This month in bookmarks: July 2008

Here are some of my best Delicious bookmarks from this July. Some especially good Javascript tidbits, and you’ll also notice some shell scripting goodness. Expect see it more often. I’m not trying to pick the most popular articles here, just the ones you might have missed.

Share your best link of July in the comments!

Shell

• Working With History in Bash [TextMate Blog] - Allan Odgaard wrote a hugely useful tutorial to help us master bash history. I found this very useful and I’m sure you will, too.
• Job scheduling with cron and at [IBM] - Automating repetitive tasks is obviously a huge productivity booster. Here is a good intro to scheduling tasks in Linux. You’ll want to stay tuned, though, as I’ll probably give you some better examples in an upcoming post ;)
• Top 10 Command Line Tools [Lifehacker] - Some nifty tips here, especially in the comments. Please forgive the shameless plug as I did write 2 of the 10 articles mentioned, but hey I’m frickin’ proud of it, ok?

Mozilla

• Firebug Lite 1.2 [Get Firebug] - Firebug Lite just got a lot cooler for IE, Opera, and Safari. You can use it to inspect HTML, CSS and JavaScript, keep track of your XHRs, and of course use the console. If you haven’t been using it then give it a try until Dragonfly/Drosera/etc. are done.
• hyperstruct [MozLab] - I’ve been considering making some Firefox extensions for some time, and this suite of tools is exactly what will help. If you need some extra debugging power in Mozilla apps, you’re just an extension away now.
• Firefox 3 features you may not know [Mozilla Links] - 8 really interesting features baked into Firefox 3 that I had no idea about. I love these little easter egg bits.

Productivity

• No, your code is not so great that it doesn’t need comments [New Adventures in Software] - Dan Dyer gives some interesting points about why comments are necessary even for "self-documenting" code. I think of it this way: if 80% of the time your program is being maintained, you really need to make it as easy to understand as possible. True productivity means cumulative time saved and not just your time.
• The Myth of the Interchangeable Programmer: Can’t We Just Offshore Him? [Datamation] - An insightful post about the reality of programming productivity when certain management formulas are applied. It makes a good point that smaller teams are better, and I agree.

Web Design

• Tips to design your site for mobile devices [woork] - Antonio Lupetti really has gone out of his way to provide everything you need to make your site mobile friendly, from redirect scripts to template HTML/CSS to font support(!).
• Script & Style - Friends Chris Coyier and David Walsh unveil a brand new place to post your best articles for CSS and Javascript. So far what I’ve seen of it has been great.

Javascript

• DOM DocumentFragments [John Resig] - John yet again pulls out some arcane, forgotten Javascript feature and makes it useful. DocumentFragments dramatically decrease the time required to insert many DOM nodes into a document and are supported by IE6+ which means you can use it now!
• What’s the Fastest Way to Code a Loop in JavaScript? [Gregory Reimer's Weblog] - An incredibly thorough set of tests for coding Javascript loop iteration for performance. I definitely learned a lot from all the examples given and now know the fastest way to iterate different collections etc. in different situations.
• JavaScript Event Delegation is Easier than You Think [SitePoint] - I find that good knowledge of event handling is unfortunately rare in the web programmer world, since it is such a useful construct to know. SitePoint does a great job of introducing event bubbling and targeting here, something that you should give a read even if you think you have it down.

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