Issue #14 - February 18, 2011

Welcome to issue 14 of JavaScript Weekly. Some subscribers have asked me to include Facebook and Twitter buttons in issues so they can help to easily promote the newsletter so.. your wish is my command. Any likes or "retweets" are much appreciated!

News

Game Closure Makes it a Breeze to Build Multiplayer, Cross-Platform Games
The coding, synchronization, and debugging involved in building multiplayer games can be difficult but Game Closure, launched yesterday, is a new JavaScript-based dev environment and SDK that makes it easy to build and deploy multiplayer games across several platforms.

The yayQuery Podcast Digs Into jQuery 1.5
I can't link to it specifically, unfortunately, but the latest episode (#21) of the popular yayQuery podcast digs deep into the recently release jQuery 1.5. It's an entertaining 45 minutes, particularly if you watch the video version.

Articles and Guides

JavaScript Garden - Beautiful JavaScript Quirks
JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It's a single pager but the design is great.

Fixing These jQuery - An HTML5 Presentation
Fixing These jQuery is an HTML5 presentation designed to familiarise developers with basic approaches to debugging jQuery and JavaScript code. It also introduces many of the common pitfalls most people encounter at some point on their jQuery journey.

Understanding Prototypal Inheritance
Behavior reuse is a key aspect of object oriented programming. Many mainstream OO languages encourage this through class based inheritance. JavaScript has no classes, however, so Lakshan Perera takes a quick look at the alternatives.

How to Build a VoIP-Based Baby Monitor with JavaScript
Two members of the Phono/Tropo team have recently added new babies to their families. So what to do? Build a VoIP-based baby monitor using JavaScript, of course. This shows you how.

Testing for '-0' in JavaScript
The IEEE standard for floating point numbers upon with JavaScript's implementation is based treats 0 and -0 as distinct numbers. Horribly obtuse but some of you will love this!

Re-using Backbone.js Models on the server with Node.js and Socket.io to build real-time apps
A comprehensive walkthrough/tutorial by Henrik Joreteg on using Backbone.js, Node, and Socket.io to build data models that work and sync between clients through a Node server.

Using Twilio with Node.js
Twilio is a popular web-service API for performing telephony operations. Dusty Candland has written a post to quickly get you started writing your own Twilio apps running on Node.

46 jQuery Tutorials For Web Developers
I know, I know, it's a 'list post.' I usually find something worth reading from these though and this one has some interesting links if you're working with jQuery.

Using AJAX with jQuery Screencast
A free 20 minute screencast by Screencasts.org about performing AJAX requests using jQuery's handy AJAX functions - ideal for beginners or those looking for a refresher.

Building Single Page Apps with jQuery's Best Friends
Addy Osmani returns with a bumper walkthrough of building a gracefully-degradable 'single page' app using jQuery, Underscore.js, Backbone.js, LAB.js, and more.

Code and Libraries

Move: An Interesting New Flavor of JavaScript
A simpler and cleaner programming language than JavaScript, but which can run in any JavaScript environment. Move is a superset of JavaScript rather than an entirely different language so Move scripts can be valid JavaScript scripts too.

Amplify - A Component Library for jQuery
Amplify is a set of components designed to solve common webapp problems with a simple API. Its goal is to simplify all forms of data handling by providing a unified API for various data sources. Amplify's store component handles persistent client-side storage, using standards like localStorage and sessionStorage, but falling back on non-standard implementations for older browsers.

jsfx: Javascript Sound Effect Generator
jsfx is a library by Egon Elbre that can generate sound effects directly from JavaScript (think noise, square waves, and the like).

JSONloops: A Node.js Powered Audio Sequencer
JSONloops is a real-time, multiuser audio sequencer for node.js and the browser reminiscent of FruityLoops (a.k.a. FL Studio). Audio playback is handled by node.js servers, while multiple browsers can act as control devices.

cluster: Plugin-enabled multi-core server manager for Node.JS
Cluster makes it easy to run a Node.js app across multiple cores on a multi-core machine. You get hot restarts, workers, and plugins for things like stats and logging, all out of the box.

It's not specifically JavaScript but..

httpstat.us
A super-simple service that returns different HTTP codes on demand - useful for testing how your scripts deal with varying responses. And if you send any other three digit number that's not in their list, they'll return it!