Learning JavaScript: Essentials And Guidelines
This is a selection of most popular and useful Smashing Magazine’s articles on learning JavaScript and jQuery published over all the years here, on Smashing Magazine.
Quick Overview
- My Favorite Programming Mistakes
- Ten Oddities And Secrets About JavaScript
- Seven JavaScript Things I Wish I Knew Much Earlier In My Career
- The Seven Deadly Sins Of JavaScript Implementation
- Find The Right JavaScript Solution With A 7-Step Test
- What You Need To Know About JavaScript Scope
- jQuery And JavaScript Coding: Examples And Best Practices
- Image Manipulation With jQuery And PHP GD
- jQuery Plugin Checklist: Should You Use That jQuery Plug-In?
- Commonly Confused Bits Of jQuery
- Make Your Own Bookmarklets With jQuery
- Behind The Scenes Of Nike Better World
- Five Useful Interactive CSS/jQuery Techniques Deconstructed
- Five Useful Interactive CSS/jQuery Techniques Deconstructed
- 10 Useful CSS/JS-Coding Solutions For Web-Developers
- Useful HTML-, CSS- and JavaScript Tools And Libraries
- 50 Fresh JavaScript Tools That Will Improve Your Workflow
- 40 Useful jQuery Techniques And Plugins
- 45 Fresh Useful JavaScript And jQuery Techniques And Tools
- 50 Brilliant CSS3/JavaScript Coding Techniques
- 45 Powerful CSS/JavaScript-Techniques
My Favorite Programming Mistakes
Over my programming career, I have made a lot of mistakes in several different languages. In fact, if I write 10 or more lines of code and it works the first time, I’ll get a bit suspicious and test it more rigorously than usual. I would expect to find a syntax error or a bad array reference or a misspelled variable or something.
I like to classify these mistakes into three broad groups: cock-ups (or screw-ups in American English), errors and oversights. A cock-up is when you stare blankly at the screen and whisper “Oopsâ€: things like deleting a database or website, or overwriting three-days worth of work, or accidentally emailing 20,000 people. Errors cover everything, from simple syntax errors like forgetting a } to fatal errors and computational errors.
Ten Oddities And Secrets About JavaScript
JavaScript. At once bizarre and yet beautiful, it is surely the programming language that Pablo Picasso would have invented. Null is apparently an object, an empty array is apparently equal to false, and functions are bandied around as though they were tennis balls.
This article is aimed at intermediate developers who are curious about more advanced JavaScript. It is a collection of JavaScript’s oddities and well-kept secrets. Some sections will hopefully give you insight into how these curiosities can be useful to your code, while other sections are pure WTF material. So, let’s get started.
Seven JavaScript Things I Wish I Knew Much Earlier In My Career
I’ve been writing JavaScript code for much longer than I care to remember. I am very excited about the language’s recent success; it’s good to be a part of that success story. I’ve written dozens of articles, book chapters and one full book on the matter, and yet I keep finding new things. Here are some of the “aha!” moments I’ve had in the past, which you can try out rather than waiting for them to come to you by chance.
Shortcut notations. One of the things I love most about JavaScript now is shortcut notations to generate objects and arrays. So, in the past when we wanted to create an object, we wrote…
The Seven Deadly Sins Of JavaScript Implementation
Using JavaScript has become increasingly easy over the last few years. Whereas back in the day we needed to know the quirks of every browser, now many libraries such as jQuery, YUI, Dojo and MooTools allow someone who doesn’t even know JavaScript to spruce up boring HTML documents with impressive and shiny effects. By piggy-backing on the CSS selector engine, we have moved away from the complexity and inconsistencies of the DOM and made things much easier.
If you look at some of the code that has been released, though, we do seem to have taken a step backwards. In gaining easier access, we also became a bit sloppy with our code. Finding clearly structured, easy-to-maintain jQuery code is quite tough, which is why many plug-ins do the same thing. Writing one yourself is faster than trying to fathom what other developers have done.
The rules for solid, maintainable and secure JavaScript haven’t changed, though. So, let’s run through the seven sins of JavaScript development that will bite you in the backside when you have to maintain the code later on or hand it over to another party.
