JsMag - the magazine for JavaScript developers

News roundup: Modern JavaScript, V8Monkey and SpiderNode, Adapt.js

Posted on April 23, 2011, 12:50 am, by David Calhoun, under News.

Modern JavaScript

Modern JavaScript by Rebecca Murphey makes the case that we still have a ways to go in the JavaScript community in terms of dependency management, cross-code communication, and modularity of code, and argues in support of the AMD proposal (Asynchronous Module Definition API). In short, she makes the case that we haven’t found a good way to make everything in the JavaScript landscape play nicely with each other yet. At least in an ideal fashion.

V8Monkey and SpiderNode

Mozilla has taken an interest in Node and is starting to fashion its own flavor using their own JavaScript engine.

You may remember concerns a few months back about Node’s tight coupling to V8, the engine that powers Google’s Chrome browser. Paul O’Shannessy, a Mozilla engineer, echoed the same concern and also explained it as a rationale to build a V8 API on top of Mozilla’s own JavaScript engine SpiderMonkey, resulting in what they call V8Monkey. SpiderNode, on the other hand, is the general term for Mozilla’s fork of Node.

Earlier this week, it looks like they were successful in getting Node to run on V8Monkey briefly before segfaulting. Progress, but there’s more work to be done!

Adapt.js

Adapt.js is a very lightweight JavaScript file that determines which CSS to load before a browser renders a page, as well as after a window resize (which also occurs on screen rotation on mobile devices). It serves as an alternative to building a separate website for mobile or serving content with media queries (which aren’t universally supported, requiring a polyfill for older browsers).

Releases

jQuery 1.6 Beta 1
Sproutcore 1.5
Knockout.js 1.2.0

Upcoming Events

An Event Apart Boston 2011 (May 2-4, 2011 in Boston)
JSConf 2011 (May 2-3, 2011 in Portland, Oregon, US)
NodeConf 2011 (May 5, 2011 in Portland, Oregon, US)
Google I/O 2011 (May 10-11, 2011 in San Francisco)
Web Directions Unplugged (May 12–13 2011, Seattle)
jsday (May 12-14, 2011 in Italy)
Mobilism (May 12-13, 2011 in Amsterdam)
BrazilJS (May 13-14, 2011 in Brazil)
TXJS (June 11, 2011 in Austin, Texas)
An Event Apart Atlanta (June 13–15, 2011, Atlanta)

Tidbits

Actual JavaScript Engine Performance – Crockford uses his own JSLint as a benchmark. But is JSLint really a better benchmark?

Multi-touch game controller in JavaScript/HTML5 for iPad (via JavaScript Weekly)
Videos from the Day of JS on Mobile back in January have now been posted.

Ways to immediately invoke functions (JSFiddle) – not that you should necessarily use all of these techniques, but they’re interesting nonetheless

WebGL Sonic the Hedgehog Game Engine

ECMA-262, 5th Edition: A survey of the latest JavaScript specification

Maqetta is an open source project that provides WYSIWYG visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces

jQuery Events: Stop (Mis)Using Return False

The IE10 User-Agent String – Microsoft warns about the dangers of user-agent sniffing. There will be some RegExp breakage for IE10… (just as there was with Opera 10)

Early findings: 97% of mobile end-user response time happens at the front end

Videos: jQuery Conf Bay Area 2011

jslintmate – JSLint/JSHint bundle for TextMate

FunctionSource is a new website from the creators of Ajaxian

Spine is a lightweight framework for building JavaScript web applications.

HTML5/JavaScript platform game optimised for iPad

The Complete Javascript Number Reference – a handy resource for converting between number formats

pre-commit checks your JavaScript before you commit. Included are jslint, console.log(), space vs. tab check, and a trailing whitespace check.

Audio: Jqcon 2011 SF Bay Area (Official jQuery Podcast)

Resume: How to not lose 90% of your upload

Get started with object-oriented JavaScript code

Getting CORS Working (cross-domain Ajax)