So, You’d Like to Start an Open Source Project

Regular readers of this blog are no strangers to free and open source software. From Firefox to Brave, Node.js to OpenSSL, and jQuery to React (finally), today’s web developer can’t get very far at all without relying on “FOSS.” However, there is a huge difference between consuming FOSS and maintaining FOSS. The latter task is […]

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The Caper of the Flaky Test

The test showed up on my desk just like any other. There I was, working with Google’s Web Platform Predictability team to find so-called “flaky” tests in the venerable Web Platform Tests project. I’d run a hundred or so at a time, over and over again, looking for any that reported inconsistent results. It was […]

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The Many Faces of Functions in JavaScript

If you’ve had any contact with JavaScript code, you’re probably very familiar with how to define and call functions, but are you aware of of how many different ways you can define a function? This is a common challenge of writing and maintaining tests in Test262—especially when a new feature comes into contact with any […]

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Screencast Transcript: Improving Webpack Build Times

On February 15, 2017 we had a screencast to talk about how to improve webpack build times by utilizing the new webpack HardSource plugin created by our colleague Z Goddard. This post contains the video of that event along with a transcript and visual aids. If you’re interested in learning more about webpack, check out […]

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Using NVDA Screen Reader on Windows

NVDA stands for NonVisual Desktop Access and is a FREE screen reading app for Windows OS. Emphasis on the “free”, as there are other Windows screen readers out there with prices that will make you spit-take across your monitor. (Is there such a thing as a subtweet inside a blog post?) If you do end […]

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Visualizing the Health of the Internet with Measurement Lab

How do you visualize the “Health of the Internet”? This was the challenge posed to the Data Vis team at Bocoup by our client Measurement Lab, a nonprofit that collects millions of Internet speed tests every month from around the world since 2009. This data is invaluable to policy makers, researchers, and the general public […]

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Three Years with the WordPress REST API

In December WordPress 4.7 shipped with a built-in REST API, giving every WordPress site out-of-the-box REST endpoints for the core WordPress data types such as posts, comments and categories. This release is the culmination of almost four years of work by a globally-distributed contributor team, and I’m proud to say that here at Bocoup we’ve […]

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CSS Grid: Learning new layout

I’ve been writing base layouts for CSS a long time. Come next month, I’m going to be using a new feature to do that work for the first time in many years, CSS Grid. Yes, flexbox came along and I used it for some pieces of the layout, but it didn’t change the way I […]

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Exploring New Technologies for Making Maps. Vector Tiles & WebGL (Part One)

Maps are both practical and political. They possess undoubtable utility for navigating the physical world and have a long history of being used to shape and reshape the our social and political conceptions of the world. The ability to mark a territory, carve up a continent (or remember one), count a people, or map our […]

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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 […]

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