Playing with React VR

The folks at Hashrocket have a nice introductory writeup on getting started with the aforementioned React VR. So if you’ve been doing React or React Native for the past months, you’ll see that React VR is super simple to get started and will let you build exciting 360 experiences. Starting from the default React VR …

Getting Started with the Web Animations API

The Web Animations Api (short WAAPI) tries to combine the power of CSS with the flexibility of Javascript in order to allow complex animation sequences. There are big differences between the WAAPI and for example libraries like GSAP, the biggest one being that the WAAPI is going to provide native browser support without needing to …

How to make an ARKit app in 5 minutes using React Native

Apple has made ARKit very easy to use, but it still requires quite a lot of efforts to properly set it up and run the first demo, especially for those who are not very familiar with 3D programming. What we are going to show you in this article is, with the help of React Native …

A New Kind of Map: It’s About Time

The Mapbox Team: Recently, we’ve been thinking of a visualization that cuts directly to the way in which people make decisions about where to go: what would a map look like if we swept the physical world away completely, in favor of the time needed to move around it? We’ve been prototyping a simple discovery …

Javascript : The Curious Case of `null >= 0`

Abinav Seelan takes a deep dive to unearth why exactly this happens in JavaScript: null > 0; // false null == 0; // false null >= 0; // true How can a value not be greater than 0, not be equal to 0, but be greater than and equal to 0? Javascript : The Curious …

Getting Ready for PHP 7.2

PHP 7.2 is planned to be released on 30th November 2017. And it comes with two new security features in the core, several smaller improvements and some language legacy clean-ups. In the article, I will describe what the improvements and changes are. I read the RFCs, discussions on internals and PRs on Github, so you …

Spark: A Typeface for Creating Sparklines in Text Without Code

Spark is a typeface for creating sparklines in text. It uses OpenType’s contextual alternates and requires no Javascript, though it does require a modern-ish browser that can make use of OpenType features in text. Spark data needs to be formatted as comma-separated values, with curly brackets at both ends of the set, e.g., {30,60,90}. You …

Detox: E2E Testing in React Native

High velocity native mobile development requires us to adopt continuous integration workflows, which means our reliance on manual QA has to drop significantly. Detox tests your mobile app while it’s running in a real device/simulator, interacting with it just like a real user. Here’s a sample test for a login screen: describe(‘Login flow’, () => …

The (fictitious) adventure of learning the next big framework

Installing all the things! On learning a new framework, and having to install a gazillion things for starters, and then eventually seeing it not work at all: I just want to write a bit of code and make a simple app,” Roger thought. It shouldn’t be this hard. Still, he didn’t quit. He cut and …

Monitoring for the encrypted web with “Oh Dear!”

Because there’s more to HTTPs than just monitoring for certificate expiration dates. Next to SSL Certificate Expirations, Oh Dear! also scans for Mixed Content, Revoked (Intermediate) Certificates, the use of bad or insecure ciphers, etc. Knowing that this service is built by Dries Vints, Freek Van der Herten, and Mattias Geniar tells me that this …