Update June 2020: This blender is still going strong and this review was first published in 2015. We have bought name brand appliances and blenders that have never lasted this long. Since the issue of the screw coming loose and using some Loctite on it, we have had no issues and the screw hasn’t come loose. This blender is now five years old and doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of death.
I am rather smitten with Aurelia but it’s hard to deny the popularity of React. To avoid a situation where it’s React or nothing, to get the best of both worlds, we can use React inside of Aurelia. In Angular, we would have done this using a custom directive. In Aurelia, we are going to be doing the same, but instead, we will be creating a custom element which achieves the same thing as an Angular directive, albeit in a more clean ESNext and Aurelia-like way.
Recently in Aurelia I ran into a peculiar issue using the bundled Browser Sync Gulp task for deploying a test server. When visiting a parameterised URL the paths to the System packages would break. It turns out by default the paths are set in a way they will add onto the current URL instead of referencing the root “/” as the base path. In /config.js where all of the paths are setup, right up the top you will see a few paths set. Mine looks like the following (yours probably does as well):
Update: January 2017 I am using Aurelia, still. I am loving working with it and I find it hard to work with anything else. Aurelia has been stable and has saved me hundreds of hours of time by allowing me to be super efficient. Update: December 2016 I am still using Aurelia and enjoying it thoroughly. Since writing this article, Aurelia has grown immensely and hit a stable v1 release with constant improvements being made. Such a great framework that I am glad I decided to use.
The VR space has been ramping up for a while now, thanks in part to Oculus Rift and the fact that Facebook bought them for a VERY large sum of money a little while ago. Since Oculus originally debuted on Kickstarter and then were subsequently purchased, a VR arms race was started. Everyone is rushing to get their solution out there, evident by the fact Oculus have been working on their headset for years, the problem of creating a decent functional headset is harder than it appears.
The latest and greatest version of React.js is here in the form of version 0.13. With the latest release comes a plethora of great and potentially application breaking changes. This isn’t a definitive guide, just more of a brief post explaining some of the biggest changes in React.js. ES6 Support During the beta phase of 0.13 which I have been using for some time now, I absolutely loved the ES6 support aspect. Being able to write ES6 classes for React components just feels so damn right. The only downside is of course using ES6 classes means you cannot currently use mixins, I rarely use mixins anyway, so this was not really an issue for me.
Well, Apple have finally announced further details of their anticipated Apple Watch and I am seriously not impressed. The anticipation for the event was high, expectations even higher considering Apple like to tout themselves as this handheld and wearables design messiah. The incestuous fanboy brethren who live for every word their cult leader Tim Cook tells them also help further propel this grandiose perception of God-like perfection. While the Apple Watch looks quite decent, it is definitely not the best looking smart watch out there. And when compared to a traditional timepiece, it does not matter if you have a sapphire coated screen, you cannot compete with the look and feel of a real watch.
There are tonnes of different development methodologies and styles out there. You have test driven development, rapid application development, feature driven development and a whole bunch of other types of development approaches you can take. My favourite approach for personal projects is API Driven Development. You’re probably wondering if it is even a real thing. Before writing this article I wasn’t even sure myself. Sure enough, I found some posts on the subject of API Driven Development proving that I am not crazy and that API Driven Development is a real thing.
Corporate social networks are not a new premise. The corporate social network Yammer which was acquired by Microsoft in 2012 has been slowly toiling away behind the scenes, but you don’t really hear about it. I think it is safe to say Yammer has failed. Facebook reportedly have been readying a product called “Facebook for Work” which is exactly what it sounds like. An internal version of Facebook that allows internal communication within a company.
Javascript is an ever-growing language, especially now that releases for ECMAScript specifications now operate on a yearly release schedule. As such the importance of needing to know Javascript beyond just jQuery becomes even more important as the language grows in scope and quite quickly. This isn’t a definitive guide that claims to be the holy grail of Javascript developer knowledge. There are definitely things I have missed, things I might be wrong about and things you might disagree with as being something every Javascript developer should know.