It turns out that JavaScript has proven more useful for my job than Python. I certainly use it more. I assume this is an inevitable result of being a Web Librarian. JavaScript has seeped into my professional life. Part of me wishes this was different. If I were at a research institution, I might find […]
I did some JavaScripting yesterday that I thought might be of interest to librarians who use LibGuides and LibAnswers. The impetus for this was that some of the librarians at my college were dissatisfied with the “Email Me” buttons that are on LibGuides’ profile pages and profile boxes. I have to agree, the Email Me […]
I’ve been building some web stuff recently with a JavaScript library that seems to be well past its prime. A couple of years is a long time in JS-land. I deliberately won’t name the library, because my intention here isn’t to criticize; rather I want to point out some of the challenges of working with […]
While I was very optimistic about Vue Single File Components (SFCs) a few posts ago, I’ve been having some trouble implementing them in LibGuides. While you can upload whatever JavaScript you want to a LibGuides group (as “Customization Files”), I’m beginning to realize that the LibGuides interface really wasn’t meant to accommodate a SFC workflow. […]
In my last post I talked about pushing back on the complexity of JavaScript frameworks. Now I’m thinking about taking this further. In the name of maintainability, I think I am going to make an alternate version of our library page: a “minimum viable website”. I’ll strip out as much of the JavaScript as absolutely […]
Lately, I’ve been trying to push forward with best practices for our library webpage. This has meant moving toward Vue and moving away from jQuery. The result is a more modern site. While a lot of the changes that I’ve made recently have been invisible to the end user, there has been a lot of […]
For a long time, I’ve been intimidated by JavaScript builds. They have a reputation for being complicated, difficult to understand, and unforgiving. This tracks with my past experiences. I have been burned before, so my approach has been to avoid builds, and just use script tags like it is 2005. Yes, it is possible to […]
I’m really taking my time writing some JavaScript for our library homepage. The current code (that I want to replace) is working fine, but that’s not the reason I’m dawdling. I’m going slowly because I want JavaScript to move more slowly. In my opinion, the whole language can just slow down. I know that’s an […]
I’m currently reading a book by Kyran Dale called Data Visualization with Python and JavaScript, and it’s super interesting. In my experience, it’s very unusual to find a fully bilingual programming book. This is a great example. Most technical books, for better or worse, focus exclusively on one programming language. I’m still in the early […]
JavaScript has changed a lot over the years. Old browsers are not equipped to handle new syntax. ES6 (in 2015) was a major change. That was a long time ago. But unfortunately, on our campus, we still have browsers deployed in labs that predate ES6. Why is this? My guess is that old system images […]