Find The Right JavaScript Solution With A 7-Step Test
As Web developers and designers, we are spoilt for choice right now. To build a complex Web application or even just spice up a website with some highly interactive interface element, we have hundreds of pre-built solutions to choose from. Every library comes with widgets and solutions, and every developer tries to make a name for him or herself by releasing a funky JavaScript solution to a certain interface problem. We can pick from dozens of menus, image carousels, tabs, form validators and “lightboxes.”
Having this much choice makes it easy for us to pick and choose, which is where things go wrong. In most cases, we measure the quality of a solution by its convenience to us. Our main reasons for picking one solution over another are: Does it do what I need it to do? Does it look cool? Does it sound easy to use? Would I want to use it? Does it use the framework I’m committed to?
What You Need To Know About JavaScript Scope
Understanding scope in programming is key to appreciating how your variables interact with the rest of your code. In some languages, this can be quite straightforward, but JavaScript’s anonymous functions and event handling features, along with a couple of little quirks, mean that handling scope in your applications can become frustrating.
This article discusses how JavaScript handles scope and how various JavaScript libraries provide methods for dealing with it and how they smooth out a few bumps. We’ll also look at how you can get back to basics and do some interesting scope wrangling without a library, a useful approach if you’re writing code that needs to stand alone.
jQuery And JavaScript Coding: Examples And Best Practices
When used correctly, jQuery can help you make your website more interactive, interesting and exciting. This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular Javascript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects.
The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript and, furthermore, why jQuery is a good choice of a framework to implement best practices.
Image Manipulation With jQuery And PHP GD
One of the numerous advantages brought about by the explosion of jQuery and other JavaScript libraries is the ease with which you can create interactive tools for your site. When combined with server-side technologies such as PHP, this puts a serious amount of power at your finger tips.
In this article, I’ll be looking at how to combine JavaScript/jQuery with PHP and, particularly, PHP’s GD library to create an image manipulation tool to upload an image, then crop it and finally save the revised version to the server. Sure, there are plugins out there that you can use to do this; but this article aims to show you what’s behind the process. You can download the source files for reference.
jQuery Plugin Checklist: Should You Use That jQuery Plug-In?
jQuery plug-ins provide an excellent way to save time and streamline development, allowing programmers to avoid having to build every component from scratch. But plug-ins are also a wild card that introduce an element of uncertainty into any code base. A good plug-in saves countless development hours; a bad plug-in leads to bug fixes that take longer than actually building the component from scratch.
Fortunately, one usually has a number of different plug-ins to choose from. But even if you have only one, figure out whether it’s worth using at all. The last thing you want to do is introduce bad code into your code base. The first step is to figure out whether you even need a plug-in. If you don’t, you’ll save yourself both file size and time.
Commonly Confused Bits Of jQuery
The explosion of JavaScript libraries and frameworks such as jQuery onto the front-end development scene has opened up the power of JavaScript to a far wider audience than ever before. It was born of the need — expressed by a crescendo of screaming by front-end developers who were fast running out of hair to pull out — to improve JavaScript’s somewhat primitive API, to make up for the lack of unified implementation across browsers and to make it more compact in its syntax.
All of which means that, unless you have some odd grudge against jQuery, those days are gone — you can actually get stuff done now. A script to find all links of a certain CSS class in a document and bind an event to them now requires one line of code, not 10. To power this, jQuery brings to the party its own API, featuring a host of functions, methods and syntactical peculiarities. Some are confused or appear similar to each other but actually differ in some way. This article clears up some of these confusions.
Make Your Own Bookmarklets With jQuery
Bookmarklets are small JavaScript-powered applications in link form. Often “one-click” tools and functions, they’re typically used to extend the functionality of the browser and to interact with Web services. They can do things like post to your WordPress or Tumblr blog, submit any selected text to Google Search, or modify a current page’s CSS… and many other things!
Because they run on JavaScript (a client-side programming language), bookmarklets (sometimes called “favelets”) are supported by all major browsers on all platforms, without any additional plug-ins or software needed. In most instances, the user can just drag the bookmarklet link to their toolbar, and that’s it!
In this article, we’ll go through how to make your own bookmarklets, using the jQuery JavaScript framework.
