JavaScript Articles
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What makes WebAssembly fast?
Programming with WebAssembly or JavaScript is not an either/or choice. So developers don’t need to choose between WebAssembly and JavaScript. However, we do expect that developers will swap out parts of their JavaScript code for WebAssembly. Fifth in a series about WebAssembly.
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Where is WebAssembly now and what’s next?
On February 28, the four major browsers announced their consensus that the MVP of WebAssembly is complete. Even in the initial release, WebAssembly will be fast. But it should get even faster in the future, through a combination of fixes and new features. Sixth in a series about WebAssembly.
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TypedArray or DataView: Understanding byte order
Depending on how you access an ArrayBuffer you get different byte order on the same machine. So long story short: it makes a difference if you use a TypedArray or the setters from a DataView.
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Async/Await Arrive in Firefox
The new
async
andawait
keywords—which make asynchronous code more concise, obvious, and maintainable—have arrived in Firefox 52. Currently available in the latest Developer Edition release, Firefox 52 is scheduled for general release in March 2017. -
Visualize animations easing in DevTools
The easing (or timing function) of an animation is what dictates the way it progresses through time. For example, a linear easing means that an animation runs at the same speed throughout its duration. This means that if an element isn’t moving at first and then starts to move, it will do so instantly, as […]
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Mozilla Push Server now supports topics
The Mozilla Push Service now offers the capability to provide topics for notification messages. This means that any user agent subscribed to the application will only be provided with the last message in a topic when it returns from an offline state.
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Cooperative Scheduling with requestIdleCallback
requestIdleCallback
support has landed in Firefox Nightly, with plans to ship in Firefox 52. Historically, there's been no way for scripts to "play nice" with user interaction and page rendering, leading to choppy frame rates and laggy input. Obviously, I wouldn't be writing this post if that were still true! -
Introducing debugger.html
debugger.html is a modern JavaScript debugger from Mozilla, built as a web application with React and Redux. This project was started early this year in an effort to replace the current debugger within the Firefox Developer Tools. Also, we wanted to make a debugger capable of debugging multiple targets and functioning in a standalone mode. […]
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Animating like you just don’t care with Element.animate
In Firefox 48 we’re shipping the <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Element/animate" target="_blank"><b>Element.animate()</b></a> API — a new way to programmatically animate DOM elements using JavaScript. Let’s pause for a second — “big deal”, you might say, or “what’s all the fuss about?” After all, there are already plenty of animation libraries to choose from. In this post I want […]
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Web Font preloading for HTML5 games
In game development there are two methods of rendering text: via bitmap fonts and vector fonts. Bitmap fonts are essentially a sprite sheet image that contains all the characters of a given font. The sprite sheet uses a regular font file (traditionally .ttf). How does this apply to game development on the Web and HTML5 […]