A few weeks ago a reader asked if I had an example of infinite scroll with a ColdFusion back end. I replied that I did not, and that infinite scroll was the worst thing to happen to the Internet since the rainbow horizontal rule.
I'm possibly being a bit overly dramatic, but I'm really not a fan of it. Maybe it's the OCD in me, but the fact that I can never get to the end of an infinite scroll UI just bugs the hell out of me.
That being said - I figured - why not make a quick example. It can't hurt, right?
As people know, I'm a huge fan of PhoneGap and what it allows me to do with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. But I think it is crucial to remember that you don't always need PhoneGap. A great example of that is camera access. Did you know that recent mobile browsers support accessing the camera directly from HTML and JavaScript? Let's look at an example.
Forgive the title, I'm not sure it best describes the task. I was asked by a reader to consider a simple problem. Given a list of dates, how would you rewrite them so that two (or more) consecutive dates are displayed together? For example, imagine this input.
It has been a few weeks (ok, a few months) since my last blog post on JavaScript design patterns. I'd apologize, but frankly, it will probably be a few more weeks until I blog on this subject again, so hopefully people aren't expecting a fast series here (grin). As a reminder, the idea behind this series is to create real, practical examples of various JavaScript design patterns based on the book, "Learning JavaScript Design Patterns" by Addy Osmani. (See my review here.) In this blog entry I'll be discussing the Revealing Module pattern.
Over the weekend I was working on a small project and needed a copy of jQuery. I try to avoid the CDN as I find myself at airports without wifi access sometimes so I did what I normally do:
- Go to jQuery.com
- Click the download link
- Click for the latest minified version
- Right click, save as
On Tuesday, April 30th, I'll be giving a free, online presentation about PhoneGap as a preview of my Fluent 2013 presentation in San Francisco next month. This presentation will be your basic "What the frak is PhoneGap"-type presentation, but if you are looking for a chance to get introduced to the product, please join me.
Developing Mobile Applications with PhoneGap
(Wow - I need to update my bio there. Apparently I'm still an independent contractor focused on ColdFusion.)
Just as an FYI, today my first article on flippin' awesome! was published this morning: Building a Google Maps Application with Updating Markers
In the article I discuss how to create a Google Map that automatically refreshes marker data every few seconds. The idea being that you may have data for moving items (trucks, dragons, users with jetpacks) and your map can automatically update the display in near real time.
In one of the more recent Brackets sprints, Node.js was added to the core of Brackets. If you read my blog you know I've been playing a bit with Node.js lately. I've yet to deploy any "real" web site/app using Node, but I've built a few applications and demos as a way to help learn the platform. In a recent Twitter conversation the idea of using Node.js within an extension came up and I had a good idea I thought I'd try out.
I've been thinking a lot lately about client-side development (as is hopefully evident by the type of posts I've been making). I feel like I've finally gotten comfortable with JavaScript, but am looking for ways to bring my skill set to the next level. In general, I'm looking for ways to better organize my code. I know that design patterns can help me with that goal. So I was pretty excited to get "Learning JavaScript Design Patterns" by Addy Osmani. My expectation was that this book would give me a good overview of the various types of patterns I could apply to my client-side work. Unfortunately, I don't know if the book reaches that goal. Let me explain why.
Yesterday while on the road (ok, technically, in the air), I thought it might be kind of cool if there was a "library" of common JSON responses. I've used AJAX mocking services before (hell, I've even built one), but if you don't know the "form" of a remote service, then you can't really mock it, right? To be honest, there probably aren't that many services out there that people need to mock, but if you had an example JSON packet you could use right away, I kinda thought that might be useful.
I've created a new project on GitHub for this: ServiceDataFormatLibrary. It has a grand total of one example so far, but I figured I'd put it out there and see who wants to help flesh it out.