Articles on JavaScript / AJAX
An AJAX Auto-Save Implementation
For a recent client engagement, we were tasked with implementing auto-save on a multi-field form: any time any of the field values changed, we’d save the form to the server. This is a common scenario where users are composing longer inputs, such as emails, word processing, and spreadsheets.
A 3D Flocking Simulation using HTML5 Canvas
I recently unearthed an old Java applet that I had written many years ago and decided to see what it would look like as a single page canvas application (an HTML5 compatible browser is required to view this page). The applet was inspired by the way blackbirds roost on power lines in San Francisco (and …
Ew… you got CSS in my Javascript
The other weekend I test drove a little Javascript library to output CSS style rules from within Javascript. I took the most obvious Javascript-literal approach to get the most out of Javascript support in editors. I called it Csster (“sister”), and it looks like: Csster.style({ h1: { fontSize: 18, color: ‘chartreuse’ } }); All it …
A few experiments with HTML 5 applications
I’ve had a long-standing interest in taking client-side programming beyond display logic and input validation. The new HTML 5 technologies are making full-scale application development in the browser increasingly practical. Unfortunately, the needs of Carbon Five’s clients generally exceed the capabilities of purely client-side solutions, so I don’t get to spend as much time developing …
Controlling embedded Vimeo video using javascript
We are embedding video from Vimeo on a site we are working on and wanted to change the behavior of playing a video so that it would go back to the first frame after the video was done playing, rather than staying on the last frame. Since it ended up being harder than expected and …
Ada Freezes Monsters with Snowballs (and Canvas)
Alex sent me an email Saturday morning with this really cute Canvas game he wrote with his daughter Ada. His timing was really great since I am on a panel at SXSW Tuesday called Is Canvas the End of Flash? He explains it all below… I was telling Ada how video games are made one …
Javascript Testing Talk in Oakland
Next week at EBig Jonah and I are wrapping up our world tour of talking about Javascript testing. March 17th in Oakland: “Recent evolutions in Javascript testing frameworks now allow creating test suites, test-driving development, and running tests on a continuous integration server. This allows us to support more complex Javascript, have confidence in the implementation, …
Test-Driven JavaScript with ScrewUnit and BlueRidge
Jonah and I are taking our presentation about Javascript Testing on the road next Tuesday at 6:30 in Palo Alto, at the SDForum The teaser for it… Recent evolutions in JavaScript testing frameworks now allow creating test suites, test-driving development, and running tests on a continuous integration server. This allows us to support more complex JavaScript, …
Screw.Unit JS Testing in Maven: javascript-test-maven-plugin
I’ve written a maven plugin to integrate Screw.Unit javascript tests into a maven build. The project is inspired by the Blue Ridge testing framework for Rails, but it’s a bit more light-weight by design.
Unit testing JavaScript with Blue Ridge
My current rails project is using Blue Ridge and the tool set it bundles together (Rhino, env.js, Screw.Unit, and Smoke) to write test driven JavaScript. The ability to write tests of my JavaScript, in JavaScript, as efficiently as I can test other languages has forced me to rethink how I structure my work and I’m …