Web development is an industry that’s in a state of constant flux with technologies and jargon changing and mutating in an endless cycle. Not to mention the sheer deluge of information one has to process everyday.
In this semi-frequent series of articles, we’ll seek to rectify this by bringing you all the important news, announcements, releases and interesting discussions within the web development industry in a concise package. Join me after the jump!
News
All of the important news in a single place: releases, announcements, companies bickering, security issues and all related hoopla.
jQuery 1.6.2 Released
Almost every seems to be using jQuery these days and version 1.6.2 of the library is now out. This is the second minor release on top of jQuery 1.6 and lands a number of fixes for bugs. The version is already up on a number of oft used CDNs so using the new version is just a switcheroo away!
JS Bin 2.8.0 is Out
Remy Sharp’s JSBin is a fantastic tool for debugging — by yourself or with a team. JS Bin 2.8.0 brings with it live previews, resizable panels and autocomplete among many others.
IE10 Platform Preview 2 Released
Internet Explorer is on the path to standards redemption and they see IE10 as their asnwer. The IE10 Platform Preview 2 has been released and includes support for CSS3 Floats, HTML5 Drag-drop and File reader API among a lot more.
WordPress 3.2 now available
The new version of WordPress ships with a ton of new features including a super focused, writing mode, a refresh of the dashboard, a new HTML5 theme and performance improvements among others. Be sure to update your installations!
Code Release: Backbone.js 0.5.0
Along with a slew of tweaks and bug fixes, the most notable new feature is HTML5 “pushState” support, which you can see in action by trying a search in DocumentCloud’s public archive.
Google Web Fonts v2 Released
Version 2 of Google Web Fonts has been released. This release includes a ton of new functionality including better searching and filtering capabilities and, of course, many more fonts.
Google Releases Flash to HTML5 Conversion Tool
The tool, named Swiffy, was made available on Google Labs. You can upload a SWF file, and Swiffy will produce an HTML5 version which will run in modern browsers with a high level of SVG support such as Chrome and Safari.
Node 0.5 Out in the Open
Version 0.5 of the highly acclaimed NodeJS environment is now out with a number of new features, bug fixes and performance improvements. Check out the link below to see the full changelog.
NodeJS on the way to Windows
In more Node related news, Microsoft has officially partnered with Joyent in porting NodeJS to the Windows platform. The resulting binary is expected to work with versions as far back as Server 2003.
Nettuts+ Releases Apps for Web Developers
Not to toot our own horn but recently we’ve started releasing custom made desktop apps that are tailor made for on web developers. Hit the link below to find out more!
New Kids on the Block
As web developers, the sheer amount of resources we can tap into increases exponentially with time. Here is just a quick look at some recently created resources that deserve your attention — everything from new books to scripts and frameworks.
Guider.JS
Guiders is a JavaScript library for visually enhancing your web application with guiders. A guider is a dialog box that guides a user through your application. This improves the user experience of a web application by visually introducing the user to important features.
Paper.JS
Paper.js is an open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas. It offers a clean Scene Graph / Document Object Model and a lot of powerful functionality to create and work with vector graphics and bezier curves, all neatly wrapped up in a well designed, consistent and clean programming interface.
smoke.js
A framework-agnostic styled alert system for JavaScript. Lightweight, flexible,uses CSS3 animation and is easy to use.
CoffeeKup
If you like CoffeeScript, then you’re really go love CoffeeKup. It’s basically HTML markup as CoffeeScript!
jsPlumb
jsPlumb provides a way to “plumb” elements of a UI together. It can be used with jQuery, MooTools or YUI3
Meow
jQuery Meow mimics Growl notications. It supports all jQuery events and you can bind it to various sources for message input making it ideal for form validation, Rails flash notices, or a replacement for the alert() box.
SocketStream
A phenomenally fast real-time web framework for Node.js, SocketStream is a new full stack web framework built around the Single-page Application paradigm. It embraces websockets, in-memory datastores (Redis), and client-side rendering to provide an ultra-responsive experience that will amaze your users.
VisualSearch.js
VisualSearch.js is a rich search box for real data. It enhances ordinary search boxes with the ability to autocomplete facets and values for sophisticated searches.
Interesting Reads
Often, you’re not really looking for a tutorial as much as you’re looking for a rant, an opinion or just the musings of a tired developer. This sections contains links to precisely those — interesting posts from the developer community.
Can a local variable’s memory be accessed outside its scope?
A great discussion with an extra fun analogy to explain memory management.
Why is JSON so popular?
A quick look into why JSON gained so much marketshare compared to its more enterprise-y competitors.
JavaScript is Dead. Long Live JavaScript!
