Welcome to On Our Radar, a weekly round-up of news, trends and other cool stuff from the world of web development.
Why Windows 95 pushed Microsoft from version 9 to 10
After last weeks announcement that Windows 8 is going to be followed by Windows 10, people were asking questions as to why number 9 was being skipped. It seems now that the move to 10 was due to early testing of version 9 and having issues due to Windows 95 and 98. Lazy developers outside of Microsoft were only checking if the version number started with a 9, assuming that it was Windows 95 or 98.
Here’s the sort of existing code that was causing trouble for the new Windows 9.
if (version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))
{
/* 95 and 98 */
} else {
}
Developing your own sites and apps
It’s best for us to avoid the above coding mistakes in our own code, so here’s some advice for smaller developers in an article about how 50+ startups manage their code. It’s not easy either to become an overnight success, here’s how Product Hunt and Hacker News achieved it.
With a service such as Sway you can easily bring together information for a presentation or development, and Webplate is front-end framework that lets you stay focused on building your site or app.
If you’re going mobile then here are 5 mobile design patterns for a successful app, and here are 20 more docs and guides for front-end developers too.
If you’re planning on applying for work developing code, here are 5 More JavaScript Interview Exercises, and you can then sit the test and show what you know about development, perhaps even using skeletal tracking with JavaScript and the Leap Motion to achieve something amazing.
CSS shapes in email
This week we had some great advice on writing CSS and Sass that doesn’t suck, where we’re taken through things to look for and improve on when taking over a new project. If instead you want to develop something from fresh, Basscss gives us a low-level CSS tookkit to work with. We also saw some nice techniques arrive for reliably creating CSS shapes in email.
Automate everything
Automation has been on everyone’s lips this week. Responsive images can now be easily achieved thanks to the srcset attribute, and responsive line heights can also be used to create optimal readability across different screen sizes.
We also have an exploration in automatically fixing JavaScript linting errors using fixmyjs which you can try out too. Another auto-linter that’s also worth checking out too is jsfmt which has found its way to my Sublime Text and Atom editors.
Other interesting JavaScript things that we came across this week include:
- htmljs – HTML render engine and data binding
- Learn AngularJS playing Super Mario Brothers
- RWDPerf – a performance testing tool for responsive web designs
Which links caught your eye this week? Which framework or language would you like to learn by playing Mario?
Paul WilkinsI'm a web developer living in Christchurch (thanks for all the quakes) where JavaScript is my forte. When off the computer I volunteer down at the local community centre, or enjoy playing tabletop games such as Carcassonne or Stone Age with friends.
