MakeUseOf: Creating an Interactive Timeline With CSS and JavaScript. “Timelines are powerful visual tools that help users navigate and understand chronological events. Explore how to create an interactive timeline using the dynamic duo of CSS and JavaScript.” A very easy walkthrough with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Ars Technica: “Make It Real” AI prototype wows devs by turning drawings into working software. “On Wednesday, a collaborative whiteboard app maker called ‘tldraw’ made waves online by releasing a prototype of a feature called ‘Make it Real’ that lets users draw an image of software and bring it to life using AI. The feature uses OpenAI’s GPT-4V API to visually interpret a vector drawing into functioning Tailwind CSS and JavaScript web code that can replicate user interfaces or even create simple implementations of games like Breakout.”
I’ve created a list of most available Gizmos at https://searchgizmos.com/biglist/ . There are 45 Gizmos listed with categories including Wikipedia, Google Web search, Google News search, and location-based search tools. Everything’s free and there are no ads, but it probably won’t work on your phone.
Smashing Magazine: Top Front-End Tools Of 2022. “Who doesn’t love a good front-end tool? In this roundup, you’ll find a nice list of useful front-end tools that were popular last year but are still bound to help you speed up and enhance your development workflow. Let’s dive in!” Some of these are high-level design items, but anybody can get use out of Text Cleaner, Fonoster, and Allinone.tools.
CogDogBlog: Bookmarklet to find Edyth and Friends in the Flickr Commons. “What does my search bookmarklet do? By definition, you access it any time you need it. Use the button on the left for a keyword search or select text from a random list on the right to try that method. If you are gobsmacked, you can then install it by dragging the link for the Big Button at the bottom of your page to your browser bookmarklets bar. Bing! There’s a new tool at your reach.”
CogDogBlog: Do Look at Don’t Look At My Photos. “The idea is to do the opposite of flickr’s Explore or Interestingness, to try to find some of the obscure photographers in the mix. The whole thing is a bit of duct tape JavaScript tapping into the flickr API. Every hour a server script updates the site’s single page to find a new photographer to feature.”
The Verge: This site exposes the creepy things in-app browsers from TikTok and Instagram might track. “Did you know you’re potentially being tracked when you load an in-app browser on iOS? A new tool reveals exactly how, showing how applications like TikTok and Instagram can potentially use JavaScript to view sensitive data, including your address, passwords and credit card information, without your consent.”
The Online Journalism Blog has turned into one of my “treat” feeds. I know when I see its icon in NewsBlur that I’m going to get something good. Online Journalism Blog: VIDEO: JavaScript Journalism and interactivity. “Some of the best interactive storytelling involves the use of JavaScript — what has sometimes been called ‘JavaScript Journalism’. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explains what JavaScript journalism is, the story formats that are often created with JavaScript, some useful JavaScript libraries, and how to get started.”
The Hacker News: Microsoft Warns of Web Skimmers Mimicking Google Analytics and Meta Pixel Code. “Threat actors behind web skimming campaigns are leveraging malicious JavaScript code that mimics Google Analytics and Meta Pixel scripts in an attempt to sidestep detection.”
The Register: JavaScript library updated to wipe files from Russian computers. “The developer of JavaScript library node-ipc, which is used by the popular vue.js framework, deliberately introduced a critical security vulnerability that, for some netizens, would destroy their computers’ files.”
CogDogBlog: Could Not Stop Making Bookmarklet Tools. “I was a bit excited to push out my recent bookmarklet tool experiment. The reception was kind. I was hasty in the naming of it in github tying to google images because as alluded to, I realized I could make a new one for searching Openverse (the updated version of Creative Commons CC Search).”
CogDogBlog: A CC Only Google Images Bookmarklet By Request. “Hmmm, someone pressed the 3 button. This is an outflow of the recent hand tossed post about my hackly idea for making Google Image search server only Creative Commons licensed results…. @ResearchBuzz tossed in the request line. I have to give Tara a listen as I have been pilgering links and resources from her site since the beginning of web time.” It always weirds me out when I guest star in my own newsletter.
Free Software Foundation: FSF announces JShelter browser add-on to combat threats from nonfree JavaScript. “The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the JShelter project, an anti-malware Web browser extension to mitigate potential threats from JavaScript, including fingerprinting, tracking, and data collection. The project is supported by NLnet Foundation’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) Zero Privacy & Trust Enhancing Technologies fund. Collaborators include Libor Polčák and Bednář Martin (Brno University of Technology), Giorgio Maone (NoScript), and Ana Isabel Carvalho and Ricardo Lafuente (Manufactura Independente). The JShelter browser add-on is in development and the first release is available.”
BusinessWire: New Open Source Library Makes Data Visualization Attainable for Any JavaScript Developer (PRESS RELEASE). “Observable, the collaborative data visualization company, today launched the beta version of Observable Plot, an open-source JavaScript library that enables developers to easily create visual representations to explore and interpret data.”
Smashing Magazine: The Guide To Ethical Scraping Of Dynamic Websites With Node.js And Puppeteer. “For a lot of web scraping tasks, an HTTP client is enough to extract a page’s data. However, when it comes to dynamic websites, a headless browser sometimes becomes indispensable. In this tutorial, we will build a web scraper that can scrape dynamic websites based on Node.js and Puppeteer.”
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