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388 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsEnterprise Web Apps Done Right
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Episodes
Moving 4-ward with Intern
February 10, 2017 13:51The motivation for Intern 4 is to make it easier to author tests with ES6+ features within tests, with or without transpilation. Want to skim? Here’s the Intern Roadmap which lists our high level status for each Intern release going forward. Or if you’re curious to know the details for our plans for Intern this […] The post Moving 4-ward with Intern appeared first on SitePen.
Introducing Milestone Mayhem
February 01, 2017 18:33Introducing Milestone Mayhem With years of building large scale web apps, we’ve experienced almost everything that goes right and wrong during software development projects. So we created Milestone Mayhem, a card game that reflects the challenges and successes with app development. Milestone Mayhem is a two team card game that tells the story of software […] The post Introducing Milestone Mayhem appeared first on SitePen.
State of JavaScript 2017
January 25, 2017 18:55It’s been two very active years since the release of ES6, and we’ve seen pretty substantial changes in how we build JavaScript applications. While some complain of fatigue, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a JavaScript engineer. So with the new year upon us, it’s time to look at where we are, […] The post State of JavaScript 2017 appeared first on SitePen.
ChallengeStar Case Study
January 20, 2017 19:04To quote professional zoologist Jim Fowler, “The biggest challenge is how to affect public attitudes and make people care.” When a small startup has a big idea, they run into an even bigger challenge. They want to change the public attitude towards charities and engage people on multiple levels, but it won’t happen unless they come […] The post ChallengeStar Case Study appeared first on SitePen.
New Year’s Resolutions for 2017!
January 19, 2017 19:03As the new year starts to unfold, it’s time to take a quick look at the things our team at SitePen resolves to do this year. Eliminate the Department of Redundancy Department Too often, we see large enterprise customers who have multiple teams creating the same features, without having a simple way to share and […] The post New Year’s Resolutions for 2017! appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast – Season 2 Episode 1
January 18, 2017 18:05 - 1 hour - 110 MBThe gang talks about AWS re:Invent, ReactVR, AFrame 0.4.0, DayDream, a special CES Truthy/Falsey and more! The post SitePen Podcast – Season 2 Episode 1 appeared first on SitePen.
Intern Visual Regression Plugin
December 15, 2016 14:31Thanks to a generous Mozilla Open Source Support program award, Intern has expanded its testing ecosystem to include new and robust sets of tools. Engineers can now easily write tests to benchmark sections of code, test for accessibility (a11y) support, and test for visual differences. Today we’ll show you how to use Intern’s Visual Regression […] The post Intern Visual Regression Plugin appeared first on SitePen.
TypeScript 2.1 Goodness Coming Soon to Dojo 2!
December 14, 2016 18:53The TypeScript team has just announced the release of TypeScript 2.1 which contains several long-awaited features (pun intended) for Dojo 2. Rather than repeating the excellent summary from the TypeScript team, we’ll look at how a few of these features will improve Dojo 2! async/await down-emitting for ES5 Dojo 2 supports exporting to ES5 environments. […] The post TypeScript 2.1 Goodness Coming Soon to Dojo 2! appeared first on SitePen.
Accessibility Testing with Intern
December 13, 2016 12:07Intern already has a wide array of capabilities and today we’re pleased to announce one more: accessibility testing. Thanks to a generous award from Mozilla Open Source Support we’ve created the intern-a11y plugin, which allows users to run accessibility tests on pages or components using Intern. How it works Web accessibility testing generally works by […] The post Accessibility Testing with Intern appeared first on SitePen.
Intern 3.4 Released
December 08, 2016 22:31Today we’re pleased to announce the release of Intern 3.4. This release brings usability enhancements and bugfixes, including a new benchmarking mode! We’ve outlined some of the features below, but as always, visit the release notes for more details. A number of contributors made this release possible. Thanks to all of them for their code […] The post Intern 3.4 Released appeared first on SitePen.
Web Summit Recap
November 16, 2016 20:23Now in its 7th year, Web Summit is the world’s largest web conference, with more than 50,000 people in attendance. The conference possibly draws inspiration from SXSW Interactive, with a European twist. Each year it brings an impressive agenda of speakers and attendees from around the world. It has become an event that attracts startups and […] The post Web Summit Recap appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 021
November 08, 2016 20:29 - 1 hour - 105 MBThe Apple event happened and the team shares their thoughts on the future of the Mac. The post SitePen Podcast Episode 021 appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 020
October 27, 2016 15:12 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBWe start off by talking about the new features in TypeScript 2.0 and then Neil describes his woes using TypeScript for rapid prototyping. The post SitePen Podcast Episode 020 appeared first on SitePen.
