The day everyone has long been waiting for has finally arrived. I’ve just started the first part of a series of posts walking through how to build an actual application using the Backbone.js JavaScript MVC framework. With this first piece of the puzzle I cover the structure of the application and get you started with some HTML plus the model and collection JavaScript code. Let’s take a look!
Does anyone know any good FREE screencast recording software? I’ve been using Camstudio for a while and with my first 5 tutorials it seemed great. Now it randomly decides to hate me and flash black screens in the middle of recording. I’ve finally gotten to the point of starting the Backbone App video tutorial series but I can’t get the recording to work right, so it’s delayed until I can find something that works. If I can’t find something within 24 hours, you’ll receive written tutorial for something else instead until I can find a solution.
Keeping a blog maintained solo, while creating useful projects and making updates to the design of the site, can be quite the stressful for a husband and father. I’m having a hard time keeping up the pace. I started this blog because I love JavaScript and I wanted to help other JavaScripters keep up with the times and learn, but now I need some help fulfilling that dream. If you know anything about JavaScript and can write relatively well, I’d like to hear from you.
We’ve all heard time and time again that when you’re trying to determine the JavaScript capabilities of a browser you should avoid user agent string parsing like a horrible plague and instead put your trust in a little thing called feature detection. But why should we? What’s so bad about relying on user agent strings? Also, how do I even use feature detection anyway? Read on and you’ll find the answer to all of these questions.
We’ve all heard of Templating, heck I’ve written about templating. Templating is a great way to write HTML that is designed to be manipulated and inserted into a document via JavaScript, but it has a very annoying caveat: it’s a huge pain to make templates external. They pretty much have to be inline, which doesn’t allow you to maintain them separately. That’s all about to change.
As JavaScript moves further and further away from the playground programming language that it used to be, and is used more and more as the core for large-scale applications, managing the code starts to become extremely difficult. Splitting the code into multiple files helps with that, though it also adds more complexity in a different way. One way to fight this new complexity is with dependency management libraries, but which one is right for you?
It’s taken too long, but it’s finally completed. The project page for JZ Parse URL is up with full documentation. You can also find it listed on the projects page. Along with this new project comes a few minor changes to the way the project pages are done: files will no longer be directly downloadable from the site, but instead everything is done on GitHub. Also, I’ve decided to make the documentation in the JavaScript files more minimal and instead just link to the project pages. This update will happen soon and will not bring a new version number.
Everyone has their own style when coding. For some people, the style they use might be so inconsistent that it looks like they used a program to randomize the code layout so it would confuse everyone as much as possible. In general it’s best to use a consistent coding style, for your own sake, and for the sake of everyone else who might look at your code. To keep things consistent you can use a style guide, which will help you remember and use your rules.
A good JavaScript developer, or developer of any kind, knows that it’s very wise to keep up with the times and continually be learning in order to guarantee that their knowledge doesn’t become obsolete. One of the best ways to keep knowledge fresh and up-to-date is to follow blogs that update often, such as this one. But, obviously, this is not the only JavaScript blog out there, and likely not the best. Here, you’ll find the 5 JavaScript blogs I follow the closest and have the most respect for.
As more and more web browsing devices are becoming mobile and/or battery-powered, we need to become more aware of that battery power we use in our applications. Mozilla has come up with a solution for JavaScript that allows us to monitor the battery levels of the devices that our code runs on. Sadly, Firefox is the only browser that has the API implemented, but it shouldn’t be too far in the future before the API is accepted by the other browsers.