CategoryTechniques

September 5, 2016 — Not enough people know about the major advantages of web apps. They can replace all of the functions of native apps and websites at once. In this article, Ada Rose Cannon will show you some do’s and dont’s on how to make a progressive web app, as well as resources for further research. She’ll also go into the various components and support issues surrounding web apps. Although not every browser is friendly to them, there are still some compelling reasons to learn more about this technology. Read more…

August 25, 2016 — With so many amazing designers creating such beautiful animations, any developer would naturally want to recreate them in their own projects. Now, CSS does provide some presets for transition-timing-function, which add some level of smoothness and realism, but they are very generic, aren’t they? Motion curves are primarily used by animators to create advanced, realistic animations. In this article, Nash Vail will show you how motion curves work. Let’s begin! Read more…

June 28, 2016 — Redux is a predictable state container for JavaScript apps. It’s an application data-flow architecture, rather than a traditional library or a framework like Underscore.js and AngularJS. It is used mostly for application state management. To summarize it, Redux maintains the state of an entire application in a single immutable state tree (object), which can’t be changed directly. When something changes, a new object is created (using actions and reducers). Today, Alex Bachuk will go over the core concepts in detail. Read more…

May 25, 2016 — Stylelint is a powerful style sheet linter. It brings clarity to code and saves you from errors. It’s useful for everyone. Once you start using it, you will hear no more comments like, “You forgot to remove it there.” in this article, Aleks Hudochenkov will show you why linting a style sheet matters, how stylelint brings order to a style sheet and how we can avoid errors. Happy developing, and may you have a peaceful code review. Read more…

May 19, 2016 — Microsoft Edge has evolved over the past year — from being announced as a brand new browser, with Microsoft moving away from Trident (or MSHTML) to EdgeHTML, to the browser usage share increase curve similar to the one Google experienced when Chrome was first introduced in 2008. This article is part of the web development series from our tech evangelists and engineers on JavaScript skills, community projects and best practices including Microsoft Edge browser and the new EdgeHTML rendering engine. Read more…

April 20, 2016 — Containerization will start a revolution in open source similar to what Git did, by making it much simpler to take any code and start compiling it right away. In this first part, Daniel Demmel gives a bit of background to help you understand the concepts behind Docker through some metaphors. But if you just want to get started with the tutorial, skip to the “Time to Play!” section. By the end, you should have a basic understanding of Docker and have it working on your computer! Read more…

March 24, 2016 — Houdini is a new W3C task force that introduces a new set of APIs that will give developers the power to extend CSS itself, and the tools to hook into the styling and layout process of a browser’s rendering engine. In this article, Philip Walton is going to talk about how Houdini will solve CSS feature problems and list some of the more exciting features currently in development. He’ll also offer some concrete things you as web developers can do today to help make Houdini a reality. Read more…

March 8, 2016 — Your “virtual retrospective board” needs to allow team members to sync the current state of the board in real time between all team members, talk about the board via video chat, create, edit and move sticky notes and make sure users log in with the right password. To achieve this you need deepstream and a bit of JQuery. In this article, Wolfram Hampel will show you the step by step you need to know. Read more…

February 10, 2016 — In this article, Shawn Jansepar will guide you through his experience in building an app for Beyond the Rack in which he and his team mix native and web content to create an app that “feels” native. With Beyond the Rack, he set out to build an app in which he could easily ship value to users without sacrificing the experience. By following an approach that puts technology in the back seat, allowing them to use the right technology for the task, they believe they have achieved just that. Read more…

February 2, 2016 — Service workers do a lot of different things; there are myriad ways to harness their powers. In this article, Lyza Danger Gardner explains what a service worker is and how to put together your own by registering, installing, and activating it without any hassle. She decided to build a simple service worker for her website that roughly mirrors the features (provide a customized offline fallback experience, make the website function offline, and increase online performance by reducing network requests for certain assets) that the obsolete Application Cache API used to provide. Read more…