CategoryJavaScript

June 12, 2018 — Many applications today rely on real-time data transfer. As the size of data for each message in our system differs from a few bytes to up to 100MB, we needed a scalable solution that could support a multitude of scenarios. In this article, Dhimil Gosalia explains why you should consider building an in-house Pub/Sub service, too. Through the lens of BrowserStack’s real-world problem, you will get a deeper understanding of the requirements and process of building your very own Pub/Sub. Read more…

May 23, 2018 — The modern solution to developing for both modern and legacy browsers is feature queries. They allow us to write CSS that is conditional on browser support for a particular feature. In this article Ire Aderinokun explains how she developed the Feature Queries Manager. Find out how this tool can help you suport older browsers, and also how to create your own DevTools extensions. Read more…

May 8, 2018 — Have you ever wondered whether it’s possible to do anything on the web without JavaScript? How many sites use progressive enhancement in practice? In this article Chris Ashton will try to use the web under various constraints, representing a given demographic of user. A good core experience is indicative of a well-structured web page, which, in turn, is usually a good sign for SEO and for accessibility. It’s usually a well designed web page, as the designer and developer have spent time and effort thinking about what’s truly core to the experience. Read more…

May 7, 2018 — Some time ago, designers and developers built the same kinds of websites over and over again, so much so that they were mocked by people in our own industry. Today, the design landscape has changed completely. We’re equipped with new and powerful tools — CSS Grid, CSS custom properties, CSS shapes and CSS writing-mode, to name a few — that we can use to exercise our creativity. In this article, Zell Liew explains how. Read more…

April 25, 2018 — Ever find yourself writing the same code over and over again? Sharing code between projects is vital to building software faster, while making your code base simpler to maintain and develop over time. However, the overhead of splitting repositories, refactoring projects, and modifying components from different projects can make it hard to effectively collaborate and share your code. In this article, Jonathan Saring shares his and his team’s lessons learned from their own journey towards simple and effective code sharing. Read more…

April 19, 2018 — Not all developers are aware of how useful React Native actually is. Here are some tips on how to create an audio and video recording app by using Expo development tools. In this article, Oleh Mryhlod will share some insights about the high-level capabilities of React Native and the products you can develop with it in a short period of time. By the end of this guide, you should have all the necessary knowledge to create video/audio recording functionality with React Native. Let’s get into it. Read more…

April 6, 2018 — Building an MVP is all about building lots of functionality in a small amount of time. Vue.js is a good option, with a minimum of architectural boilerplate and a lot of raw power. All it needs is somewhere to store data. Let’s say you have this great idea for a new product. In this article, Lukas van Driel will guide you through the steps of creating and hosting this new web app. Read more…

March 21, 2018 — Linking JavaScript functionality to the DOM can be a repetitive and tedious task. In this article, Rik Schennink explains how ConditionerJS can help make websites more flexible and user-oriented.  Step-by-step he’ll improve this logic, and finally, he’ll make a 1 Kilobyte jump to replacing it with Conditioner. By combining all of the following tiny changes, you can speed up page load time and more closely match your functionality to each different context. This will result in improved user experience and as a bonus improve our developer experience as well. Read more…

March 19, 2018 — Is it possible to use digital musical instruments as browser inputs? With the Web MIDI API, the answer is yes! The best part is, it’s fairly quick and easy to implement and even create a really fun project. In this article, Peter Anglea will cover the basics of MIDI and the Web MIDI API to see how simple it can be to create a web app that responds to musical input using JavaScript. Read more…

March 15, 2018 — Each platform has its own limitations and proprietary publishing mechanism. Creating interactive content that works across all of these environments is a real challenge. Publishing content to so many media without lots of extra development overhead can be difficult. In this article, Chris Ashton explains how they’ve approached the problem in BBC’s Visual Journalism department. Read more…