Front End Development Blog by Greg Babula

HTML5 Rocks HTML5 Rocks is now sporting a new design and enough...

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:00:06 -0500

HTML5 Rocks is now sporting a new design and enough awesome information to keep you reading for days.

SimpleVid: A jQuery Plugin for Self-Hosted Fluid Width Video

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

SimpleVid: A jQuery Plugin for Self-Hosted Fluid Width Video:

SimpleVid provides an easy way to host and embed your own fluid (in the resizable sense) videos. Think of it like a FitVids.js but for self hosted video. Handy. It even has a Flash fallback for browsers that don’t support H.264.

Touchy.js: A Lightweight JS Library for Touch Events

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:00:06 -0500

Touchy.js: A Lightweight JS Library for Touch Events:

Touchy.js by Jairaj Sethi is a simple, lightweight (just over 1KB when compressed) library for dealing with touch events in the browser. It has no dependencies so you can get started right away.

Is it The Section Or The Aside? An HTML5 Element Flowchart As a...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Is it The Section Or The Aside? An HTML5 Element Flowchart

As a relatively new specification, HTML5 still has quite a few myths and misconceptions which lead one to misuse its technology. New semantic elements introduce a better way to define the content of web pages, yet not all of them are very convenient nor straightforward. Do you know exactly when each element should be used (and when not)? Don’t fear, the Doctor is to the rescue.

Clever PNG Optimization Techniques

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Clever PNG Optimization Techniques:

This article provides you with a good number of useful techniques that will help you optimize your PNG-images. The techniques are derived from laborious hours spent on studying how exactly the PNG encoder saves data.

flotr2: A Canvas Graphing Library Flotr2 is a fork of the...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

flotr2: A Canvas Graphing Library

Flotr2 is a fork of the popular Flotr library and offers a great canvas-based way to render attractive charts and graphs. Flotr2 brings library agnosticism and mobile/touch event support to the table and clocks in at under 25KB!

psd.js: A Photoshop PSD File Parser

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

psd.js: A Photoshop PSD File Parser:

psd.js is a general purpose file parser for PSD files created in Photoshop. Given a PSD file, it can parse out information such as image size and color modes, image resources, layer info, image contents, etc.

ArcText While CSS3 can letters, it’s complicated to...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

ArcText

While CSS3 can letters, it’s complicated to arrange each letter along a curved path. Arctext.js is a jQuery plugin that does it for you and the results look great.

Stellar.js: Easy Parallax Effects in JavaScript

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Stellar.js: Easy Parallax Effects in JavaScript:

Stellar.js claims all you need to do is add some simple data attributes to your markup, run its stellar() method, and.. you get to enjoy the latest visual effect du jour.

The State Of HTML5 Video An analysis of the state of HTML5...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

The State Of HTML5 Video

An analysis of the state of HTML5 video and its support across different browsers and platforms with what formats, tags, and accessibility features are also supported.

From jQuery to JavaScript: A Reference

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

From jQuery to JavaScript: A Reference:

Jeffrey Way takes a variety of common jQuery tasks, and converts them to both modern and legacy JavaScript. Very handy if you’re more comfortable with jQuery than native JavaScript and want to pick up some techniques.

HTML5 Canvas and Processing.JS

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

HTML5 Canvas and Processing.JS:

Processing is a language and IDE for building visually oriented programs and processing.js is a JavaScript equivalent using the HTML5 Canvas. In this article, Joey Cadle goes step by step through the basics of using Processing.js to work with the canvas.

Device and Viewport Size In JavaScript

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Device and Viewport Size In JavaScript:

A quick live demonstration of how to grab the device and browser viewport sizes using JavaScript.

TextExt: A jQuery Plugin to Extend Text Field Functionality

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

TextExt: A jQuery Plugin to Extend Text Field Functionality:

TextExt is a plugin for jQuery which is designed to provide functionality such as tag input and autocomplete and ultimate provides modularity and extensibility for enhancing text field functionality.

The Top 12 JavaScript MVC Frameworks Reviewed

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0500

The Top 12 JavaScript MVC Frameworks Reviewed:

Can’t remember the pros and cons of all those frameworks like Spine, Sammy, Sproutcore, Backbone, and the rest? Gordon L. Hempton runs through 12 of the most popular, lists their pros and cons, and picks Ember.js as his ultimate winner

HTML5 Please A cool bunch of folks just launched HTML5 Please,...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

HTML5 Please

A cool bunch of folks just launched HTML5 Please, which is aiming at answering those questions and providing advice and recommendations on the best way to handle the implementation and fallback scenario.

Captain Obvious on JavaScript

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Captain Obvious on JavaScript:

Reg Braithwaite demonstrates the power of using JavaScript’s first order functions, factoring expressions into functions, and using functions as building blocks in larger processes. A must read. I might call it ‘how functional ideas can make JavaScript rock’ perhaps ;-)

Steve Souders on JavaScript Performance Steve Souders, Googler...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Steve Souders on JavaScript Performance

Steve Souders, Googler and general Web performance optimization guru, recently gave a talk at SFJS about the performance of asynchronous JavaScript loading in the browser. Here are the slides which, luckily, can mostly stand on their own.

Understanding MVC And MVP (For JavaScript And Backbone Developers)

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Understanding MVC And MVP (For JavaScript And Backbone Developers):

Addy Osmani looks at the popular Model-View-Controller (MVC) and Model-View-Presenter (MVP) models of application development and how they apply to JavaScript developers. There’s a lot to read here but it’s worth it.

Building a jQuery Mobile Application, Part 1

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:11:00 -0500

Building a jQuery Mobile Application, Part 1:

The first part of a series of articles about building a mobile app using jQuery Mobile. Part 1 is from November 2011 but he finished the whole 4 part series this week.