Behind The Scenes Of Nike Better World
Perhaps one of the most talked about websites in the last 12 months has been Nike Better World. It’s been featured in countless Web design galleries, and it still stands as an example of what a great idea and some clever design and development techniques can produce.
In this article, we’ll talk to the team behind Nike Better World to find out how the website was made. We’ll look at exactly how it was put together, and then use similar techniques to create our own parallax scrolling website. Finally, we’ll look at other websites that employ this technique to hopefully inspire you to build on these ideas and create your own variation.
Five Useful Interactive CSS/jQuery Techniques Deconstructed
With the wide variety of CSS3 and JavaScript techniques available today, it’s easier than ever to create unique interactive websites that delight visitors and provide a more engaging user experience. In this article, we’ll walk through five interactive techniques that you can start using right now. We’ll cover animated text effects, animated images without GIFs, mega drop-down menus, fancy slideshow navigation and animated icons for the hover state of buttons.
Besides learning how to accomplish these specific tasks, you’ll also master a variety of useful CSS and jQuery tricks that you can leverage when creating your own interactive techniques. The solutions presented here are certainly not perfect, so any thoughts, ideas and suggestions on how you would solve these design problems would be very appreciated.
Five Useful Interactive CSS/jQuery Techniques Deconstructed
Interactivity can transform a dull static website into a dynamic tool that not only delights users but conveys information more effectively. In this post, we’ll walk through five different coding techniques that can be easily implemented on any website to provide a richer user experience. These techniques will allow you to better display difficult content, help users find information more effectively and provide meaningful UI cues without overwhelming the user: on-page text search, drag controls for oversized content, subtle hover effects, comment count bars and a full-page slider.
Websites often have search boxes to allow users to find content from their archives. But what if you want to find content on the given page? Information Architects has had on-page text search that provides a great user experience. Let’s recreate this using jQuery.
10 Useful CSS/JS-Coding Solutions For Web-Developers
Often creative and truly remarkable design solutions remain unknown because we, designers, simply overlook them. Being busy with our own projects, we sometimes try to grasp the intuition behind (probably) complex and cluttered code of other designers to understand how they manage to implement particular design ideas. In fact, by just observing the code of other developers we can learn a lot from them; we can find interesting ideas and improve the quality of our work.
Over the last months we’ve been paying closer attention to interesting design techniques and coding solutions and tried to understand how each of these solutions work and how they can benefit other designers and developers. Such designs are often hard to find, so it would be great if you could suggest some solutions that are worth exploring in detail – we’ll certainly cover them in our next posts!
So let’s take a closer look at 10 useful CSS & Javascript techniques and coding solutions that can turn out to be useful for your next project. You should have at least a basic knowledge of CSS and JavaScript before you read the entire article.
JavaScript And jQuery Tools
Useful HTML-, CSS- and JavaScript Tools and Libraries
Front-end development is a tricky beast. It’s not difficult to learn, but it’s quite difficult to master. There are just too many things that need to be considered; too many tweaks that might be necessary here and there; too many details to make everything just right. Luckily, developers and designers out there keep releasing useful tools and resources for all of us to learn, improve our skills and just get better at what we do.
Here at Smashing Magazine, we’re continuously searching for time-saving, useful HTML-, CSS- and JavaScript-resources for our readers, to make the search of these ever-growing tools easier. We hope that these tools will help you improve your skills as well as your professional workflow. A sincere thanks to all designers and developers who are featured in this round-up. We respect and appreciate your contributions to the design community.
50 Fresh JavaScript Tools That Will Improve Your Workflow
JavaScript is an integral part of the RIA revolution. JavaScript allows developers to create rich and interactive web interfaces and establish asynchronous communication with servers for constantly up-to-date data without a page refresh.
Many things that were once accomplished using Flash objects can now be built using JavaScript – with the added benefit that it is free, typically more web and mobile accessible under most circumstances using best practices for development techniques, and without the need to use proprietary software for development.
Though JavaScript has been around for a while, new tools, techniques, and information are constantly being pumped out to continually push the technology into greater heights. In this article, we wish to share with you a huge list of fresh and new tools and resources that JavaScript developers will find useful and informative.
