Cory House: 12 Rules for Professional JavaScript in 2015
September 28, 2015Some good advices on writing Professional JavaScript Code by Cory House.
WP REST API – Core Merge Proposal
September 22, 2015In case you missed it: WP REST API is finally being officially proposed to merge into WordPress Core. The idea is to first integrate the infrastructure of the API in Version 4.4 and then merge the endpoints in Version 4.5 as a second step.
What’s also great is that the Team working on the API used GitHub during Development and the experience they gained could lead to a tighter integration of GitHub for the work on WordPress core too, which would be a great side effect.
Eric Meyer on Content/Ad Blocking
September 22, 2015Eric Meyer’s primer on Content Blocking is spot-on.
The ads that are at risk now are the ones delivered via bloated, badly managed, security-risk mechanisms. In other words: what’s at risk here is terrible web development.
Granted, the development of these ads was so terrible that it made the entire mobile web ecosystem appear far more broken that it actually is, and prompted multiple attempts to rein it in. Now we have content blockers, which are basically the nuclear option: if you aren’t going to even attempt to respect your customers, they’re happy to torch your entire infrastructure.
I used an Ad Blocker on desktop for a long time now, but i also have many sites set to “do not block”. These are basically all sites that respect me and treat me as a human being. And if you are a publisher, ad-provider or anyone else working in this industry and don’t respect your customers, i couldn’t care less if you’re going downhill from here and i would suggest you to go back to the drawing board as fast as you can.
Or, as Kontra eloquently phrased it on Twitter:
Then Users: Please DoNotTrack me AdTech+Publishers: Screw you Now AdTech+Publishers: Please DoNotAdBlock me Users: Screw you
— Kontra (@counternotions) September 20, 2015
Improving Code Quality
July 9, 2015If you’re building things with WordPress, it’s important to deliver quality code. Especially if it’s going to be released to the public or used by a client. There’s a good post on the WPMUDEV Blog covering many aspects from HTML/CSS, JavaScript or PHP to the WordPress Coding Standards or Accessibility.
It’s a great starting point if you are unsure how to improve your code but also a good reminder for experienced developers.
Stop Cowboy Coding: 10 Tips for Improving the Quality of Your WordPress Themes and Plugins
JavaScript.com
June 16, 2015
Code School just launched JavaScript.com, a page dedicated to all things JS. Basically, the page is split into Resources and News, which can also be subscribed to via an Email Newsletter called FiveJS (5 Minutes of JavaScript).
First thought: Heck, i wanna to know what they paid for this domain.
Second thought while looking through the news and resources: After all these years working with the web it still amazes me how much knowledge you can get for free.
Realistic Text
May 26, 2015
Another crazy experiment: Creating realistic looking text in CSS. Hard to believe that it’s fully rendered in browser and not photographed.
Quotes on Design fetches Quotes using the WP-API
May 13, 2015Quotes on Design is a page that serves quotes about design, curated by Chris Coyier. They just rebuilt it using the WP-API to fetch posts from WordPress.
Up to this point, Quotes on Design (QoD) used a bit of custom code to query the WordPress database and serve up quotes. This was used for the site itself, and for its API to allow use on external sites. With the excitement surrounding the upcoming WordPress JSON REST API, we thought it would be fun to rebuild the site to use the WP API instead of our own custom code.
It’s nice to see more and more real world examples using the WP-API popping up lately. In this post on CSS-Tricks, Andy Adams details exactly how they built it which makes it a perfect tutorial if you want to get familiar with the WP-API.
Beau Lebens: WordPress As The Backbone(.js)
March 30, 2015A great presentation by Beau Lebens about how to build dynamic Applications using Backbone.js and the upcoming WP-API.
CSS-Tricks – An introduction to WordPress Escaping
March 24, 2015If you’re a WordPress developer that writes HTML/CSS/JS (which is 100% of theme developers and 99% of plugin developers), you need to know the basics of front end security for WordPress. WordPress gives you all the tools you need to make your theme or plugin secure. You just need to know how and when to use each tool.
CSS-Tricks published a good introduction to Escaping in WordPress and why it is so important. There’s no excuse anymore to not make your front end code secure.
Introduction to WordPress Front End Security: Escaping the Things
You might not need jQuery
March 5, 2015We often use jQuery just because we’re used to work with it. This page nicely demonstrates how easy some common functionality could be replaced with plain JS.
jQuery and its cousins are great, and by all means use them if it makes it easier to develop your application.
If you’re developing a library on the other hand, please take a moment to consider if you actually need jQuery as a dependency. Maybe you can include a few lines of utility code, and forgo the requirement. If you’re only targeting more modern browsers, you might not need anything more than what the browser ships with.
Definitely something i will come back to next time i’m tempted to implement jQuery just to switch some classes easily.