Learn Ember, Microsoft and Ruby

Rails is a web-application framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

rails

Expanding on [Part 1](https://egghead.io/lessons/angularjs-rails-todo-api-part-1), this lesson will look at how to bootstrap AngularJS in a rails application as part of the asset pipeline. With Angular available, you'll see how to communicate with the Rails API using $resource.

Rails Todo API Part 2

A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web applications.

ember

In this lesson we will create an `updateContent` method that sets the value of our `content` property to the current epoch timestamp. We need to call `toString()` on the `Date.now()` method in order to make TypeScript happy.

```
updateContent() {
  this.content = Date.now().toString()
}
```

We create a constructor that takes the options parameter, call `super(options)` and call into our `this.updateContent()` method.

```
constructor(options) {
  super(options)
  this.updateContent()
}
```

When we refresh our page we can see that the value of `content` is set to the epoch timestamp. 

To make the content really dynamic we use `setInterval()` to call into `updateContent` each second: `setInterval(() => this.updateContent(), 1000)`.

When we save our file we see that our content does not get updated anymore and when we check the console we see that we get an error telling us that: The 'content' property on the my-component component was changed after it had been rendered. The error also informs us that we should Use the @tracked decorator to mark this as a tracked property.

We add the @tracked decorator to our property, we import tracked from @glimmer/component and we refresh the page. We verify that `content` gets updated each second.

We change our `updateContent` to add our the timestamp to the array. When we use `this.items.push(this.content)` to achieve this we see that the list does not get updated. This is because the `@tracked` decorator only tracks the re-assignment of properties.

The way to get this working is by re-assigning our `items` array inside `updateContent`. We assign a new array, de-structure the current items array and add the new content.

```
this.items = [...this.items, this.content]
```



Use dynamic data in a GlimmerJS component

AngularJS is an open-source JavaScript framework, maintained by Google, that assists with running single-page applications. Its goal is to augment web-based applications with model–view–controller (MVC) capability, in an effort to make both development and testing easier.

angularjs

Rails makes an excellent choice for delivering data to AngularJS via REST apis. In this first lesson of a two part series, you'll see how to create a simple API for CRUD operations on TODOs using Rails. This isn't an introduction to Rails, and assumes you know the basics. 

Rails Todo API Part 1

In this lesson we will use the ember cli to generate a new component. Running `ember g glimmer-component my-component` generates the template and component class. We change the content of our component and add it to the main template in order to show it on the page.

Create a new GlimmerJS component

In this lesson we will add a variable called `content` to our component class, initialize it as a string and display the variable in our class using the double curly braces syntax, which is the handlebars expression for expressions, `{ {content }}`. 

After this we create a new class variable called `items`, initialize it as an array with strings. To display this list in our template we add a `<ul></ul>` and inside this unordered list we use the handlebars `each` helper to display the list items.

And inside our each statement we will print a `<li>` tag and render `{{ item}}` inside it.

```
<ul>
  {{#each items key="@index" as |item| }}
    <li>{{item}}</li> 
  {{/each}}
</ul>
```



Use template variables in a GlimmerJS component

[GlimmerJS](https://glimmerjs.com/) is a UI component library built by the Ember.js team. It is fast and lightweight and uses a combination of TypeScript and Handlebars to build the components.   

In this lesson we will use the Ember CLI to initialize a new GlimmerJS project.

We will start by installing Ember CLI globally by running `npm install -g ember-cli/ember-cli`.

Next we will use the `ember` command to create our new project by running `ember new egghead-glimmer -b @glimmer/blueprint` . 

When our project is created we `cd` into the project directory and start the development server. We will view the page in the browser and change the base template.

Initialize a project using Glimmer.js

Create a search directive with AngularJS and Rails. You'll want to take a look at the related [Rails TODO API Part 1](https://egghead.io/lessons/angularjs-rails-todo-api-part-1) and [Rails TODO API Part 2](https://egghead.io/lessons/angularjs-rails-todo-api-part-2). This is **not** a Rails how-to, so some knowledge there is expected to get up and running.

Search Directive with Rails

Microsoft Windows is a group of several graphical operating system families, all of which are developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry.

microsoft

For a production Windows server it makes sense to run NodeJS applications as a Windows service.  This way they can be automatically restarted if the server is rebooted.

It also makes it easier to use monitoring tools like datadog to detect if there are issues with the service which is critical for production systems.

Install a Node.js Application as a Windows Service

Express is a minimal and flexible Node.js web application framework that provides a robust set of features for web and mobile applications.

express

To replicate your production application its helpful when developing a local NodeJS Express application is running under SSL. 

There are some web technologies which do not play nicely with standard http and its likely to become more common e.g. Web Push Notifications.

