NomadJS: A new way to learn

Almost two years ago a friend and fellow conference speaker, Cal Evans, began an interesting experiment: a virtual PHP usergroup he called NomadPHP. The event started small, just a dozen or so attendees, which isn't out of the ordinary for a usergroup generally. But the meetings had fantastic speakers focusing on deep technical content. That idea has blossomed into another endeavor: our new group called NomadJS. I want to take a few minutes to introduce to this group, ask for your help...

Next Stage for Mockjax

In 2010, while working for our mutual former employer, Jonathan Sharp started working on a small library to mock Ajax calls made through jQuery in order to better test front end JavaScript code. Since then, fifty different people have contributed to jQuery Mockjax to make it one of the simplest tools for mocking out HTTP calls from JavaScript. I took over primary maintenance of the library earlier this year while working at appendTo; however, as of last Friday, October 17, 2014, ownership...

Testing Front End Code Without a Server

The existence of a server does not determine the success of your front end testing strategy.

That is the basis, a thesis almost, for the rest of this post. The fact is that of the few of you actually doing front end testing, most are doing so with the "help" of a testing server that provides data from some pre-filled database. This is wrong.

This may not sit well with any of you, but my guess is that if you're reading this post, then you are...

My Next Billion Users

I'm trying to change the world - a goal my wife has always aspired to, but which I've only recently thought about in earnest. Crazy you say? Perhaps...

I attend a fair number of conferences and usergroups - large and small, near and far - and generally speaking I get a lot out of them professionally. That's not only from a technical perspective, but also in terms of professional connections and conversations. A few weeks ago I was in Miami for the SunshinePHP conference...

Windows 8 Native JavaScript File System

I've been doing a fair amount of work on Windows 8 native applications lately, working with the Windows and WinJS JavaScript namespaces. Contrary to what a lot of people may say – including me from time to time – I have enjoyed much of that work. There are serious issues that the Microsoft team needs to work on (testing, the hamstrung webview, the structure of the syntax, etc), but it's certainly a nice direction to be headed for a core web developer like myself.

I've...