40 Useful jQuery Techniques And Plugins
Over the last year, Smashing Magazine has evolved. We’ve been publishing fewer lists and more in-depth articles about design and Web development. We have invited professionals and high-profile developers to write for us. We’ve been investing more resources in the quality and relevance of our articles. We’ve also explored new formats; and on weekends we’ve been publishing more inspirational pieces, leaving the in-depth articles to weekdays.
We’ve tried our best to fuel the growing appetite of our readers for more advanced articles, but recently we’ve been receiving more requests for carefully selected, useful round-ups. We are not big fans of lists either, but the format is useful and — if the resources are relevant — can be extremely helpful. Therefore, we’ve decided to add a couple of round-ups per month as a bonus to our regular articles. Instead of replacing the main articles, we will add round-ups on top of our regular schedule. If you don’t like round-ups or find them inappropriate, please feel free to skip them. How does this work for you?
In this post, we present 40 useful but obscure jQuery plug-ins that will hopefully help you improve the user experience on your websites. We look forward to your ideas and suggestions in the comments to this post.
45 Fresh Useful JavaScript And jQuery Techniques And Tools
Yes, this is another round-up of fresh and useful Javascript techniques, tools and resources. But don’t close the tab yet, as you might find this one very useful. In this selection we present calendars, forms, buttons, navigation, debugging, optimization and compatibility tables as well as handy resources and tools. We also cover various jQuery-plugins that will help you extend the functionality of your website and improve user experience with ready components or coding solutions.
The last section also covers a number of useful educational resources such as a compilation of useful JavaScript coding practices, a detailed comparison of JavaScript frameworks and general JavaScript programming conventions. We are looking forward to your feedback.
50 Brilliant CSS3/JavaScript Coding Techniques
CSS3 is coming. Although the browser support of CSS 3 is still very limited, many designers across the globe experiment with new powerful features of the language, using graceful degradation for users with older browsers and using the new possibilites of CSS3 for users with modern browsers. That’s a reasonable solution — after all it doesn’t make sense to avoid learning CSS3 (that will be heavily used in the future) only because these features are not supported yet. The point of this article is to give you a glimpse of what will be possible soon and what you will be using soon and provide you with an opportunity to learn about new CSS3 techniques and features.
In this post we present 50 useful and powerful CSS3/jQuery-techniques that can strongly improve user experience, improve designer’s workflow and replace dirty old workarounds that we used in Internet Explorer 6 & Co. Please notice that most techniques presented below are experimental, and many of them are not pure CSS3-techniques as they use jQuery or other JavaScript-library.
45 Powerful CSS/JavaScript-Techniques
CSS and JavaScript are extremely powerful tools for designers and developers. However, sometimes it’s difficult to come up with the one excellent idea that would solve a problem that you are facing right now. Good news: almost every day designers and developers come up with fresh and clever CSS tricks and techniques and share them with other developers online. We regularly collect all these tricks, filter them, sort them, revise them and prepare them for Smashing Magazine readers.
In this post we present 45 useful CSS/JavaScript-techniques that may help you find clever solutions to some of your problems or just get inspired by what is possible with CSS. We cover interesting CSS-techniques, navigation menus, CSS typography, CSS lists and CSS buttons. The focus of this post lies on CSS; please notice that some of the techniques use JavaScript or PHP for enhanced functionality.
Please notice that this is the first part of our large round-up of fresh CSS/JavaScript-techniques. Other techniques (CSS tables, CSS layouts, CSS for Mobile and CSS forms) will be featured in an upcoming article. So don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter for similar articles and a stream of useful resources. Please also let us know what we should change or improve in our future posts!
Related Posts
You might be interested in the following “Best of” selections as well:
We love high-quality content and we care about little details. We believe that good content and design are crafts worth sharpening. Located in the lovely city of Freiburg, Germany. Mostly Vitaly (vf), Iris (il), Stephan (sp) and Sven (sl).
Leave a Comment
Yay! You've decided to leave a comment. That's fantastic! Please keep in mind that comments are moderated and rel="nofollow" is in use. So, please do not use a spammy keyword or a domain as your name, or it will be deleted. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation instead. Thanks for dropping by!
No comments have been posted yet. Please feel free to comment first!
Note: Make sure your comment is related to the topic of the article above. Let's start a personal and meaningful conversation!