Apr 8, 2011

Friday JavaScript & Web Dev Links

I'm summing up some reading tips for JavaScript and web development. Just thought you'd like 'em.

JavaScript

Command-Line JavaScript on Rhino
So you want to write command-line JavaScript on Rhino? Here's how you do it on Mac OS:
  1. Download Rhino 1.7R2: http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/download.html
  2. Unzip Rhino in for instance Applications/Utilities/Java
  3. Download JLine: http://jline.sourceforge.net/
  4. Unzip JLine in for instance Applications/Utilities/Java
  5. Move jline-0.9.94.jar to /Library/Java/Extensions
  6. In a shell: cd /Applications/Utilities/Java/rhino_1_7R2
  7. In the very same shell: java org.mozilla.javascript.tools.shell.Main
Code away!

Building Large-Scale jQuery Applications
A good read on RIA architecture and links to lib and framework choices, not only for jQuery junkies:

JavaScript Primitive Types Becoming Objects
About JavaScript's primitive types and how they become objects when their properties are used:

Scoping and Hoisting in JavaScript
If you haven't looked into scoping and variable assignments in JavaScript, read this and improve your programs:

'String'.replace() Only Replaces First Instance
String.prototype.replace, i.e. 'yourString'.replace(), only replaces the first instance of the regexp. So beware. Twitter made the mistake and got vulnerable because of it. Read about it and a suggested patch:

Non-Blocking JavaScript Loading (and more) With head.js
With Head JS your scripts load like images - completely separated from page rendering, and in parallel!

Web Development

RESTful Design, Patterns and Anti-Patterns
A nice webcast on REST design. For instance brings up the idea of session ids with constant state on the server. But as always, I wonder when the CSRF storm is going to hit all these REST services out there?

Chrome Web Dev Extensions
Google Chrome is becoming many web developers' favorite browser. The bundled developer tools are good. But check out the extensions too, for instance the CSS reloader:

iframe Loading Techniques and How They Affect Performance
Want your iframes to stop blocking and allow onLoad to fire earlier? Check these techniques out:
http://www.aaronpeters.nl/blog/iframe-loading-techniques-performance


Did I miss a good resource or read? Just fire away below.

5 comments:

  1. not a static resource - but the javascriptweekly.com newsletter is awesome!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Command line js is actually available out of the box on os x, typically well hidden here:
    /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework/Versions/A/Resources/jsc

    I wrote a little .sh wrapper around jslint using this: https://gist.github.com/858343

    ReplyDelete
  3. This one is great too :-) :
    http://bonsaiden.github.com/JavaScript-Garden/
    "...a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavours into the depths of the language."

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is a really good post:
    http://andyet.net/blog/2010/oct/29/building-a-single-page-app-with-backbonejs-undersc/
    There are two things in particular that I find interesting;

    * backbone.js, which is a really nice tool to separate MVC but still maintaining updates on views.
    * icanjaz.js, a drop dead smart way of declaring client side html templates *properly* : as html (in script tags). clever!

    After digesting the post above, read this post to follow up with more awesomeness:
    http://andyet.net/blog/2011/feb/15/re-using-backbonejs-models-on-the-server-with-node/

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here's one about testing and optimizing singe page applications: http://blog.dynatrace.com/2011/03/22/testing-and-optimizing-single-page-web-2-0ajax-applications-why-best-practices-alone-dont-work-any-more/

    ReplyDelete