Hello and welcome to This Week in JavaScript, our 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 for this week’s JavaScript finds …
Getting started
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Things every JavaScript developer should know - Not claiming to be a definitive guide, but covers a wide range of JavaScript ideas and techniques that you should know about.
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5 tips to make your Readme stand out - Five simple tips to breathe life into your Readme and attract users’ attention to what’s in it?
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The single biggest mistakes programmers make every day - How to avoid complicating your work and give you an easier coding life.
Learning more
- In defense of the Reset button - Are reset buttons still useful?
- Promises API - Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world, with many new APIs being implemented with the promise philosophy.
- Rain & water effect experiments - Some experimental rain and water drop effects made with WebGL and shown in different demo scenarios.
Libraries
- Canvid.js - A tiny dependency free library for playback of relatively short videos on canvas elements.
- jQueryConfig - Optimize the size of jQuery so that you don’t download the full version.
- Wui - Collection of GUI widgets for the web
ES2015 (ES6) and beyond
- JavaScript ES6+: var, let, or const? - Going over the differences between these seemingly similar ways of defineing variables, and how to benefit from them.
- Using ES2015 (ES6) modules with Babel 6 - How to start using ES2015 modules which promise to be a simple way to easily encapsulate and reuse your code, with the help of Babel.
- Generator-babel-init - Yeoman generator to setup Babel effortlessly.
- Javascript quiz. ES6 edition. - Mind-bending snippets that no sensible developer would ever use in their code.
- An update on Object.observe - The Object.observe proposal is now being removed.
Frameworks
- A beginner splurge in Node.js - An introduction to Node.js going over the main highlights while hiking up some pretty high ground, taking an intermediate overview of the stack while keeping it all inside the console.
- Node Facade - Node.js module that abstracts the process of consuming a REST endpoint.
- Things I wish I were told about React Native - You might prefer to learn by doing, but you’ll end up saving yourself hours of wasted effort with these useful tips.
- React toolbox - Bootstrap your application with beautiful Material Design components.
- Understanding components in Ember 2 - As of Ember 2.x components will replace views and controllers (which have been deprecated) and are the recommended way to build an Ember application.
- Investigator - Interactive and asynchronous logging tool for Node.js - An easier way to log & debug complex requests directly from the command line.
- Angular forms and validation - A step by step example of setting up a sign up form with a custom password validator and an asynchronous email check.
- Will Angular 2 be a success? - During the latter half of 2014 frameworks like React and Ember grew in popularity, but the Angular team did not stand still.
Testing
- Breeze.js - Write better queries that work with a wide range of frameworks.
- How to fix JavaScript errors more easily with Chrome’s debugger - Instead of sprinkling console.log or alert throughout your code, here’s how to use Chrome’s JavaScript debugger to help you your fix errors faster and more easily.
- Debuggable JavaScript in production with source maps - When debugging code in the browser, commonly you are looking at transpiled and (typically) hard-to-read JavaScript. The solution to this problem is a nifty browser feature called Source Maps.
- Testable code: why you should not use “new” in javascript - A use case that demonstrates why the “new” keyword shouldn’t be used and how dependency injection helps us to write testable and robust code.
- Nightwatch.js - Remove the frustration of writing automation as part of your development process.
- Ava - Futurists test runner that runs in parallel with separate processes.
- Introduction to Ionic 2 - The basics of an Ionic app and what is happening in your app and little differences between angular 2 and ionic 2 apps.
Cool stuff
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Rich and Mike’s Predictions - From the guys that brought you cutting reviews of the prequals and Plinkett, here’s over 45 minutes of predictions based on the trailers and other existing sources.
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 chrisofarabia.