Detect the Content Type in the Clipboard

A user’s clipboard is a “catch all” between the operating system and the apps employed on it. When you use a web browser, you can highlight text or right-click an image and select “Copy Image”. That made me think about how developers can detect what ... more

fetch with Timeout

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 ... more

Customizing HTML Form Validation

Form validation has always been my least favorite part of web development. You need to duplicate validation on both client and server sides, handle loads of events, and worry about form element styling. To aid form validation, the HTML spec added some ... more

How to Determine a JavaScript Promise’s Status

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 ... more

Detect XR Support with JavaScript

A few years ago I wrote an article about how to detect VR support with JavaScript. Since that time, a whole lot has changed. “Augmented reality” became a thing and terminology has moved to “XR”, instead of VR or AR. As such, the API has needed to evolve. ... more

Document.elementFromPoint

Reacting to events with JavaScript is the foundation of a dynamic experiences on the web. Whether it’s a click event or another typical action, responding to that action is important. We started with assigning events to specific elements, then moved ... more

JavaScript print Events

Media queries provide a great way to programmatically change behavior depending on viewing state. We can target styles to device, pixel ratio, screen size, and even print. That said, it’s also nice to have JavaScript events that also allow us to change ... more

Detect Browser Bars Visibility with JavaScript

It’s one thing to know about what’s in the browser document, it’s another to have insight as to the user’s browser itself. We’ve gotten past detecting which browser the user is using, and we’re now into knowing what pieces of the browser UI users are ... more

How to Control CSS Animations with JavaScript

When it comes to animations on the web, developers need to measure the animation’s requirements with the right technology — CSS or JavaScript. Many animations are manageable with CSS but JavaScript will always provide more control. With document.getAnimations ... more

How to Internationalize Numbers with JavaScript

Presenting numbers in a readable format takes many forms, from visual charts to simply adding punctuation. Those punctuation, however, are different based on internationalization. Some countries use , for decimal, while others use . . Worried about having ... more

How to Extend Prototypes with JavaScript

One of the ideological sticking points of the first JavaScript framework was was extending prototypes vs. wrapping functions. Frameworks like MooTools and Prototype extended prototypes while jQuery and other smaller frameworks did not. Each had their ... more

Convert Fahrenheit to Celsius with JavaScript

The United States is one of the last bodies that refuses to implement the Celsius temperature standard. Why? Because we’re arrogant and feel like we don’t need to change. With that said, if you code for users outside the US, it’s important to provide ... more

Detect System Theme Preference Change Using JavaScript

JavaScript and CSS allow users to detect the user theme preference with CSS’ prefers-color-scheme media query. It’s standard these days to use that preference to show the dark or light theme on a given website. But what if the user changes their preference ... more

Skip or Only Run a Test with JavaScript Mocha

Whenever I start to feel anxiety about a big change I’m making, I start writing more unit tests. I’ll write down my fear and then write a test that attacks, and eventually relaxes, that fear. There are two actions that I’ve been frequently using with ... more

CSS :out-of-range

One aspect of web development I’ve always loathed was working with forms. Form elements have been traditionally difficult to style due to OS and browser differences, and validation can be a nightmare. Luckily the native HTML APIs added methods for improving ... more

How Plugins Enhance The WYSIWYG Editing Experience (Sponsored)

Image by JK_Studio from Pixabay WYSIWYG editors are one of the core components of any content management system (CMS). A well-coded, feature-filled WYSIWYG HTML editor can distinguish between a CMS users love and one they can’t stand. While all WYSIWYG ... more

JavaScript Event.defaultPrevented

Whether you started with the old on_____ property or addEventListener , you know that events drive user experiences in modern JavaScript. If you’ve worked with events, you know that preventDefault() and stopPropagation() are frequently used to handle ... more

7 Ways to Optimize Performance for Your WordPress Site (Sponsored)

The vast majority of blogs, news websites, and information websites run on WordPress. While the WordPress developer team and community do their best to ensure wordPress is performant, there are a number of practices you can implement to keep your site ... more

Get a Random Array Item with JavaScript

JavaScript Arrays are probably my favorite primitive in JavaScript. You can do all sorts of awesome things with arrays: get unique values, clone them, empty them, etc. What about getting a random value from an array? To get a random item from an array, ... more

Legacy String Methods for Generating HTML

I’m always really excited to see new methods on JavaScript primitives. These additions are acknowledgement that the language needs to evolve and that we’re doing exciting new things. That being said, I somehow just discovered some legacy String methods ... more

Interview with an Intiface Haptics Engineer

I was recently re-reading my Interview with a PornHub Web Developer and one bit I started thinking about was the VR question and the idea of making users not just see but feel` something. The haptic feedback of VR games is what really sets them apart ... more

Input valueAsNumber

Every once in a while I learn about a JavaScript property that I wish I had known about years earlier — valueAsNumber is one of them. The valueAsNumber provides the value of an input[type=number] as a Number type, instead of the traditional string representation ... more

Advanced Code Display with Code Detection API (Sponsored)

Web apps are accepting numerous types of inputs, from basic text to code to imagery, files, and more. It’s important that we validate the contents we receive but if you do allow arbitrary text, it’s good to know what exactly has been submitted so you ... more

Flexible, Powerful DataGrad from Sencha (Sponsored)

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 ... more

Simplify Your File Handling With Filestack Workflows (Sponsored)

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 ... more

Detect Dark Mode Preference with JavaScript

Seemingly every website, dapp, and app offers a dark mode preference, and thank goodness. Dark mode is especially useful when I’m doing late night coding, or even worse, trading into altcoins. I’m presently working on implementing a dark theme on MetaMask ... more

JavaScript Class Privates

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 ... more

Immediately Executing setInterval with JavaScript

Employing setInterval for condition polling has really been useful over the years. Whether polling on the client or server sides, being reactive to specific conditions helps to improve user experience. One task I recently needed to complete required ... more

JavaScript S

Replacing a substring of text within a larger string has always been misleading in JavaScript. I wrote Replace All Occurrences of a String in JavaScript years ago and it’s still one of my most read articles. The confusion lies in that replace only replaces ... more

navigator.clipboard API

Reading from and writing to the user’s clipboard can be both a very useful and dangerous capability. Used correctly and it’s a huge convenience to the user; used dubiously and the user could suffer catastrophic consequences. Imagine a wrong account number ... more