Learn Canvas, Chai and Chrome-devtools

Miscellaneous one-off lessons on debugging, productivity hacks, and JavaScript tricks.

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

Tips and Tricks

Chrome DevTools are incredibly useful for a frontend developer, sometimes we spend more time using them than our text editor of choice.

That's why it's so important to understand this tool better - those quick lessons will teach you things that will help you to become a more effective developer.

You will learn how to:

- **Use (experimental) CSS Overview to learn all about CSS used on a page in a minute**
- **Style console.log messages with CSS** - a _crucial_ skill for any senior developer (j/k)
- **Debug your code (on production and local environment) with logpoints**
- **Run a Lighthouse audit of your site**
- **Choose accessible colors for your website that have an AAA contrast ratio rating**
- **Force a DOM element state in Chrome DevTools**
- **Use Console utilities to make debugging easier**
- **Copy a network request as fetch or cURL with Chrome DevTools**

Have fun!

The Chrome Developer Tools (DevTools for short), are a set of web authoring and debugging tools built into Google Chrome.

chrome-devtools

Chrome DevTools tips & tricks

Frontend runtime optimization is heavily impacted by rendering.  Understanding the way the JS engine and the browser work is crucial for optimizing applications and understading how to avoid performance pitfalls.
This collection explains about the Critical Rendering Path, performance bottlenecks and practical solutions.

Critical Rendering Path

In this course we’ll take a deep look at the Elements panel in the chrome devtools. We’ll step through each button and tab on this panel and discuss how to use them to interact with your web application as it runs.

Debug the DOM in Chrome with the Devtools Elements Panel

This course examines the Sources panel in the Chrome DevTools, which allows you to see what files are responsible for the various things on the screen. Bundled into this panel, though, is the single most useful tool for any JavaScript developer - the JavaScript Debugger. We’ll use the Debugger to inspect JavaScript as it runs, allowing you to watch (and even interact with) the state of your application as it runs in ways that’ll blow your mind if you’ve mostly used console.log to debug your applications to this point. 

Debug JavaScript in Chrome with DevTool Sources

This course will examine the Network panel in Chrome DevTools. We’ll step through the request log, examining the various properties exposed. We’ll talk about timing, filtering, throttling and generally using the network panel to better understand the ways in which our applications exist within a connected context.

Debug HTTP with Chrome DevTools Network Panel

If you are developing JavaScript applications you are likely using logging as an integral part of your development process. Did you know that you aren't limited to simple `console.log` statements? Modern browsers give you a lot more logging options to work with!

This course will explore those options and give you some new logging tools for your professional toolbox.

Advanced Logging with the JavaScript Console

Get more mileage from your console output by going beyond mere string logging - log entire introspectable objects, log multiple items in one call, and apply C-Style string substitution to make the console work for you.

Advanced Console Log Arguments

Organize your log output by grouping your logs into collapsable hierarchies using console.group().

Grouping and Nesting Console Log Output

A <canvas> element provides scripts with a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly.

canvas

Learn some of the different ways you can affect the graphical content that you are drawing to a canvas. We'll cover global alpha, global composite operations and shadows.

Canvas Effects

With the HTML `canvas` you can easily draw text as well as graphics. Let's take a look at basic text manipulation on the canvas.

Drawing Text on Canvas

 AJAX allows us to send requests to the server from our javascript applications, rather than allowing the browser to directly request declaratively specified resources. Under the hood, though, AJAX requests are still just HTTP requests - and that means we can use the Network Panel in Chrome’s DevTools to inspect our AJAX operations!


Examine AJAX Requests with Chrome Devtools

In this lesson, we cover several different ways to animate graphics drawn to Canvas.

Animating with Canvas

To understand the Network DevTool, you have to understand what HTTP is and how it works. Let’s use the Network DevTool to inspect an HTTP request and its corresponding response so that we can understand what the browser is doing.

Analyze HTTP Requests and Responses with Chrome Devtools

When drawing on the HTML5 canvas element, your fills aren't limited to flat colors. You can use gradients to get smoothly blended color fills on your drawn elements.

Gradient Fills on the HTML5 Canvas

Go beyond console.log by learning about log levels, filtering log output and structuring your output to be meaningful and concise. The JavaScript console object offers many methods to make your life easier - start learning them here!

Log Levels and Semantic Methods

Learn about console.assert, which is syntactic sugar for logging an error the console when a given condition is not met. It's useful, but may not do what you expect if you're coming from another language - watch this lesson to learn how to use it, and when not to.

Proper use of console.assert in JavaScript

Most of today’s websites use optimized, compiled, minified and obfuscated javascript and CSS. Examining this stuff here has some severely limited utility, which is why when developing we rely on sourcemaps. We’ll set up a webpack workflow that uses sourcemaps to show you how they can help your debugging!

Unbundle your JavaScript with Source Maps in Chrome DevTools

Learn to use the Style panel within the Element Inspector to examine and tweak the CSS rules applied to your application as it runs. 

Chrome Devtools: Elements - Debug with Style!

The Element Inspector in Chrome DevTools offers powerful integration with the console - learn how to programmatically navigate your selected element, how to search through the history and use CSS selectors to control what you're looking at and how to quickly and easily listen for events as you debug your application.

Chrome Devtools: Elements - Console Integration

Use the Event Listeners tab within the Elements panel to list all DOM Event listeners. This is useful to understand how and why your site is reacting to various forms of input.

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