Exploring WebVR
October 26, 2016 19:12This October, we delivered meetup talks on WebVR in London and Phoenix on the same day to share our early efforts in exploring WebVR with TypeScript, Dojo 2, Intern, and A-Frame. What is WebVR? WebVR is an experimental JavaScript API that provides access to Virtual Reality (VR) devices, such as the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, […] The post Exploring WebVR appeared first on SitePen.
Announcing the JS Foundation!
October 17, 2016 16:47The official name of the rebranded and relaunched merging of the jQuery Foundation and the Dojo Foundation is the JS Foundation. SitePen is excited to be a member of this new organization! Back in 2004, Alex Russell, David Schontzler, and I wrote the first lines of code for the Dojo Toolkit. Our early goal was to create the “next-generation […] The post Announcing the JS Foundation! appeared first on SitePen.
Running Intern Tests in the Cloud
October 11, 2016 14:43With Intern you can easily run tests using your local machine’s web browser or on any other machine running a Selenium server. Sometimes a project will need to be tested across a wide range of platforms and browsers, more than an individual user or even an enterprise may have available. Cloud testing services such as […] The post Running Intern Tests in the Cloud appeared first on SitePen.
SafetyNet 2016 recap
October 07, 2016 15:41SafetyNet is an annual conference hosted by Pulsiam and is focused on trends in software for the safety industry. Because of our expertise in shaping the modern web and our ongoing work with Pulsiam’s application development efforts, I was invited to deliver a keynote about the past, present, and future of the web, as this […] The post SafetyNet 2016 recap appeared first on SitePen.
Solving complex dgrid edge cases
October 04, 2016 20:46We were recently asked by the team at eQuorum to investigate an issue with dgrid performance when leveraging the dgrid/Tree mixin. The issue was challenging to solve, so we thought it would be useful to share our story in debugging and solving it. Background dgrid is a powerful Dojo-based component for managing large data sets […] The post Solving complex dgrid edge cases appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 019
September 30, 2016 21:33 - 1 hour - 94.6 MBThe gang invites Sean Larkin, core team member of Angular-CLI and Webpack, to the show to explain what Webpack is and where it's going. The post SitePen Podcast Episode 019 appeared first on SitePen.
Improving TypeScript modules
September 29, 2016 22:15One of the main challenges with creating modern JavaScript web applications is the relatively incomplete approach to ES modules. As an interim solution until all necessary use cases are solved, many developers create source code with ESM, and then transpile to either AMD, CJS, or UMD for easy usage within today’s browsers. As we work […] The post Improving TypeScript modules appeared first on SitePen.
Inside Answers: Intern and async functional testing
September 20, 2016 12:43SitePen Support is a service used by companies to improve the productivity and efficiency of their enterprise development teams. Our customers often ask questions about best practices when using various development tools for modern JavaScript and TypeScript development. Recently, we were asked to better explain some of the asynchronous syntax used by Intern. For example, […] The post Inside Answers: Intern and async functional testing appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 018
September 15, 2016 21:33 - 1 hour - 89.7 MBThis is virtually the best show we have ever done, we talk all about VR! The post SitePen Podcast Episode 018 appeared first on SitePen.
TypeScript 2.0 Awesomeness
September 01, 2016 13:22Over the past few years, TypeScript has iterated and greatly improved developer ergonomics. With our efforts on Dojo 2, we’ve been very excited about many of the features and improvements made, including several key improvements that have landed for TypeScript 2, which is currently in beta release! Control flow type analysis TypeScript 2 adds a […] The post TypeScript 2.0 Awesomeness appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 017 – Live from NEJS Conf
August 30, 2016 18:31 - 59 minutes - 82.3 MBRecorded at NEJS CONF 2016, there's the usual banter and a game of Truthy/Falsy but the highlights are the incredible guests we corralled onto the show. The post SitePen Podcast Episode 017 – Live from NEJS Conf appeared first on SitePen.
The long and winding road to Dojo 2
August 24, 2016 17:46Recently on GitHub, someone accused Dojo 2 of being vapourware. This opinion came from a position of misinformation. I was glad the individual then engaged with the Dojo 2 project to understand where we are today. We are making swift progress and a beta is on the horizon. It has taken Dojo 2 a long […] The post The long and winding road to Dojo 2 appeared first on SitePen.
Mixing Dojo widgets and Angular 2 components
August 19, 2016 16:10We were recently asked about options for mixing Dojo widgets and Angular 2 components into the same application: Is it possible to render an Angular 2 component and Dojo widgets on the same page? Are there any special configuration settings needed? What’s the best way for Angular 2 and Dojo to communicate and/or send messages? […] The post Mixing Dojo widgets and Angular 2 components appeared first on SitePen.
