This Week on the Web: Swift, Bitcoin Calculators, and More!

Hello and welcome to This Week on the Web.

As the name suggests, this is a weekly round-up of trends and themes from the exciting and giddy world of web development.

Every week, we’ll put together a collection of links to articles and resources that will make your lives as designers and developers easier, as well as helping you stay up-to-date in this fast-paced industry.

So without further ado, let’s dive straight in.

Swift

It’s been a couple of weeks since Apple announced Swift – its new programming language to create iOS and Mac OS X apps. The announcement initially triggered a lot of buzz in the community, but what are people saying now they’ve had a chance to check it out?

• Apple’s Swift and What it Means for Developers and Users
• Apple’s Swift: A Developer’s First Impression
• Apple’s Swift not so swift after all (Haters gon’ hate …)
• 5 Reasons Why Rubyist Will Love Swift
• Why Swift Will Never Replace RubyMotion

And if you’re sold already, here are a handy Top 10 Tips to Speed up Swift Learning

Learning

Some Italian polymath claimed that: “learning never exhausts the mind”. I guess he never had to keep up with the constant deluge of new technologies with which us web professionals are bombarded on a daily basis.

With that in mind here are some tutorials, just so that your minds never get exhausted:

• Understanding Variable Scope & Closures Without Losing your Mind
• 10 Most Common Mistakes that Rails Programmers Make
• The Mystery Of The jQuery Object: A Basic Introduction
• PHP Namespaces in 120 Seconds
• HTML5 Forms: The Markup – a three-part series about HTML5 web forms
• Beginners GIT: Or If I Could Turn Back Time… – because we all use version control, right?
• An introduction to the Ember JS framework – somwhat lengthy, but a great resource

Framework Corner

With the news that the US Government is selling off 30,000 Bitcoins, we thought now might be a good time to look at how to use AngularJS to build a Bitcoin investment calculator.

We also look at using node.js in production (which apparently quite a lot of companies do) and form validation in Symfony 2 (be sure not to miss the first in the series).

• Node.js in Production
• AngularJS by Example – Building a Bitcoin Investment Calculator
• Creating a CRUD App in Minutes with Angular’s $resource
• Real-Time Chat With Node.js’ Readline & Socket.io
• Socket.IO 1.0 Release Brings Binary Support, new Engine.IO module
• Form Validation in Symfony 2

Buzzword of the Week – SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) are all the rage right now. The advantages of using them are many: they can be created with any text editor, they can be searched, they are scalable (meaning the image can be zoomed without degradation), the list goes on.

If you’re not using SVGs in your projects, now might be a good time to start.

• Getting Started with SVG Gradients
• More Tricks & Tips For Working With SVG in Adobe CC
• Love Generating SVG With JavaScript? Move It To The Server!
• Building a responsive SVG map
• Animated Day-Night Cycle With CSS and SVG
• A random SGV icon tip (from @chriscoyier)

Tools and Resources

Here are some tools and resources to make your lives easier (or to make you feel slightly unnerved in the case of jSpy).

All I need now is a tool to hack my neighbor’s robotic lawn mower and direct it to my garden. That would mean that could dodge the garden work and enjoy a well earned pint in the sun instead.

• jSpy – JavaScript script to test and detect your visited websites
• Laverna – note taking web application and task manager
• TypeSample – a tool for identifying and sampling web fonts
• randomColor – A color generator for JavaScript
• Resources for Staying on Top of JavaScript

And It’s Goodnight from Me

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first issue and that you tune in again at the same time next week, when my co-author will be taking the reigns.

In the meantime, we’d love to hear what you think. Do you have any experience with Swift? Have you mastered JavaScript closures? What’s your current framework of choice? And how do you keep up-to-date with web technologies?

Finally, with the World Cup 2014 having just begun, spare a thought for those who don’t like sports …