This Week in JavaScript - 8 February 2016

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

  • Learning JavaScript Native Functions and How to Use Them - JavaScript is becoming the most popular programming language though it is very misunderstood. Understanding JavaScript’s internals is tough. Devan Patel highlights key native functions with hopes to elucidate JavaScript’s innards.
  • https://codyhouse.co/gem/advanced-search-form/ - Here’s a nice practical example of an advanced search form, using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
  • JS by Examples - Early days for this resource, but one to keep an eye on as it develops.
  • Leveling Up Your JavaScript - JavaScript is one of those languages that can be easy to pick up, it can be infinitely more difficult to master. However, a lot of articles seem to assume that you are already a master.

Learning more

Libraries

  • jQuery Select Box Components – Chosen vs Select2 - In this article, Taulant Spahiu puts these two plugins head-to-head, and compares their features and their use cases, so that you can make an informed choice as to which is best for you.
  • Introduction to jCanvas: jQuery Meets HTML5 Canvas - If you develop with jQuery, jCanvas makes it easier and quicker to code cool canvas drawings and interactive applications using jQuery syntax.
  • Microwork - Microwork.js is a library for simple creation of distributed scalable microservices in node.js with RabbitMQ.
  • MediumEditor - The dead simple inline editor toolbar.
  • Multi-Screen.js - A simple, lightweight, and easy to use jQuery plugin which turns a single page into a collection of screens with animated navigation.

ES6

  • Feature watch: ECMAScript 2017 - This blog post tracks what features may be included in ES2017.
  • Getting Started with ES2015 and Babel - David Walsh shows you how to get writing your JavaScript in ES2015 and then use Babel to transpile it into “traditional” JavaScript for the browser.
  • ES6 const is not about immutability - This seems to be a very common misconception that just won’t die. I keep running into it in blog posts, Twitter discussions, and even books. This is Matthias Bynens attempt at setting things straight.
  • Writing Next Generation Reusable JavaScript Modules in ECMAScript 6 - This post focuses on how to create a JavaScript package written in ES6 that’s usable in a site or app regardless of whether you’re using CommonJS, asynchronous module definition (AMD) or plain browser global modules.
  • Introducing ES2015 Proxies - ES2015 Proxies (in Chrome 49 and later) provide JavaScript with an intercession API, enabling us to trap or intercept all of the operations on a target object and modify how this target operates. Addy Osmani explains all.
  • Understanding JavaScript’s async await - We’ve heard about this feature for a while, but let’s drill down into it and see how it works. To be able to grasp the contents of this article, you’ll need a solid understanding of promises and generators.

Frameworks

  • Building a React Universal Blog App: A Step-by-Step Guide - Part 1 of Tony Spiro’s short series on how to build a React Universal Blog App
  • Building a React Universal Blog App: Implementing Flux - In this second and final part of t the series, Tony Spiro takes our blog to the next level by learning how to add and edit content.
  • 5 Reasons Why Meteor Is Ideal for Startups - Meteor is a full-stack web application framework. Pranab Agarwal has identified the top five reasons why he thinks the Meteor framework is an ideal fit for new startups.
  • Learning React: #1 Setting up the environment - Nadeem Khedr discusses his learning experience with ReactJS, as he starts what will be an opinionated series on what he thinks of ReactJS & other libraries and why I switched to it.
  • Front-end boilerplate for working with react - A front-end boilerplate for working with react, react-router, postcss, cssnext and webpack + hot reloading.
    #Everything Else
  • Validating Data With JSON-Schema, Part 1 - When you’re dealing with complex and structured data, you need to determine whether the data is valid or not. JSON-Schema is the standard of JSON documents that describes the structure and the requirements of your JSON data. In this two-part series, you’ll learn how to use JSON-Schema to validate data.
  • Validating Data With JSON-Schema, Part 2 - In the first part of this tutorial, you learned how to create quite advanced schemas using all available validation keywords. Many real-world examples of JSON data are more complex than our user example…
  • JavaScript AI For An HTML Sliding Tiles Puzzle - This article will be divided into two parts. First, we’ll provide a brief description of how to create and develop a sliding tiles puzzle using HTML, CSS for the visual aspects, and JavaScript for moving the tiles on the board.
  • Better bundles with Rollup - Rollup, is a new JavaScript bundling tool that aims to produce smaller bundling sizes through tree shaking, which is the process of taking an application and figuring out which code is actually used.
  • I cannot sensibly explain this, but… - Have you ever wondered what kind of a cat your favorite JavaScript framework would be?

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.

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