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- Jul 14 2014
Improve Your Tests by Breaking the Rules
For many developers, writing tests is a hassle that would be best put off till tomorrow. For one, nothing can compete with the direct impact of writing great application logic. No user ever shared feedback like, “The UI was really pleasant and the functional tests were well-organized and readable.” There’s not much I can say […]
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Improve Your Tests by Breaking the Rules- Tagged in:
- performance,
- testing
- Mar 13 2014
Proactive Node.js Development with Travis CI
Life on the cutting edge can be treacherous. At any moment, your web browser may dramatically update its user interface. Your e-reader might take your books away. Your favorite snack cake could disappear from store shelves. For many, the uncertainty of this lifestyle just isn’t worth it. Fortunately, when it comes to Node.js development, you […]
Continue ReadingProactive Node.js Development with Travis CI- Tagged in:
- deployment,
- performance
- Feb 07 2014
The Little JavaScripter, Revisited
Many readers will recognize the following program, which is an adaptation of The Little Schemer’s Y combinator implementation; written and published by Douglas Crockford in 2003 to demonstrate the commonalities found between JavaScript and Scheme. If you’re unfamiliar with recursion, fixed point combinators or the “Y combinator”, take a look at the Wikipedia article and […]
Continue ReadingThe Little JavaScripter, Revisited- Tagged in:
- performance,
- web standards
- Jan 16 2014
Building HTML5 Games with GSN Games
HTML5 is ready for mobile Open Web games. Flash is absent or disappearing on mobile devices. Meanwhile, in the US and the UK, 20% of Internet users are mobile-only, and in some markets more than half of Internet users are mobile-only. It is widely held that the next two billion people coming online in the […]
Continue ReadingBuilding HTML5 Games with GSN Games - Dec 12 2013
Effective Unit Testing with AMD
AMD (short for Asynchronous Module Definition) is a JavaScript API specification for structuring modular code. The web abounds with blog posts illustrating its use in front-end application development (and there’s plenty of healthy debate around its necessity, too). The topic of unit testing (despite being integral to the process of software development) does not receive […]
Continue ReadingEffective Unit Testing with AMD- Tagged in:
- performance,
- testing
- Dec 10 2013
Counting Uniforms in WebGL
For a recent consulting project I was attempting to render some fairly complex skeletal animations in WebGL on Firefox and Chrome. I quickly ran into a situation where the animation was rendering on Linux and Mac computers, but not on Windows. All the test machines had up-to-date graphics drivers, but the Windows machines threw a […]
Continue ReadingCounting Uniforms in WebGL- Tagged in:
- data visualization,
- design,
- performance
- Oct 28 2013
Building Multiplayer HTML5 Games with Cloak
Here at Bocoup I’ve been building a lot of multiplayer HTML5 games using Node.js and Socket.io. This stack has been working great for us! We’ve used Socket.io in our work with Game Show Network, PBS and MIT, and we build all kinds of stuff on Node. My experience on these projects has led me to […]
Continue ReadingBuilding Multiplayer HTML5 Games with Cloak - Oct 21 2013
Towards “Responsiveness” with d3.chart.js
While data visualization is growing as a medium on the Open Web, practitioners of the field still struggle to make data visualization “work” on different screens. The question “how do I render at different sizes?” is an important one, but only tackles a portion of the greater challenge of “what does it mean to create […]
Continue ReadingTowards “Responsiveness” with d3.chart.js - Sep 03 2013
How Node.js Makes Network Code More Testable
Introduction Node.js, a server platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript engine, is changing the face of web development. While Node.js itself is fast and scalable, the open source community surrounding Node.js is constantly discovering new ways to make application development more productive. This article will show how Node.js network code can be easier to write automated […]
Continue ReadingHow Node.js Makes Network Code More Testable - Jun 18 2013
Information Hiding in JavaScript
Why would Bocoup, a company whose charge is to “move the open web forward,” be publishing an article on something so nefarious-sounding as “information hiding”? An article titled “Free Love & Information in JavaScript” would seem much more apt for this blog. Trust me: if information hiding were an inherently immoral practice, I wouldn’t know […]
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