Latest Posts in Webdev

  • PoliticianList: Playing with Congressional Data

    PoliticianList: Playing with Congressional Data
    I've often found myself wondering when a particular senator is up for re-election, or what party an obscure member of the House is from. So I looked around and found an API from ProPublica. Then I made a list.
  • Making a Promise Chain

    Making a Promise Chain
    I was late to the game with JavaScript promises, but I'm onboard now. Let's talk about promises a little bit and see if we can make things clearer for future reference.
  • Using Deferred Objects to Counter Threading Problems

    Using Deferred Objects to Counter Threading Problems
    Recently at work I had to work out some logic to make absolutely sure that some code didn't run until all of the JavaScript files were loaded. I'd like to share the solution with you just in case you need it, or more likely when I need it as a reference down the road. However it lands, here we go...
  • How I Got Started with Gulp

    How I Got Started with Gulp
    Recently I decided to start the inevitable move from (extremely useful) apps like Codekit and MAMP to Gulp. I'm not an expert yet, but I managed to find some good resources for setting things up as well as some solutions for common troubles. I'm posting this as a reference rather than a tutorial.
  • Document Fragments and jQuery and Star Trek

    Document Fragments and jQuery and Star Trek
    For those of you who don't already know, I'm a big-time Star Trek fan. I'm especially interested in the original series, and some of my favorite content comes from an old role-playing game from a company called FASA in the 1980's. The game had an extensive timeline of events, and I've always wanted an easier way to read through it. Since I grew up to be a web developer, the obvious choice is to build an app!
  • Multiple JSON Data Sources for AngularJS

    Multiple JSON Data Sources for AngularJS
    If you have more than one data source for your AngularJS app, then you'll need them all completed before the thing runs. Although this is a common problem, solutions can be hard to find on the Unhelpful Interwebs. But don't worry, I promise we can solve it.
  • Event Delegation without jQuery

    Event Delegation without jQuery
    Today we're going to listen to some buttons from a parent element, and we're not going to use jQuery. We're going to use vanilla JavaScript. I still love me some jQuery, of course, but we don't gain a deeper understanding of JavaScript unless we dig into it a little bit and let go of our favorite tools.
  • Managing JavaScript on Resize

    Managing JavaScript on Resize
    For the past good long while, I've been using a throttled function to do various JavaScript chores when the browser fires a resize event. It's a good way to correct the heights of things or add a class when the window hits a certain size. That's been fine for a while, but recently I found a need to upgrade things.
  • Understanding Flickr Photo Size Suffixes

    Understanding Flickr Photo Size Suffixes
    When I built the image galleries for this site, I had to get cozy with Flickr's developer API. There are a few gotchas in there, so I thought it would be nice to save someone else a few minutes of headache and just post some answers. Today's gotcha involves the way Flickr's image suffixes work.
  • Spider-Man Knows When You Leave His Browser Tab

    Spider-Man Knows When You Leave His Browser Tab
    I've been playing around with Ye Olde Canvas again. This time I wanted to use several techniques in one animation, including the Page Visibility API, and combine those with some behaviors outside of the canvas itself. I also wanted to put an Easter egg into my site. Because Spider-Man.