09 4 / 2013
csscss
There’s nothing we like better than turning up our noses at inefficient CSS and here’s a tool that can help us keep the edge. CSSCSS analyzes CSS or SASS (we like to kick it old skool ourselves but, whatever) finds duplicate rules and, like, shows you where they are.
posted by: piraterob
15 2 / 2013
js2coffee
Ever wanted to turn legacy JavaScript into CoffeeScript? Now you can, either online or via the terminal
npm install -g js2coffee
You should totally set this up as a git post commit hook to definitively win the war with that one guy on your team who insists on still using JavaScript.
posted by: piraterob
Permalink 4 notes
16 1 / 2013
Six
CoffeeScript? That’s so 2012. We’re already porting our stuff to Six the ECMAScript 6 pre-processor. I guess you wouldn’t have heard of it yet but you will soon because we’ll be making sure everyone can overhear us affecting blasé detachment whilst discussing it in the latest pop-up dirty food joint.
03 1 / 2013
FRP? Yeah, we were doing that in 2012
Surely everyone knows by now that 2013 will be the year of Functional reactive programming (FRP) on the client-side? We totally ditched all those irksome callback functions ages ago, and we even re-wrote the Node.js core libraries for FRP, something which the Node.js dudes flagrantly copied with streams. If you want to buy into this particular bandwagon, you could do worse than take a look at Bacon.js. As a strict vegan I had to roll my own implementation of FRP of course, which I’m calling celeriac.js.
posted by: froots101
21 11 / 2012
Test 'Em
Obviously we use Chrome Canary as our primary desktop browser but if we sell out and our startup goes mainstream there’s the disturbing possibility that we might start attracting visitors using things like Safari, or even shudder IE.
Test ‘em is the slickest solution I’ve seen for running various flavors of JavaScript test in multiple browsers.
It can pre-process CoffeeScript, run tests automatically as files change, produces Tap compatible output and most importantly has a lo-fi tabbed command line interface.
posted by: piraterob
10 9 / 2012
Bower
I’m the kind of sharp guy who likes to roll my own everything: cigarettes, fresh pasta, nori. So, you know, I don’t really need a package manager to handle my handcrafted artisanal JavaScript and CSS. I’m a vanilla JS user, and hey, just because my last project took a lot longer than I said it would, it’s because that shit is handcrafted. With love. So yeah.
If you were the sort of lame-o that still uses third-party libraries (if you are still using jQuery why are you even reading this site?), then I guess you could use Bower, which is some kind of package manager for client-side code. It was made by some guys at Twitter, though, so I can’t use it anyway because I’m boycotting everything they do until they un-ban my ‘fixietoot’ Mac client - the one that forces you to type exactly 140 characters for every tweet.
posted by: froots101
05 9 / 2012
Neat vs Semantic GS
Yesterday saw the release of Neat, a new responsive grid system. Its aim is to not pollute your beautiful semantic markup with grid_n type classes but instead to use SASS mixins extended from Bourbon. I approve of the name (although although mine’s an Old Fashioned).
Does Neat offer anything other than a snappier name over The Semantic Grid System? Semantic GS has been available for a while and gives you the holy-war avoiding choice of LESS, SCSS or Stylus flavors. I’ve used Semantic GS on my own portfolio site & been very pleased with how easy & unobtrusive it is.
posted by: piraterob
24 8 / 2012
Webspecter
Since CasperJS has sold out by producing some really nice documentation & a Homebrew formula scenesters like us desperately need a new end-to-end testing tool that people in the flyover states haven’t heard of yet…
¡Hola, Webspecter!
Like Casper it’s based on PhantomJS & supports Coffeescript but the focus is squarely on testing rather than general browser automation. The syntax is BDD derived - based on Mocha and Chai. Best of all it has a nice looking helper extension mechanism that could be the starting point for a robust page abstraction.
posted by: piraterob
07 7 / 2012
Rivets.js
Declarative data binding is what all the cool kids are doing right now. If you want the indie coffee house to the Starbucks of Angular.js then check out Rivets.js.
Unlike the absurdly powerful capabilities of Angular we’re talking one-way binding from model to view only. That said it’s small, simple, configurable, uses standard data- attributes and provides an adapter API so it’s simple to hook up to whatever you’re using to manage your data model whether it’s backbone, spine or your own artisanal, locally sourced framework.
posted by: piraterob
06 7 / 2012
The JavaScript plugin for Gradle looks like it’s shaping up nicely. Does Yeoman have some competition?
posted by: piraterob
