Category: Web work

These days, most of my work is very related to the online world. Building web sites, reviewing web applications, integrating with web services, coordinating people who are far away from each other, etc. Whenever I find a new tool or service or an innovative, interesting idea about working online, I share it in this category.

SOAR – SQL Optimizer And Rewriter

 

SOAR is an SQL Optimizer and Rewriter.  It can help analyse, optimize, and rewrite SQL queries.  Don’t get offset by the Chinese documentation as default – there is an English translation.

Here are some of the features:

  • Cross-platform support, such as Linux, Mac, and Windows
  • Support Heuristic Rules Suggestion
  • Support Complicate SQL Indexing Optimize
  • Support EXPLAIN analyze for query plan
  • Support SQL fingerprint, compress and built-in pretty print
  • Support merge multi ALTER query into one SQL
  • Support self-config rewrite rules from SQL Rewrite
  • Suggestions were written in Chinese. But SOAR also gives many tools, which can be used without understanding Chinese.

And if you are familiar with the other tools that provide similar functionality, here’s how SOAR compares to them:

33 concepts every JavaScript developer should know

“33 concepts every JavaScript developer should know” is an excellent collection of articles and video tutorials for anybody who wants to start learning JavaScript or improve their current knowledge.  The list categorized into concepts which make it even easier to skip parts and only focus on the parts that you are interested in.

croc – simple and secure cross-platform file transfer

croc is a very simple but super useful utility, which helps with occasional file transfers between two computers. When you need to send a few files to a friend on another computer or in another country – this might just be the easiest way.  No need to setup HTTP or FTP servers, Samba or NFS shares, or register at one of the million web services that provide such functionality.

croc is written in Go and is compiled for a variety of operating systems, include Linux, Windows, and macOS.  It even has a simple GUI for those who wants it.

The Illustrated TLS Connection

“The Illustrated TLS Connection” is an interactive guide to the TLS connection, explaining every byte with code, comments, annotations, and more.  If you ever wanted to know the details of how this works, I can’t think of a better resource to direct you to.  And if you find any issues or can suggest a better explanation, there’s a GitHub repository for you to contribute.

Having fun with link hover effects

Any web developer knows how to apply CSS rules to style web page elements.  Including links.  Including hover effects (on mouse over).  But I think most have never went far enough to explore the limits of this styling.  “Having fun with link hover effects” goes exactly there, with some really cool techniques that tend to leave people with “why didn’t I think of that” thought hovering over their head.