Intern 3.3 released!
August 18, 2016 13:27Today, we’re very happy to announce the release of Intern 3.3! This is the result of several months of work to improve Intern and its Dig Dug and Leadfoot dependencies, as well as the introduction of a new intern-cli package to make command-line testing configuration even easier. sitecues by Ai Squared generously sponsored some of […] The post Intern 3.3 released! appeared first on SitePen.
Introducing intern-cli
August 03, 2016 13:05Intern makes writing high-quality tests easier and now running the tests is even easier using intern-cli. This package provides an intern command that has a POSIX-like interface, using familiar flags and options like --help. It follows some conventions that make running Intern simpler, and provides plenty of inline help. It even makes getting started with Intern easier with a new init command. The post Introducing intern-cli appeared first on SitePen.
JavaScript Pub Quiz
July 26, 2016 13:04A quintessential British tradition is the pub quiz, a test of a group’s knowledge of obscure facts and trivia, typically shared over dinner and drinks at a pub. In the era of the smart phone, pub quizzes have needed to implement strict no phone policies to make sure people are answering from their knowledge rather […] The post JavaScript Pub Quiz appeared first on SitePen.
FullStack 2016
July 20, 2016 13:56FullStack is a large London JavaScript conference hosted at the Skills Matter CodeNode. The conference brings together an impressive line-up of speakers and workshops covering five tracks over three full days of festivities. We were invited to speak at FullStack, and also enjoyed many of the other sessions and met many great engineers. The sudden […] The post FullStack 2016 appeared first on SitePen.
The Lead Developer: Day 2
July 08, 2016 13:39Day 2 of the Lead Developer Conference continued with a series of excellent talks. Be sure to check out the Day 1 recap if you missed it. Michael Lopp, Slack Michael is the VP of Engineering at Slack and known for Rands in Repose. He gave the talk Leadership. By the Numbers which included a […] The post The Lead Developer: Day 2 appeared first on SitePen.
The Lead Developer: Day 1
July 07, 2016 16:59Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Lead Developer Conference, a two-day, single-track conference with over 400 development leads from the UK, Europe, the US, Australia, and New Zealand. The event included an excellent array of speakers representing development leads at companies including Slack, Atlassian, ThoughtWorks, Amazon Web Services, GitHub, Shopify, Couchbase, and […] The post The Lead Developer: Day 1 appeared first on SitePen.
Building Better Enterprise Web Applications Part 3: SitePen solutions
June 30, 2016 12:51In this installment of our series on building web applications, we look at the SitePen approach to solving challenges in web application development. We employ all of the solutions described in part 2 of the blog series. Additionally, we have some overarching principles we apply to our work. The right architecture and an emphasis on […] The post Building Better Enterprise Web Applications Part 3: SitePen solutions appeared first on SitePen.
Building Better Enterprise Web Applications Part 2: Solutions
June 29, 2016 13:36While there are many challenges today with building web applications, there are also many options to address the issues we face with technology, process, and people, allowing us to reap the benefits of the web as an application platform. Technology solutions While many of the challenges with today’s web applications come from the vast array of […] The post Building Better Enterprise Web Applications Part 2: Solutions appeared first on SitePen.
Building Better Enterprise Web Applications: Challenges
June 28, 2016 15:45Web applications provide many benefits. Most organizations seek to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes through the use of software. The benefits of web applications include: Simple distribution model for end users (e.g. no installation required) Instant propagation of changes Unified code base to support many platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile, etc.) Easy piloting […] The post Building Better Enterprise Web Applications: Challenges appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 016
June 21, 2016 21:36 - 1 hour - 98.8 MBIn this episode the gang talks all about modules, from what they are to how to use them in TypeScript! The post SitePen Podcast Episode 016 appeared first on SitePen.
Dojo FAQ: Is there a modern theme for Dojo?
June 16, 2016 12:42One of the additions of the recent Dojo 1.11 release is a modern flat theme created with the Stylus preprocessor. The flat theme allows you to apply a modern, flat look and feel to existing Dojo applications. The flat theme includes support for most Dijits as well as dgrid. Significant contributions for the theme were […] The post Dojo FAQ: Is there a modern theme for Dojo? appeared first on SitePen.
A quick look at Intern’s findByXpath
June 14, 2016 16:32Intern‘s Leadfoot API makes it easier to author functional tests in JavaScript. One of the fundamental concepts for authoring functional tests is to access an element within a page to test it. While most developers are familiar with CSS selectors, this is not always the most efficient mechanism for referencing a particular element in a […] The post A quick look at Intern’s findByXpath appeared first on SitePen.
