A Simple Slideshow Web Component / / No Comments As I continue to play around with and learn more about web components, I thought I’d build a simple component to make it easier to add a slideshow. By that, I mean something that renders one picture but provides controls to go to more images. I’ve probably built this many times in the past, both in JavaScript and server-side code, and I thought it would be a nice candidate for a component. As with most of my demos so far, there’s a lot more that could be done with it, but I thought I’d share what I have so far. Once again I want to give a shout-out to Simon MacDonald for helping me get this code working. (At the end of the post, I’ll share the mistake I made, as... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Component, simple, Slideshow
fetch with Timeout / / No Comments A few years back I wrote a blog post about how write a fetch Promise that times out. The function was effective but the code wasn’t great, mostly because AbortController , which allows you to cancel a fetch Promise, did not yet exist. With AbortController and AbortSignal available, let’s create a better JavaScript function for fetching with a timeout: Much like the original function, we’ll use setTimeout to time to the cancellation but we’ll use the signal with the fetch request: async function fetchWithTimeout(url, opts = {}, timeout = 5000) { // Create the AbortController instance, get AbortSignal const abortController = new AbortController(); const { signal }... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: fetch, Timeout
Followup to My Intl Short Number Post / / No Comments A few days ago I shared a blog post about using the Intl object in JavaScript to create short, more readable numbers. So for example, instead of 9123456, it would display 9.1M. This was done using the notation option in Intl.NumberFormat. Yesterday I randomly ran into an interesting modification on this using yet another option, compactDisplay. The compactDisplay option is only used when notation is set to compact. It supports two options, short which is default and what I demonstrated in the previous post, and long. So given a number, i, you would use it like so: new Intl.NumberFormat('en-US', { notation:'compact', compactDisplay:'long'}).format(i); And the result is, well, longer. đŸ˜‰ What’s... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Followup, Intl, Number, Post, Short
Short Number Formatting in Python / / No Comments Yesterday I wrote a blog post about creating short number formats in JavaScript. Definitely check out that post first, but the idea was to take something like 9496301 and display it as 9.5M. In that post, I used the built-in Intl object and it worked really well. It got me thinking, could you do the same in Python? First off, I checked and was happy to see that like JavaScript, Python supports numeric separators. This makes it much easier to read large numbers in code. It also meant I could take my test array and copy and paste it into a Python program: inputs = [ 999, 1000, 2999, 12_499, 12_500, 430912, 9_123_456, 1_111_111_111, 81_343_902_530, 1_111_111_111_111, 62_123_456_789_011,... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Formatting, Number, Python, Short
How to Determine a JavaScript Promise’s Status / / No Comments Promises have changed the landscape of JavaScript. Many old APIs have been reincarnated to use Promises (XHR to fetch, Battery API), while new APIs trend toward Promises. Developers can use async/await to handle promises, or then/catch/finally with callbacks, but what Promises don’t tell you is their status. Wouldn’t it be great if the Promise.prototype provided developers a status property to know whether a promise is rejected, resolved, or just done? My research led me to this gist which I found quite clever. I took some time to modify a bit of code and add comments. The following solution provides helper methods for determining a Promise’s status: // Uses setTimeout with... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: determine, JavaScript, promises, status
Wrapping Up 2022 / / No Comments I have a tradition here where – usually – I write up a "here’s what I did this year" post. Typically I write this just for myself as I figure it’s a good way to take stock and really appreciate what I’m accomplished. Sometimes it’s just a nice way to say goodbye and look forward to the next year. I feel like every year is incredibly busy as well as exciting, but kind of in the Chinese curse manner. That being said – my kids are healthy and happy, my wife is healthy and happy and I’m well employed. No matter what else happens, that’s a win for the year over all. What I Accomplished This was a huge year for my blog and I’m very... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: 2022, Wrapping
Detecting Fonts Ready / / No Comments Knowing when resources are loaded is a key part of building functional, elegant websites. We’re used to using the DOMContentLoaded event (commonly referred to as “domready”) but did you know there’s an event that tells you when all fonts have loaded? Let’s learn how to use document.fonts! The document.fonts object features a ready property which is a Promise representing if fonts have been loaded: // Await all fonts being loaded await document.fonts.ready; // Now do something! Maybe add a class to the body document.body.classList.add('fonts-loaded'); Font files can be relatively large so you can never assume they’ve loaded quickly. One simply await from... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Detecting, Fonts, Ready
Adding Download Support in an Eleventy Site / / No Comments I was thinking recently about how I would add "Downloads" support to an Eleventy site. By that I mean, a site where you have various resources (PDFs, zip, etc) and want to provide a way to let users download them in a consistent manner, as well as how basic tracking could be done as well. I came up with a few ideas I’d like to share, but as always, please let me know what you’ve done and what you would suggest. Method 1 – Meta Refresh For my first attempt, I imagined a site where I’ve got some files up in S3 (like I do for my images here) and I’d like to take a directory and set them up as resources. So for example, imagine a _data file named downloads.json: {... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Adding, download, Eleventy, Site, Support