Link tags: dom_scripting

CSS Quick Tip: Animating in a newly added element | Stephanie Eckles

I can see myself almost certainly needing to use this clever technique at some point so I’m going to squirrel it away now for future me.

petite-vue - npm

An interesting alternative to using the full Vue library, courtesy of Vue’s creator:

petite-vue is an alternative distribution of Vue optimized for progressive enhancement. It provides the same template syntax and reactivity mental model with standard Vue. However, it is specifically optimized for “sprinkling” small amount of interactions on an existing HTML page rendered by a server framework.

1loc | Favorite JavaScript single line of code

This is very handy indeed! Quick one-line JavaScript helpers categorised by type.

And, no, you don’t need to npm install any of these. Try “vendoring” them instead (that’s copying and pasting to you and me).

A little bit of plain Javascript can do a lot

I decided to implement almost all of the UI by just adding & removing CSS classes, and using CSS transitions if I want to animate a transition.

Yup. It’s remarkable how much can be accomplished with that one DOM scripting pattern.

I was pretty surprised by how much I could get done with just plain JS. I ended up writing about 50 lines of JS to do everything I wanted to do.

Where did the focus go? | Amber’s Website

Amber documents a very handy bit of DOM scripting when it comes to debugging focus management: document.activeElement.

Getting Started with the DOM

Here’s a short clear introduction to DOM scripting.

HTML DOM - Common tasks of managing HTML DOM with vanilla JavaScript

This is a great way to organise code snippets—listed by use case, and searchable too!

Next time you’re stuck on some DOM scripting, before reaching for a framework or library, check here first.

Scripts: async, defer

I’m constantly forgetting the difference between the async attribute and the defer attribute on script elements—this is a handy explanation.

HTML Includes That Work Today | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA

Scott writes up that super smart transclusion trick of his.

Inline an SVG file in HTML, declaratively & asynchronously!

Woah! This is one smart hack!

Scott has figured out a way to get all the benefits of pointing to an external SVG file …that then gets embedded. This means you can get all the styling and scripting benefits that only apply to embedded SVGs (like using fill).

The fallback is very graceful indeed: you still get the SVG (just not embedded).

Now imagine using this technique for chunks of HTML too …transclusion, baby!

What’s the difference between JavaScript event delegation, bubbling, and capturing? | Go Make Things

I can never keep these straight—this is going to be a handy reference to keep on hand.

CSS: A New Kind Of JavaScript | HeydonWorks

A bold proposal by Heydon to make the process of styling on the web less painful and more scalable. I think it’s got legs, but do we really need another three-letter initialism?

We waste far too much time writing and maintaining styles with JavaScript, and I think it’s time for a change. Which is why it’s my pleasure to announce an emerging web standard called CSS.

Easy Toggle State

I think about 90% of the JavaScript I’ve ever written was some DOM scripting to handle the situation of “when the user triggers an event on this element, do something to this other element.” Toggles, lightboxes, accordions, tabs, tooltips …they’re all basically following the same underlying pattern. So it makes sense to me to see this pattern abstracted into a little library.

A Year Without jQuery

In many ways, moving to vanilla JavaScript highlights the ugliness of working with the DOM directly, and the shortcomings of native Element object — shortcomings which Resig solved so incredibly eloquently with the jQuery API.

Having said that, the lessons I’ve learned over the last year have made me a better developer, and the tools built in the process have opened my eyes and given me enough confidence and understanding of vanilla JavaScript that the only scenario where I would personally consider using jQuery again would be a project needing IE8 support.

You Don’t Need jQuery! – Free yourself from the chains of jQuery by embracing and understanding the modern Web API and discovering various directed libraries to help you fill in the gaps.

The tone is a bit too heavy-handed for my taste, but the code examples here are very handy if you’re weaning yourself off jQuery.

A Dive Into Plain JavaScript

A nice introduction to writing vanilla JavaScript, especially if you’re used to using jQuery.

OriDomi - origami for the web

A fun little JavaScript library for folding the DOM like paper. The annotated source is really nicely documented.

On layout and web performance by Kelly Norton

This is handy: a look at which DOM properties and methods cause layout thrashing (reflows).

DOM Enlightenment

This looks great! It’s a CC-licensed book by Cody Lindley (whose work I’ve admired for many years) aimed at teaching DOM Scripting for modern browsers. You can read the whole thing online or wait for the paper version from O’Reilly.

If all your JavaScript currently consists of writing jQuery plugins, I highly recommend you read this.

Vanilla JavaScript FTW

I’ve found myself using jQuery less and less recently. Partly to avoid the extra download and file size but also—as shown here—when it comes to DOM manipulation, there’s a lot you can do straight out of the box.