Hello and welcome to ‘This Week in JavaScript’ — another curated collection of links relating to what’s new and exciting in the world of JavaScript. The complete list is tagged jsweekly. (Don’t forget to check out our weekly .NET and front end roundups too!)
And now for this week’s finds …
Getting started
- Quick Tip: How to Make a Game Loop in JavaScript - In this short article you’ll learn how this fundamental technique works and you’ll be able to start making your own browser based games and animations.
- 6 Strategies to Keeping up with Web Development - “But, how can I keep up with all the new technology popping up?” There is no direct answer, as there are a handful of ideas to what you can do to set yourself in a better position.
- Take a Free Course on JavaScript Refactoring Techniques - In this new Coffee Break Course, JavaScript Refactoring Techniques, Envato Tuts+ instructor Pavan Podila will show you seven different techniques that can help you write more readable and refactored code.
- Understanding native JavaScript array methods - There are many times in JavaScript when you want to do something with an array of ‘stuff’.
Learning more
- Quick Tip: How to Throttle Scroll Events - Repaints are expensive, especially when you are redrawing large parts of the view, such as is the case when there is a scroll event.
- Viral.JS - Turn your user`s browsers into servers by enabling them to seed applications further.
- Unicode property escapes in JavaScript regular expressions - This article explains what Unicode property escapes are, how they work, and why they’re useful.
Libraries
- Higher Order Components: A React Application Design Pattern - In this article we will discuss how to use Higher Order Components to keep your React applications tidy, well structured and easy to maintain.
- How to Implement Internationalisation (i18n) in JavaScript - In this article Aurelio De Rosa discusses what internationalisation and localisation are and why they are important to expand a product’s market. He also briefly introduces you to the Internationalisation API by mentioning some supported features and then, shows some examples of their use.
- A Comprehensive Look at jQuery Selectors - Whether you want to manipulate the content of an element on a web page, attach an event to it, or do something else, you will need to select it first. This is where jQuery selectors come into play: they form a crucial part of the library. In this tutorial, Baljeet Rathi covers all of these selectors and point out important things that you need to keep in mind while using them.
- Build a Stateful Real-Time App with React Native and Pusher - In this tutorial you will learn how to build a real-time chat application with Pusher, React-native and Redux to manage the state of the app.
- baffle.js - A tiny (~1.8kb) javascript library for obfuscating and revealing text in DOM elements.
ES6
- JavaScript variables lifecycle: why let is not hoisted - ES2015 provides a different and improved mechanism for let. It demands stricter variable declaration practices (you can’t use before definition) and as result better code quality.
- How I Built a Progressive Beer App - Dean Hume likes beer. In fact, he likes it so much that he decided to build a web app that showcases all the amazing different types that are out there!
- JavaScript Systems Music - Learning Web Audio by Recreating The Works of Steve Reich and Brian Eno.
- ECMAScript proposal updates @ 2016-07 - The changes of proposal’s status @ 53rd meeting of Ecma TC39.
Frameworks
- Let’s build a URL Shortener with Node, MongoDB and Hapi.js - Have you ever wonder how URL shorteners like bit.ly or goo.gl work?
- Broken Link Checker - Broken Link Checker by Steven Vachon is an outstanding Node.js-powered utility for recursively checking for broken links on a website.
- Writing a JavaScript framework - Execution timing, beyond setTimeout - This is the second chapter of the Writing a JavaScript framework series.
- Create Your First NativeScript App - The last article introduced you to NativeScript. There you learned the basics of NativeScript and how it differs from other mobile development frameworks. This time you’ll be getting your hands dirty by creating your first NativeScript app.
- Checking (and updating) your Ionic Native install - Something for the ‘pretty obvious’ category.
##Other Stuff - Waves - Don’t forget to click on it a time or two whilst you’re at it.
- The Art of the Pull Request - There are a few questions that you need to answer before you open a Pull Request. In this article, we’ll cover how to make sure you comply with the maintainer’s guidelines, and how to get your changes merged. We’ll take the perspective of both the maintainer and the contributor, but mostly discuss the contributor’s vantage point.
- Finding Opportunities in the Mistakes We Make - An interesting think-piece on learning from your mistakes.
- Animating like you just don’t care with Element.animate - In Firefox 48, Mozilla are shipping the Element.animate() API — a new way to programmatically animate DOM elements using JavaScript.
For more links like this and to keep up-to-date with the latest goings on in JS land, you can follow SitePoint’s JavaScript channel on Twitter.
Please PM us if you have anything of interest for the next issue or if there is anything you would like to see featured. Paul and Chris of Arabia.