An indepth look at the JavaScript platform by Peter Michaux
Evolving the Google design and experience
The Google team writes about the recent redesign of the entire Google ecosystem. Not really developer oriented but a good, quick read.
The Node Beginner Book
A fantastic resource for the NodeJS beginner.
Monthly Spotlight
Every month we’re going to highlight a specific tool that we think deserves a special mention. This month it is…
Microjs
Microjs.com helps you discover the most compact-but-powerful microframeworks, and makes it easy for you to pick one that’ll work for you.
Wrapping Up
Well, that’s about all the major changes that happened in our industry lately. Since this is the first of its kind, everything is still up in the air — future editions will be shaped by your feedback.
Do you want us to cover more standard news? A focus on upcoming scripts maybe? Or just more interesting posts and discussions from the community? Let us know in the comments and thank you so much for reading!
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By Siddharth
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thanks for such a great article !
Great work Sid! I love posts like this, it can be quite daunting trying to keep up with this industry sometimes!
Your backbone.js article has a node.js image on it.
Fixed, thanks!
I love these articles. Keep ‘em coming, Siddharth!
Very thankful for articles like these… I’m always neck deep in code and it’s great to get these high-level outlines of what’s going on around me.
Awesome article! I’m really looking forward to the next one. What about about such an article every 2 weeks instead of once a month?
Nicely done! A valuable resource. Keep em’ comin!
2 thumbs up Sidd,
It is nice to see such interesting roundups with new stuff and not the same old boring lists we are getting tired of.
Kudos!
Love this stuff. I noticed, however, that it is all basically about JavaScript. Any plans on expanding to other stuff like PHP news?
I’ll try to cover more varied topics but JS seems to have the most mindshare among the readers here and developers in most of my circles. Nevertheless, I’ll try to include more PHP content in the future.
Thanks for reading!
Awesome. Keep em’ comin please!
Hey, thanks for the Meow mention!
Great Work!, All in One
Nice, very useful article. Looking forward to seeing more of these.
Great article, bit of an information overload at first, but hey, it all happened and we need to know about it! Great for a snap shot and reference of the month, looking forward to the next one :)
why you didn’t mantion about
- Adobe Flash 11 ,
- silverlight,
- vaadin
- cofieScript
- etc
it’s all about Web Development
this article is a “some informations about Web Development” …
but thanks for this :)
by
Hi I caught the bug when I saw your Tuts in .Net mag the one with the free mobile tutorials. Keep it up guys.
Jimmy
very good list thanks for giving a list of new kids, its hard to find whats new and useful
very good list. thanks
This is amazing. I learned a lot from you guys and its getting better and better everytime I check back. Keep up the good work :)
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Reply?
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Great post, one more for your list: Joomla v1.7 just came out :0)
Hi Siddharth,
these type of articles are worth more than the some of the tutorials on nettuts ..
thanks a lot for this.
Wow! This is a great post! i love it!. There some scripts that i only knew now b/c of this post. Thanks men! very inspiring.
Great article. It`s good to keep up with the latest updates in the industry
Certainly keeping my eye on IE10 as I would love it to put an end to all of the misery that the previous versions of IE have plagued us with. Not that I have anything against Microsoft (honestly) but they really are far behind in the browser department right now.
There’s also jQuery Boilerplate – http://jqueryboilerplate.com
Maybe it can be included in “New Kids on the Block” august’s article :)
Oh, absolutely!
I don’t suppose we can get an RSS feed *just* for these monthly news summaries? You’d get yourself at least 1 new subscriber :)
+1 to this idea
Very informative! Thank you for the articles.
Nice article to read, will be waiting for more info about this.
thanks.
Using the dashboard introduced in WordPress 3.2 is always delightful. WordPress (even more so in the new update) is an incredibly reliable product with a beautiful user interface.
This was great! Please keep everything you’ve included so far :)
Thanks for sharing informative blog, indeed I appreciate you.
Thanks for the great read. I’m looking forward to these sets of articles… I’ve been looking for a good place to refer to every once in awhile and get the latest updates in our world. I love TutsPlus.
Also, just wanted to let you know of the couple typos I found in the first few paragraphs. I think you meant to say “everyone” not “every” in the jQuery section. And “answer” was spelled wrong in the IE10 section. Not trying to be a nitpicker, just trying to be helpful. Thanks again!
Good information.
It will be more helpful, if you could provide information related to HTML & CSS.(not very often at least once in a while)
Thanks
This is one of the important post that no web developer wants to skip. Great compilation.
Thanks
Xcellence-IT
Excellent links!
Loved each and every one of them.
So much cute JavaScript and node.
I welcome Guider.JS .It sound very interesting
“Google Web Fonts v2 Released” – thats what I like ;)