This lesson will show you how to create a local SSL certificate for localhost and then convert it into a format that will work with Express.  It will also show you how to make sure that Chrome will trust it.

This lesson is for Windows as it uses a powershell command, as well as the Microsoft Management Console (MMC)
 

Create Local SSL Certificates for an Express App on Windows

Jekyll is a parsing engine bundled as a ruby gem used to build static websites from dynamic components such as templates, partials, liquid code, markdown, etc. Jekyll is known as "a simple, blog aware, static site generator".

jekyll

[Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/) is a static site generator built in [Ruby](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/) and available to generate and host websites on [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/). In this course, you'll install the Jekyll gem, use the command line tool to generate a new project, inspect the scaffolded project, and finally, serve the starter website.

Install Jekyll and generate initial, scaffolded website

Just about every tool in our accessibility auditing toolkit can help us identify any issues with sufficient color contrast ratio on a web page.  The react-axe library and axe browser extension both report findings on all elements with insufficient contrast ratios.  The tota11y browser extension will annotate any elements with their contrast ratios and color those that are insufficient in red.  

Additionally, we need to use our experience tools to see what some of our users out there may we seeing.  We need to test with high contrast browser extensions as well as the display settings in Windows and Mac.  If our users with visual impairments are using these tools we need to see what our application looks like using them because we may find that under a certain mode some things may suddenly be harder to read or virtually invisible.

## Resources
* https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2019/02/12/high-contrast-aria-and-images.html

Test for Insufficient Color Contrast Accessibility Issues

If you make a mistake when naming your database column, and have data that you want to keep unchanged. You can use the change method with the rename_column definition in your migrations files to update a single column name in your database.

Rename A Database Column with Ruby on Rails Active Record Migrations

We should not use color alone as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.  Users may not be able to see/understand the differences in color and require additional indicators.

Along with color, use additional indicators such as:
* typography
* shapes
* grids
* spaces
* and/or allocate more weight to important elements

## References:
* http://www.particletree.com/features/interfaces-and-color-blindness/
* https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/10/color-contrast-tips-and-tools-for-accessibility/

Use More than Color Alone to Convey Information in a Web Page

<p>Today Joel catches up with Iheanyi Ekechukwu. Iheanyi is a Product Engineer currently working at DigitalOcean. He previously worked at IBM on Watson. They also talk about Iheanyi's education, stack, and side projects</p><p>Iheanyi started out majoring in Computer Engineering, but switched to Computer Science after he figured out hardware just wasn't for him. He now lives and works in Brooklyn and spends most of his time coding (though he always brings his design skills to the table).</p><p>Iheanyi's design comes from a dual degree program at Notre Dame, the college where he graduated. He noticed a lot of subpar interfaces coming from pure programmers, and he was frustrated with that, so he took his school's opportunity to learn design and apply it to his work. Even if he isn't a designer, he uses his skills daily to communicate with designers and make whatever he works on that much better.</p><p>Iheanyi started using Ember back during college. He was frustrated by his school's class search interface, and he set out to improve it. Ember and Rails were like a match made in heaven for him, Ember having been authored by ex-Rails core team member, Yehuda Katz.</p><p>Joel discusses with Iheanyi what he's currently using in his work. They get into GO, and how Iheanyi has enjoyed working with a statically typed language when doing back-end work. Not having to worry about full test coverage when refactoring has been great!</p><p>Lastly, they talk about the various side projects Iheanyi has going. Such as Interface Lovers, a blog where top designers are interviewed and share their work music playlists. Also, Seeker, a job-board app that allows you to connect your strip account to it and have companies submit jobs.</p><hr /><h3>Transcript</h3><p><a href="https://egghead.simplecast.com/episodes/47aebd17/transcript">"Iheanyi Ekechukwu on education, programming, and managing side projects" Transcript</a></p><h3>Resources</h3><ul><li><a href="https://seeker.company">seeker</a></li><li><a href="https://interfacelovers.com/">Interface Lovers</a></li><li><a href="http://creative.black/">Creative Black</a></li><li><a href="https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/">Chef Watson</a></li></ul><h3>Iheanyi Ekechukwu</h3><ul><li><a href="https://iheanyi.com/">Website</a></li><li><a href="http://www.twoblacknerds.com/">Podcast</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/kwuchu">Twitter</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/iheanyi">Github</a></li><li><a href="https://egghead.io/instructors/iheanyi-ekechukwu">egghead.io</a></li></ul><h3>Joel Hooks:</h3><ul><li><a href="https://twitter.com/jhooks">Twitter</a></li><li><a href="https://joelhooks.com/">Website</a></li></ul>

Today Joel catches up with Iheanyi Ekechukwu. Iheanyi is a Product Engineer currently working at DigitalOcean. He previously worked at IBM on Watson. They also talk about Iheanyi's education, stack, and side projects

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