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- Feb 07 2017
Performance Under Pressure
The following is a transcript of a talk given at various events throughout 2016, including Smashing Conf NYC, and An Event Apart Chicago. I’d like to begin with an exercise in relaxation. As many of you know, I am the picture of mellowness—ol’ Namasté Marquis, they call me. So, close your laptops. Close ’em. No […]
Continue ReadingPerformance Under Pressure- Tagged in:
- performance,
- responsive web design
- Sep 13 2016
How BoxArt Provides Fast DOM Animations
Our last article about BoxArt showed how to use BoxArt’s Animated component to animate a tile-dropping game built in React. This time, we are going to look at some features of how Animated optimizes animations for performance. The Beastliness of Layout Thrash There’s a performance nightmare constantly threatening when you’re animating in the browser. As […]
Continue ReadingHow BoxArt Provides Fast DOM Animations- Tagged in:
- animations,
- games,
- performance,
- react
- Dec 09 2015
Smaller, Faster Websites
The following is a transcript of a talk given at various events throughout 2015, including Bocoup’s own TXJS and Boston JS. Transcript My name is Mat Marquis, of Marquis Home Renovation. I don’t care about websites. I’m a carpenter. That, you’ll notice, is why my slide deck looks like the side of the most badass […]
Continue ReadingSmaller, Faster Websites- Tagged in:
- performance,
- responsive web design
- Jun 16 2015
The ES2015 Nightmarefile
They tried to cover this up. In designing ECMAScript 2015 (a.k.a. ES6, a.k.a. ES2015), the authors identified a number of undesirable side effects of their work. “Why worry?” they asked. “People will be so smitten with arrow functions and block-scope bindings that they won’t care about a few measly backwards-breaking changes.” Well I care, and […]
Continue ReadingThe ES2015 Nightmarefile- Tagged in:
- performance,
- web standards
- Jun 03 2015
A Facade for Tooling with NPM Package Scripts
We build a lot of software at Bocoup. Like other types of builders, we tend to grow attached to the particular sets of tools and scripts we use in our work. We don’t play favorites: my colleagues support Grunt, contribute to Gulp, and maintain stand-alone tools such as JSHint. It’s easy to take familiarity with […]
Continue ReadingA Facade for Tooling with NPM Package Scripts- Tagged in:
- performance,
- tools and workflow
- May 13 2015
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility is Decadent and Depraved
Look, I like good typography as much as the next person—maybe even a little more. When a CSS property came along with promises to doctor all my type with ligatures and carefully calculated kerning—not some half-assed tracking, but real kerning—I jumped at it. I put text-rendering: optimizeLegibility on headings, body copy, navigation links; I slapped […]
Continue Readingtext-rendering: optimizeLegibility is Decadent and Depraved- Tagged in:
- design,
- performance,
- tools and workflow
- Feb 18 2015
Stabilizing ECMAScript 2015 (ES6): Teaming up with TC39 and Google on Test262
August 14, 2015. Mark your calendars. That’s my next birthday. Another important date is June 18, 2015–it’s when the ECMA General Assembly will vote on and approve the 6th edition of Ecma-262 and usher in the next era of JavaScript. On that day, all those new language features we’ve been coveting/dreading will officially enter our […]
Continue ReadingStabilizing ECMAScript 2015 (ES6): Teaming up with TC39 and Google on Test262- Tagged in:
- performance,
- testing,
- web standards
- Oct 15 2014
A Day at the Races: Avoiding Random Failures in Selenium UI Tests
Selenium is an indispensable tool for developing web applications. It allows developers to write test scripts that control real browsers and ensure their applications behave in the way that users expect. Tests like these make software development much more pleasant–developers can have much greater certainty that their application is functioning correctly even after large refactoring […]
Continue ReadingA Day at the Races: Avoiding Random Failures in Selenium UI Tests- Tagged in:
- performance,
- responsive,
- testing
- Aug 28 2014
The Bocoup Open Device Lab
I’ve always been a huge proponent of building sites that work everywhere — any user, any browser, any device, any context. Websites work everywhere by default, and they stay that way so long as we know how not to break them. That’s what the Open Web means to me: ensuring that entire populations just setting […]
Continue ReadingThe Bocoup Open Device Lab- Tagged in:
- mobile,
- open source,
- performance,
- testing
- Aug 05 2014
Designing an Exponentiation Operator for JavaScript
Update: This proposal now has two open bugs for implementation, on V8 and SpiderMonkey. https://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=3915 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135708 In this article, I’ll explore the process of adding syntax to a programming language by going through the process of designing a new JavaScript exponentiation operator, which I’ve submitted to TC39 for consideration in ES7. In many programming languages, […]
Continue ReadingDesigning an Exponentiation Operator for JavaScript- Tagged in:
- performance,
- web standards