of Foundation 5
Krasimir Tsonev explains what he didn’t like about LESS and Sass and why he wrote his own preprocessor, AbsurdJS.
AbsurdJS or Why I Wrote My Own CSS Preprocessor
Ben Nadel explains the relatively recent finish() method in jQuery animations versus classic stop() method.
$.stop() vs. $.finish() In jQuery Animations
Chris Coyier walks through using Grunt for design tasks like concatenating/compressing, optimizing images and more.
Grunt for People Who Think Things Like Grunt are Weird and Hard
Mike Pennisi walks through how to properly write unit tests using AMD modules in RequireJS.
Effective Unit Testing with AMD
Ariya Hidayat shows how combining Mocha with Istanbul and Karma you can track code coverage of the application code when running unit tests.
Code Coverage of Mocha Tests using Istanbul and Karma
Addy Osmani shows how to build applications using MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node (aka MEAN) and Yeoman.
Full-Stack JavaScript With MEAN And Yeoman
Mobile
Jake Archibald explains that the 300 millisecond delay on Android has been removed as of Chrome 32.
300ms tap delay, gone away
New and Updated Libraries and Frameworks
Voix JS is a JavaScript library for adding voice commands to sites, apps or games. Currently Chrome only.
Voix JS Component
Knwl.js can search text for dates, times, emails, phone numbers, links and emotion, or even check if it’s spam.
Knwl.js
Ever thought about writing your own programming language or DSL? Hyperglot, built on Node, is designed for just that.
Hyperglot – A Language Experimentation Platform
Feathers helps create RESTful API’s with real-time events using Express and Socket.io.
Feathers – Let your applications fly!
LMD (Lazy Module Declaration) is a JavaScript module assembler for building web applications.
LMD: Lazy Module Declaration
Etc.
Domain Swap is a Chrome Extension that lets you change the domain of the active tab while keeping the path the same.
Domain Swap: A Google Chrome Extension
I discuss Google’s recent Chrome Apps announcements including Mac support and upcoming iOS/Android support with Cordova.
Google Announces Chrome Apps Improved Offline Capabilities & Mac Support
Liveweave is another HTML, CSS and JavaScript playground with code hinting for all three plus jQuery.
Liveweave – HTML5, CSS3 & JavaScript playground for web designers & developers
Part one of an overview of mobile remote debugging tools covering iOS and Chrome remote debugging by Raymond Camden.
An Overview of Mobile Debugging Techniques – Part One
Canalyzer, a new Brackets extension by Raymond Camden, attempts to parse your project directory for possible compatibility issues.
New Brackets Extension – Canalyzer!
Brian Rinaldi is the founder of Flippin’ Awesome. Brian works as the Developer Content Manager at Telerik (though this site is not affiliated with his employer) focused on ensuring that the Developer Relations team creates top notch content for the web development community. Previously, Brian focused on publishing HTML, CSS and JavaScript developer content for the Adobe Developer Connection at Adobe.
Brian has published in a variety of technical publications over the years, has presented at numerous conferences and events and has served as a technical editor on a number of books.
You can read Brian’s blog archive with 9+ years of content at remotesynthesis.com (he still posts, infrequently). You can find a full list of Brian’s past publications and presentations. Follow Brian on Twitter @remotesynth.