Last month the Hanselminutes podcast had a great interview titled You don’t know JS with Getify (Kyle Simpson) about his book of the same name. While the book series sounds like a great resource, I really enjoyed hearing a constructive discussion of many of the concerns I’ve had about the rapidly growing popularity of Javascript. Like any language, it has strength and weaknesses. As always, I’m a firm believer in using the right tool for the job.

Topics: MS tech webinar, image multi-tool, call for developers, code review tools, PhpStorm.

• I’m not planning to go to //build, but am thinking about seeing if I can convince work to let me watch the day-long Building Blocks: Initialize() Jump Start to get up to speed on the current state of Microsoft techniques.
• The QUnit website not only has a good Introduction to Unit Testing tutorial, but it’s a great discussion of how and why to organize your Javascript code in a more object-oriented way.
• Job seekers, heard about Freelancer this week from our intern. What I found particularly interesting is that in addition to listing Projects they also have a category called Contests.
• If you’re looking for an open source project to help with:
  • A Mac port of the wonderful AxCrypt for Windows has put out a call for developers. (C#, Mono)
  • The site Up For Grabs maintains a list of projects with “curated tasks specifically for new contributors”. (via @shanselman)

Tools

• Not only might PicPick become my new go-to screenshot tool, but it also has a color picker, magnifier, ruler, whiteboard and more. A veritable Swiss Army tool of quick image management.
• Review Assistant, by Devart, is a Visual Studio extension I plan to evaluate for our team; code reviews are something we want to do, but have struggled with finding the right process.
• For PHP development I continue to be more and more impressed with the PhpStorm IDE. This week I discovered that it includes support for integrating with a number of issue tracking services.

Topics: Incentivizing software issues, free images for your blog, testing Javascript, automating browser tests.

• I think Donay has a really compelling idea, but I ran into a lot of problems with their site just trying to get an account set up. Maybe if more people express an interest in being able to ask for and provide incentives for project features/issues… I hope they can get some momentum going and turn it into something workable. Spread the word!
• Bountysource is another service that lets people set bounties on existing Github issues they’d like completed. Visit my profile.
• GettyImages strikes a good balance between copyright, intellectual property and fair use: Embed images for free in a non-commercial context.
• I’m always looking for ways to increase productivity by automating processes. This week’s NuGet Package of the Week from Scott Hanselman shows how to use FluentAutomation (I love “fluent” syntax!) with Selenium and scriptcs to automate browser testing.

Tools

• There’ve been a lot of windowing enhancement add-ons over the years; the new Preme for Windows looks pretty feature rich, with some useful hotkeys.

Coding, projects, etc.

• Been studying up on the current state of unit testing with Javascript, including Jasmine and QUnit.
  A few good tutorials:
  • Testing your Javascript with Jasmine on Tuts+.
  • Unit test Javascript applications with Jasmine on Adobe’s Developer Connection.

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