Author:

Zack Grossbart is an engineer, designer, and author. He's a founding member of the Spiffy UI project, the architect of the WordPress Editorial Calendar, and an Architecting Engineer and Human Factors Specialist with NetIQ. Zack began loading DOS from a floppy disk when he was five years old. He first worked professionally with computers when he was 15 and started his first software company when he was 16. Zack lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.

Website: http://www.zackgrossbart.com

Twitter: Follow the author on Twitter

Weak, Strong, Static And DynamicAn Introduction To Programming Type Systems

Static typing is great because it keeps you out of trouble. Dynamic typing is great because it gets out of your way and lets you get your work done faster. The debate between strongly and dynamically typed languages rages on, but understanding the issue starts with weak typing and languages ...

Read more...

Which JavaScript Recipe Is Right For You?

JavaScript has been called everything from great to awful to the assembly language of the Web, but we all use it. Love JavaScript or hate it: everyone admits there are serious flaws and not many other choices. Let’s start with some fundamental negatives. JavaScript has no good answer for some really ...

Read more...

Twelve Commandments Of Software Localization

You’ve presented the new website and everyone loves it. The design is crisp, the code is bug-free, and you’re ready to release. Then someone asks, “Does it work in Japanese?” You break out in a cold sweat: you have no idea. The website works in English, and you figured other languages ...

Read more...

JavaScript Profiling With The Chrome Developer Tools

Your website works. Now let’s make it work faster. Website performance is about two things: how fast the page loads, and how fast the code on it runs. Plenty of services will make your website load faster, from minimizers to CDNs, but making it run faster is up to you. Little ...

Read more...

Backpack Algorithms And Public-Key Cryptography Made Easy

E-commerce runs on secrets. Those secrets let you update your blog, shop at Amazon and share code on GitHub. Computer security is all about keeping your secrets known only to you and the people you choose to share them with. We’ve been sharing secrets for centuries, but the Internet runs on ...

Read more...

Writing Unit Tests For WordPress Plugins

When my WordPress plugin had only three users, it didn’t matter much if I broke it. By the time I reached 100,000 downloads, every new update made my palms sweat. My first goal for the WordPress Editorial Calendar was to make it do anything useful. I was new to JavaScript and ...

Read more...

Web-Drawing Throwdown: Paper.js Vs. Processing.js Vs. Raphael

Paper.js, Processing.js and Raphaël are the leading libraries for drawing on the Web right now. A couple of others are up and coming, and you can always use Flash, but these three work well with HTML5 and have the widest support among browser vendors. Choosing the right framework will determine the ...

Read more...

How To Create Web Animations With Paper.js

The Web is just starting to use animation well. For years, animated GIFs and Flash ruled. Text moved and flashed, but it was never seamless. Animations had boxes around them like YouTube videos. HTML5 canvas changes everything about Web animation. The canvas element makes it possible to integrate drawings and animations ...

Read more...

Searchable Dynamic Content With AJAX Crawling

Google Search likes simple, easy-to-crawl websites. You like dynamic websites that show off your work and that really pop. But search engines can’t run your JavaScript. That cool AJAX routine that loads your content is hurting your SEO. Google’s robots parse HTML with ease; they can pull apart Word documents, ...

Read more...

↑ Back to top