Hosting an Alexa Skill on Pipedream / / No Comments I’ve been a big fan of the Amazon Alexa developer experience for a few years now. I haven’t done any active skill (what they call apps) in a while, but I thought I’d take a quick look at what’s required to host a skill on Pipedream. While this won’t be a "How to build an Alexa skill" post, I will share a bit of background information about the process, because honestly it’s pretty dang cool. Raymond Camden… more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Alexa, hosting, Pipedream, skill
Flexible, Powerful DataGrad from Sencha (Sponsored) / / No Comments Many of the web functionalities that we rely on once lived within individual desktop applications. From office suites, games, and financial tools, all of them are now web applications; they’re just as feature packed as their desktop counterparts. In the past I’ve used a variety of JavaScript grid widgets on client sites, and each had a number of pain points: performance, size, flexibility, etc. Sencha’s powerful DataGrid is possibly the best grid I’ve seen yet — let’s have a look. Quick Hits Create responsive tables with filtering, sorting, pagination, AJAX, and much more Handles millions of records with no performance degradation Data import and export capabilities... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: DataGrad, Flexible, from, powerful, Sencha, Sponsored
Including RSS Content in your Eleventy Site / / No Comments Before I begin, this post is not about generating an RSS page with Eleventy. If you need to do that, check the plugin that makes it (mostly) trivial to do. This post is about consuming RSS for your Eleventy site. I’ve got a page here (About) where I track my external articles and books. At work, we use Medium to host our blog and I’ve been publishing there as part of my job. I was curious how I could get that content on my About page as well. Raymond Camden… more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Content, Eleventy, including, Site
Easy Asset Access with the Cloudinary Media Library Browser Extension / / No Comments Readers of my blog will know that I’ve been banging the Cloudinary drum for years. Their awesome media capabilities allow users to optimally deliver images, video, and audio in any format and to any device. Performance, customization, flexibility, optimized delivery… Cloudinary makes media better for everyone. Another aspect of Cloudinary that I like? Their commitment to developing tools to make using their service as convenient as possible. The latest tool is the Media Library browser extension, a simple extension that gives its users access to their media in from within any tab — no need to go to the Cloudinary website itself! If you haven’t tried Cloudinary, here’s... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: access, Asset, browser, Cloudinary, Easy, Extension, library, Media
Simplify Your File Handling With Filestack Workflows (Sponsored) / / No Comments Automation is a really important skill for engineers, especially when it comes to working with various file types. The more you accept for input, and the more you automate, the better end output you can offer. Filestack’s workflows allow developers to define automated tasks using a their specialized UI. With no coding required, it’s easy to create a document workflow and scan every assignment for viruses, quarantine it until it can be reviewed, and alert the sender of the issue so that no work is late. After signing up for a free Filestack account, you can shift to creating your own workflows. When creating your workflow, you can choose from dozens of UI items that represent... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: file, Filestack, handling, Simplify, Sponsored, Workflows
12 Best JavaScript Blogs Every Developer Must Keep an Eye On – TechGenyz / / No Comments 12 Best JavaScript Blogs Every Developer Must Keep an Eye On TechGenyz “JavaScript” – Google News… more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: best, Blogs, Developer, every, JavaScript, Keep, Must, TechGenyz
Testing out the new Pipedream to Get Trance Releases / / No Comments Readers of my blog will know I’m a huge Pipedream fan. I’ve been blogging about them since I discovered them and find a way to use them for so many things now it’s my natural "first stop" when I want to build a new service. Raymond Camden… more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Pipedream, Releases, Testing, Trance
JavaScript Class Privates / / No Comments One of my aspects of JavaScript that drew me to it as a young developers was that its syntax was loose and I could code quickly. As you gain experience as an engineer, you start to realize that some traditional coding structure is a good thing, even if it slows you down. Using Jest or TypeScript to add typing to your JavaScript can save you from maintenance headaches and unexpected errors, for example. While those are pre-compile tools to accomplish structure, we’ve traditionally employed vanilla JavaScript patterns to mock private variables and methods in JavaScript. Did you know, however, that browsers and the JavaScript language support a specific syntax for creating private variables... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: class, JavaScript, Privates