Dojo is Doing it Again
June 09, 2016 19:34Peter Higgins, former project lead for Dojo, gave an excellent talk at JSConf in 2013 titled “Dojo Already Did That” (which reflected a humorous meme started at the first JSConf). It was highly informative about how Dojo had already solved problems that the JavaScript community were solving again in 2013. Even 3 years later, there […] The post Dojo is Doing it Again appeared first on SitePen.
Migrating from DOH to Intern
June 06, 2016 15:53Until a few years ago, our testing efforts with Dojo were focused on the Dojo Object Harness (DOH), a very early unit and functional testing suite. Developed by the Dojo Toolkit community nearly ten years ago, DOH’s main purpose was to provide functionality for unit testing JavaScript functions and custom widgets in a cross-browser compatible […] The post Migrating from DOH to Intern appeared first on SitePen.
Getting Classy with Compose
May 19, 2016 15:34If you’re familiar with Dojo 1, you’re probably familiar with declare. Declare provides a flexible but controlled way to handle inheritance in JavaScript. It builds on JavaScript’s prototypal inheritance with OO (Object Oriented) principles and provides single and multiple inheritance. This enables developers to create flexible components and powerful mixins. As we started working on […] The post Getting Classy with Compose appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 015
May 17, 2016 17:19 - 1 hour - 110 MBThe gang talks about the importance of prototyping user interfaces, especially when lives literally depend on it. Nick demystifies Git and we play another round of Truthy/Falsy. The post SitePen Podcast Episode 015 appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 014
May 02, 2016 19:48 - 1 hour - 98.6 MBWe talk about the latest updates to Framer, Sketch and the just announced Origami Studio by Facebook. The post SitePen Podcast Episode 014 appeared first on SitePen.
SitePen Podcast Episode 013
April 29, 2016 23:13 - 52 minutes - 72.2 MBThe gang talks to Nick who is live at EmberConf. LeftPad destroys the internet and more! The post SitePen Podcast Episode 013 appeared first on SitePen.
QCon Beijing 2016 conference recap
April 28, 2016 13:07QCon Beijing happened last week and I had the opportunity to travel and give a talk as one of the few American speakers. Most notably, all talks were delivered in Mandarin which was a bit of a challenge given that I don’t speak Mandarin. Luckily words like JavaScript and Docker transcend the language barrier! Here […] The post QCon Beijing 2016 conference recap appeared first on SitePen.
Intern wins Mozilla award!
April 26, 2016 13:47Last fall, Mozilla announced its Mozilla Open Source Support program, specifically focused on supporting the Free & Open Source Software movement. AND THIS JUST IN: Intern was selected to receive a MOSS award in the amount of $35,000! Initially focused on awarding grants to fund projects used in its own development initiatives, Mozilla is giving […] The post Intern wins Mozilla award! appeared first on SitePen.
Simplifying Intern tests with Command helpers
April 19, 2016 14:21Intern, via the Leadfoot WebDriver library, provides a lot of low-level control over the browsers it uses to run tests. Tests can navigate to new pages, resize the browser window, examine elements on a page, and interact with controls like inputs and buttons. Unfortunately, with all this power can come great complexity. Many testing tasks […] The post Simplifying Intern tests with Command helpers appeared first on SitePen.
ES6 Symbols: Drumroll Please!
April 13, 2016 13:58Symbols are a new, unique, primitive type introduced in ECMAScript 6 (ES6). They were added to the language in order to solve the problem of extending the functionality of Object while maintaining backwards-compatibility with code written in earlier versions of JavaScript. With their addition comes the ability for developers to affect the behavior of the […] The post ES6 Symbols: Drumroll Please! appeared first on SitePen.
On the leading Edge
April 07, 2016 19:55I attended the Microsoft Edge Web Summit in San Francisco. I will be honest, outside of meeting a few people, I wasn’t expecting much. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with the “new” Microsoft. I have grown accustomed to the openness and true collaboration that the TypeScript team have engaged in, but I wasn’t expecting seeing […] The post On the leading Edge appeared first on SitePen.
2016 Esri DevSummit Recap
March 31, 2016 19:12Esri, the creators of great mapping technology, hosts their DevSummit every March in Palm Springs, CA. Esri creates their popular ArcGIS for JavaScript API by leveraging the Dojo Toolkit. Esri trends Each year Esri announces a number of new features and technologies at the DevSummit, and this year was no exception. They have really improved […] The post 2016 Esri DevSummit Recap appeared first on SitePen.