tag : how to

Introduction to Backbone.js Part 4: Collections – Video Tutorial

Part 4: Backbone.js Collections Video Tutorial is here now. We’ve already discussed models, views, and routers in Backbone.js so far, but now we’re on to collections. Collections are pretty much exactly what their name implies: collections of models. Many times, data is displayed in lists, not just singular items. This is where collections come in - to keep every model in order and synchronized with the database on the back end.

Introduction to Backbone.js Part 3: Routers – Video Tutorial

We’re on to part 3 in the Backbone.js video tutorials series. This week we feature another important piece of the Backbone puzzle: Routers. You could conceivably create your JavaScript apps without Routers, but the ingenious technique behind routers allows your users to bookmark the app at a particular state or even use the back and forward buttons to traverse through the history of your applications state. Watch the video to learn more!

Introduction to Backbone.js Part 2: Views - Video Tutorial

Last week you saw a video tutorial on using Models in Backbone.js. This week we’ve moved right along to part 2: learning about Views in Backbone.js. As usual, Backbone.js has made things super simple, yet you get a lot for how little code you write. You’ll see how to attach events (super easy) and utilize models (also super easy) to give your views some data to work with.

Introduction to Backbone.js Part 1: Models - Video Tutorial

If you’ve read my last post or have just been keeping up with the JavaScript world at all, you’ve probably heard about Backbone.js. Well, this is the beginning of a tutorial series for Backbone.js and with this new series also comes a new media type: video! Today’s video tutorial teaches you how to get started using the M from MVC: the model. It’s pretty simple, yet pretty awesome and powerful.

Give Your Apps a Backbone(.js)

As the internet gets smarter and smarter and JavaScript starts piling up on web pages, we need to learn to organize our code. The days of filling the global namespace with all the functions we can think of are long over and have become far too difficult to maintain. Along with many other design patterns, the MVC (model, view, controller) pattern can bring order to the chaotic spaghetti of your JavaScript code. Right now, the de facto JavaScript MVC framework library is Backbone.js.

5 Tips to Make Your jQuery Plugins Awesome

jQuery plugins are popping up all over the place and just about everyone is trying to get in on the action. What determines whether a plugin is good or bad for you is largely up to your opinion and your requirements, but there are few things that you can do when writing your plugins to guarantee at least a bit of quality and standardization in your plugins that everyone who looks at your plugin code will be thankful for.

How to Build a Custom Carousel With jQuery and Roundabout

Sliders and Carousels are one of the coolest ways to display information on websites. They can contain tons of information in a smaller area, and the animation of automatic sliding and the large, beautiful images that are usually included draw the user’s attention. Well, I’ll show you how to set up an awesome carousel with jQuery and the Roundabout plugin.

1024 Bytes of JavaScript Power

Once again, JavaScript programmers all over the world are being called to show off their skills in a competition. What is the most amazing thing you can program in JavaScript? Here’s the catch, though: you can only use 1 kilobyte of JavaScript code.

3 Simple Things to Make Your jQuery Code Awesome

jQuery is one of the most popular (if not the most) JavaScript libraries in existence and a great number of people use it to do some amazing things. Personally, jQuery is what got me excited for learning JavaScript. The problem is that a lot of programmers don’t understand that with all that power massive amounts of CPU cycles are used. As much as jQuery engineers try to optimize jQuery, they are always limited in how fast they can make it go. There are a few things that you, as a user of jQuery, can do to make your jQuery code faster.

JavaScript Cookies: Yummy

Most of the time cookies are handled by the server using languages like PHP or Ruby, but there are times when using JavaScript to handle the cookies is the best option. Cookies are a strange beast in JavaScript and many developers don’t know how to use them. That’s all about to change!