Hello and welcome to This Week in JavaScript—a lovingly curated collection of links relating to what’s new and exciting in the world of JS. The complete list is tagged jsweekly. (Don’t forget to check out our weekly .NET and front end roundups too!)
And now on with the show …
#learning More
- Want to learn JavaScript in 2015? - A walk-through of the steps taken to learn, with a goal to get a job in a position with Javascript.
- Are JavaScript Comments Useless? - When developing software, all developers have their view on how and when to use comments.
- Is the web platform getting too big? - PPK hit on an issue that we’re all facing: innovation fatigue.
- What is JSON? (video) - A short explanation of what JSON is and how to pronounce it.
- EcmaScript 2015: The close future of JavaScript - Christian Johansen (video) - A walk through the most interesting features of EcmaScript 2015/6, old JavaScript features you can safely forget, and some weird gotchas introduced.
##Take it further
- Designing Safer Web Animation For Motion Sensitivity - People consider scrolljacking and parallax effects annoying and overused. But what if motion does more than just annoy you? What if it also makes you ill?
- Tasks, microtasks, queues and schedules - An amazingly clear piece on microtask queueing and execution within the browser’s event loop, with interactive examples too.
- 140byt.es curried add function - Abusing JavaScript to achieve the smallest possible code.
- Preloading Images in Parallel with Promises - Recently I faced a situation where I needed to preload a lot of images in parallel. With the given constraints, it ended up being more challenging than first expected.
#es6
- ES6 for Now: Template Strings - An overview of strings and the benefits to be gained from template strings.
- The names of functions in ES6 - Useful for debugging, with ES6 this becomes part of the language standard and is frequently automatically filled in.
- ES6 WeakMaps, Sets, and WeakSets in Depth - WeakMap is as a subset of Map but it’s not iterable …
- ES6 Symbols in Depth - Symbols are a new primitive type in ES6 that come with their accompanying Symbol wrapper object.
##Libraries
- IsClass - To determine if a variable is actually a class (prototype).
- Chocolat - A free jQuery lightbox plugin. It’s light, responsive, and powerful.
- Nipple - A virtual joystick for touch capable interfaces.
- Fieldkit - A simple library for complex input formatting.
- Playing with Pixi.Js Filters - A playground where you can play around with most of the pixi.js filters.
- ShaderFrog - Create beautiful complex shaders by composing multiple ones together.
- An Introduction to GameplayKit: Part 3 - Use GameplayKit’s random value generators to optimize initial enemy spawning, and a basic rule system for the respawning behavior of enemies.
- LayerVisualizer - A simple web-based 3D layer visualizer, useful for visualizing material UIs and other things involving depth/shadows.
##Frameworks
- Lisp is still a secret weapon - Can writing your company’s product with Lisp still be an advantage?
- How to Write Modular Code with Angular UI-Router & Named Views - Prevent your app from becoming very complex very fast with Angular UI Router. Its modular nature gives you complete control over all of your views.
- Full-Stack Redux Tutorial - A Comprehensive guide to test-first development with Redux, React, and Immutable.
- Beautiful Seamless JavaScript Testing in 10 Minutes - Live testing and code coverage in your editor as you type.
- Promises in JavaScript Unit Tests: the Definitive Guide - Previously you had to wire your test’s assertions into the callbacks of the promise. Now you can fix this issue with useful patterns that are able to simplify common promise-scenarios.
##Cool Stuff
- How Could Google’s New Logo Be Only 305 Bytes When Its Old Logo Was 14,000 Bytes? - The old logo uses a complicated serif font. The simplified version of the new logo on the other hand, can be constructed almost entirely from circles and rectangles.
- City Construction Site - A great looking city-building experiment.
- HTML5 version for StarCraft game - Not the original either, this is StarCraft II we’re talking about.
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 Pullo.