This Week in JavaScript - 30 December 2013

JavaScript
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Your weekly update of interesting happenings in the world of JavaScript - feel free to discuss, and help to bring some new ideas to light.

Are you ready for the New Year? Well, here’s some reading for between the parties :slight_smile:

Learn something

An Introduction To DOM Events - click, touch, load, drag, change, input, error, resize — to name a few.
JavaScript Closure Uses - I - written by @myty ;
Create A Simple HTML5 Video Playlist - courtesy of Dudley Storey
Animating Vectors with SVG - Thanks @DaveMaxwell ;

Libraries

zepto.js - a minimalist JavaScript library for modern browsers with a (mostly) jQuery-compatible API
Generate your own custom build of Zepto - because sometimes minimal just isn’t enough
jQuery Deconstructed - Navigate the physical jQuery code to see what, where, and how the magic happens
The missing cdn for javascript and css - I ran across this this week. Very useful!

Dev Tools

Using watches in my devtools workflow - a bite-sized screencast
Chrome DevTools for Mobile: Screencast and Emulation - how cool?
jQuery Audit - a Chrome Developer Tools extension for debugging auditing jQuery
An Introduction to Source Maps - map code within a compressed file back to it’s original position in a source file

Fun stuff and Plugins

Test your maths - Not strictly JavaScript, but fun nonetheless.
Just a simple christmas tree, based on redit story - Happy Holidays!
Headroom.js - Give your pages some headroom. Hide your header until you need it.
Adaptive Backgrounds - A jQuery plugin for extracting dominant colors from images and applying it to its parent

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So, what you think about these recent happenings in JavaScript?

What have you learned the most about from this weeks articles?

Please PM us if you have anything of interest for the next issue, and happy reading! - Paul & [URL=“http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/private.php?do=newpm&u=184222”]Pullo

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Nice one. In the same category, underscore.js Annotated Source: http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html

Über-cool stuff in Dev Tools.

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I keep meaning to try out underscore.js, but haven’t yet had the occasion.
Do you use this in any of your projects?
Is there anything it’s particularly recommended for?

Man, I am constantly being amazed at what the Dev Tools can do.

I found a real gem the other day in console.table.
I’m sure you knew about it already, but for anyone else who doesn’t here’s how it works: https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/tips-and-tricks#console-table

Also, for anyone wanting to get to grips with the Dev Tools, I recommend this as a very good starting point: http://discover-devtools.codeschool.com/

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Yes I did. But now I’ve moved over to lodash, it offers AMD, underscorejs still doesn’t (while jQuery does). But underscorejs was a breath of fresh air, the first time I saw it, it just clicked.

What I recommend lodash is for AMD support and functional approach to tedious tasks. I’m thrilled to be able to express myself in a functional manner, and to only include the parts I’m using in a library, and to not have to reinvent the wheel over and over. Take memoization, for example: http://devdocs.io/lodash/index#memoize. Or take for example array operations: http://devdocs.io/lodash/index#union.

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Ok, thanks.
While I don’t have so much call to use memoization, array operations are more of a day to day task so I’ll bear it in mind for that.
That could prove a useful starting point.