A lot going on this past week, especially in the new and updated libraries. Some major new releases include updates to jQuery, Foundation, Kendo and Brackets as well as interesting new releases such as DPLOY, Ionic and DynoSRC.
Tutorials
Some tips for writing better and more performant jQuery and JavaScript code from Mathew Carella.
Writing Better jQuery Code
Get the details and some tips and tricks for using JavaScript’s native array functions from Nicolas Bevacqua.
Fun with JavaScript Native Array Functions
Tim Severien shares a bunch of helpful CSS alignment and sizing snippets.
CSS Alignment and Sizing Snippets
How to apply filters across various browsers, including the level of support, using CSS and SVG by Peter Gasston.
Cross-browser filters with CSS and SVG
Louis Lazaris on a workaround for animating the CSS display property whereby a faded element doesn’t take up space.
Animating from “display: block” to “display: none”
Kirupa Chinnathambi explains how to use parseInt, parseFloat and other JavaScript techniques to go from a strings to numbers.
Going from a String to a Number
Understand how ECMAScript 6 modules will be supported in future browsers using the <module> tag from Dr. Axel Rauschmayer.
ECMAScript 6 modules in future browsers
A great guide by Sara Soueidan covering various techniques for making text responsive.
Techniques for Responsive Typography
Dr. Axel Rauschmayer explains how to initialize arrays with a specified length and pre-filled values.
Initializing an array with values
Eric Terpstra shares the code for vintage-looking console text game built with HTML and JavaScript.
HTML Game: Are You Smarter Than Jen & Ian
Libraries and Frameworks
How to use Browserify and npm to manage front-end JavaScript dependencies by Jack Franklin.
Using Browserify with npm modules
David Catuhe shows a detailed 3D scene created with WebGL and Babylon.js, discussing how it performs across browsers.
Testing the Limits of WebGL: The Babylon.js Train Demo
Azat Mardanov explains fat arrows (=>) in CoffeeScript.
Understanding Fat Arrows (=>) in CoffeeScript
Alejandro Hernandez discusses how to build an application using JavaScript end-to-end with Node.js and MongoDB.
An Introduction To Full-Stack JavaScript
Emanuele Feronato shares an example of using Jay Salvat’s jQuery face detection plugin.
jQuery face detection plugin
Maciej Sopyło shows how to prepare a scene, add objects, add lights and animate things using WebGL with three.js.
WebGL With Three.js: Basics
New and Updated Libraries and Frameworks
Scut is a open-source Sass utility with reusable mixins, placeholders, functions.
Introducing Scut, a new Sass utility library
grunt-ec2 includes Grunt tasks for creating, terminating and deploying Node applications to AWS EC2 instances.
grunt-ec2
In the latest release of Kendo, all of the widgets have been made responsive.
What’s New in Kendo UI Q3 2013?
Brackets Sprint 34 include a new installation process, as well as extension manager and file system improvements.
Brackets Sprint 34 Build
DPLOY is an FTP/SFTP tool built in Node.js that uploads the latest changes by comparing your server and Git repo.
DPLOY
jQuery 1.11.0/2.1.0 Beta 2 now uses AMD internally, replacing their old modular build system.
jQuery 1.11.0/2.1.0 Beta 2 Released
DynoSRC loads JavaScript files inline in your HTML response, then stores them in localStorage and sends only differential updates on subsequent requests.
DynoSRC
Zurb has released version 5 of it’s front-end, responsive framework.
Foundation
Ionic is a front-end framework for developing hybrid mobile apps in HTML5 currently in an alpha release.
Ionic
Etc.
Addy Osmani shares keyboard shortcuts to increment and decrement CSS values in Chrome DevTools using the cursor.
DevTools: Incrementing CSS values under-the-cursor
Daniel Isaksson discusses how The Hobbit Experience was built using WebGL and Web Audio for mobile devices.
The Hobbit Experience: Bringing Middle-Earth to Life
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.