Spellbook of Modern Web Dev

Spellbook of Modern Web Dev is a collection of 2,000+ carefully selected links to resources on anything web development related.  It covers subjects from Internet history and basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, all the way to tools, libraries and advanced usage of web technologies, and more; from network protocols and browser compatibility to development environments, containers, and ChatOps.

  • This document originated from a bunch of most commonly used links and learning resources I sent to every new web developer on our full-stack web development team.
  • For each problem domain and each technology, I try my best to pick only one or a few links that are most important, typical, common or popular and not outdated, base on the clear trends, public data and empirical observation.
  • Prefer fine-grained classifications and deep hierarchies over featureless descriptions and distractive comments.
  • Ideally, each line is a unique category. The ” / “ symbol between the links means they are replaceable. The “, “symbol between the links means they are complementary.
  • I wish this document could be closer to a kind of knowledge graph or skill tree than a list or a collection.
  • It currently contains 2000+ links (projects, tools, plugins, services, articles, books, sites, etc.)

On one hand, this is one of the best single resources on the topic of web development that I’ve seen in a very long time.  On the other hand, it re-confirms my belief in “there is no such thing as a full-stack web developer”.  There’s just too many levels, and there’s too much depth to each level for a single individual to be an expert at.  But you get bonus points for trying.

Presentation slides with HTML5 systems

In the last few month I had to prepare quite a few presentations and slides.  This is not something that I’m very familiar with, so every time I end up with either LibreOffice or Google Slides or some other overpowered tool.  Clicking around, formatting and reformatting, and having absolutely no version control that I am so used to for my programming and system administration needs – I thought there must be a better way.

Looking at some of the technical talks and presentations around, I discovered that the world is indeed a better place than what I think of it after spending hours in the fight with fonts and pictures.  Apparently, there are quite a few systems now that utilize the power of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to help a semi-technical person keep his sanity.

Sitepoint has a helpful list of “5 of the Best Free HTML5 Presentation Systems“.  Some of the links are broken, but even those that work have enough options to choose from:

I have a big and important presentation to prepare next week, so I’ll give these three a go and see which one I like the most.

HTML Canvas Tutorial

Skilled.co put together this HTML Canvas Tutorial, which covers the HTML 5 <canvas> functionality, that allows web developers to draw all sorts of graphics on the fly, using JavaScript.  The tutorial is available for download in PNG and PDF formats, as well as on the webpage, and it covers the following:

  • Shapes
  • Styles and color
  • Text
  • Images
  • Transformations
  • Compositing and clipping
  • Animation
  • Pixel manipulation
  • Hit regions and accessibility

It also provides a few useful tips, inspiration, and links to other resources.

Web Developer Tools from Browserling

browserling-effortless-cross-browser-testing

Browserling – an awesome cross-browser testing service, has a collection of Web Developer Tools, which are as simple to use as possible.  There are now more than 80 (!!!) tools, according to this Peteris Krumins blog post, that provide immediate help with things like converting dates and times, formats like CSV, JSON, Markdown, HTML, XML, etc, generating passwords, minimizing or prettifying HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more.

10k Apart – Inspiring the Web with Just 10k

10k apart

From this article, I’ve learned about an excellent (for our times) 10k Apart competition:

With so much of an emphasis on front-end frameworks and JavaScript runtimes, it’s time to get back to basics—back to optimizing every little byte like your life depends on it and ensuring your site can work, no matter what. The Challenge? Build a compelling web experience that can be delivered in 10kB and works without JavaScript.

Think you’ve got what it takes? You have until September 30th.

I can’t wait to see the submissions and all the ways to squeeze the awesomeness of the modern web into just 10 kilobytes.  This reminds me of the Perl Golf posts over at PerlMonks and Assembly PC 64K Intro from my childhood early days (here are some examples).