Lots of interesting stuff this week. I apologize for the lateness in getting this weekly update done but I am in Sofia, Bulgaria this week presenting at the DevReach conference. Enjoy!
Tutorials
Ryan Morr offers an alternative to JavaScript’s Try/Catch that offers better performance and is customizable.
Rethinking JavaScript’s Try/Catch
Derick Bailey explores how to use the File API and JavaScript to extract metadata from an audio file.
Getting Audio File Information With HTML’s File API And Audio Element
Chrome Canary has landed support for the <dialog> element behind a flag which can be used for popups in a web page.
<dialog> element: Modals made easy
Dr. Axel Rauschmayer shares a brief introduction to Unicode and how it is handled in JavaScript.
Unicode and JavaScript
Ray Messina shows how to mimic jQuery’s .has() method in CSS to automatically style a navigation element with children.
Targeting Menu Elements with Submenus in a Navigation Bar
Kirupa Chinnathambi shares and explains a JavaScript function to check if a user is using a touch enabled device.
Check If You Are On a Touch Enabled Device
Dr. Axel Rauchmayer explains the window object in JavaScript as well as how and why you might use it.
Tips for using window in JavaScript
Libraries and Frameworks
Eric Terpstra walks through how to build a multiplayer word game using Node.js and Socket.IO.
Building Multiplayer Games with Node.js and Socket.IO
Sean Voisen explains reactive programming concepts, how they’re beneficial and how they’re implemented in JavaScript using Bacon.js.
Functional Reactive Programming in JavaScript
Jesse Warden created a combined Node, Bower, Grunt cheat sheet as a beginner’s reference.
Node, Bower, Grunt n00b Cheat Sheet
Derick Bailey says that inconsistency across JavaScript Promise library API’s makes life difficult for users.
Consistency Problems With APIs In JavaScript Promise Libraries
Mobile
Raymond Camden created a great reference for getting started with PhoneGap in his Cheat Sheet for DZone.
PhoneGap Cheat Sheet from DZone Refcardz
New and Updated Libraries and Frameworks
Flying Focus by Nikita Vasilyev uses JavaScript to make it clear where the tab focus has moved using an animation.
Focus transition
Brackets Sprint 31 includes live previewing of HTML Â (in addition to the existing live previews of CSS).
brackets
JSModeler is a JavaScript framework for creating and visualizing 3D models.
JSModeler
AbsurdJS let’s you write and compile your CSS code using JavaScript.
Write Your CSS with JavaScript
dna.js is a JavaScript templating engine to dynamically build DOM elements from data supplied by JSON objects.
dna.js Template Cloner
Etc.
Joan Lafferty walks through the steps to get started using Edge Reflow to play with CSS regions in Chrome.
Using Edge Reflow to play with CSS regions
Latest version of Edge Code has code completion for all CSS Region properties including flow-into and flow-from.
Edge Code Supports CSS Regions
CSS Regions now works in Safari on iOS7 and Edge Reflow is the first design tool to support CSS Regions.
The future of responsive layouts is here!
Reflow Cleaner is an experimental Brackets plugin by Terrence Ryan to clean up the generated HTML and CSS from Edge Reflow.
Reflow Cleaner
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.