So you're hunting down a regression (or just a bug) and want to use git bisect to find out when it was introduced? Smart kid.
If you have a shell command ready to reveal if your current state is good or bad, you can have git do most of the work for you.

Using git bisect run <your command> you can tell git that your command will reveal the issue; git on the other hand will use the return value of that call to decide if the state is good or bad.
...

Jasmine specs for the frontend often need some DOM elements to work with. Because creating them is such a common task, we should have an efficient way to do it.

Let's say I need this HTML structure:

<ul type="square">
  <li>item 1</li>
  <li>item 2</li>
</ul>

This card compares various approaches to fabricating DOM elements for testing.

Constructing individual elements

While you can use standard DOM functions to individually create and append elements, this is extremely verbose:

let list = document.createElement('...

Jasmine specs that work with DOM elements often leave elements in the DOM after they're done. This will leak test-local DOM state to subsequent tests.

For example, this test creates a <spoiler-text> element, runs some expectations, and then forgets to remove it from the DOM:

describe('<spoiler-text>', function() {
  it ('hides the secret until clicked', function() {
    let element = document.createElement('spoiler-text')
    element.secret = 'The butler did it'
    document.body.appendChild(element)
 ...

Running rails server will start a local server that you can access via http://localhost:3000.

When you are working on multiple web apps, they will likely set cookies with generic names on localhost. This is annoying, since you will sign out your current user whenever you switch to another app.

A better way is to use our own daho.im service. All daho.im subdomains resolve to your local IP (127.0.0.1). That means you can use a different hostname for different apps, and you will stay logged in in each app:

http://foo-ap...

Capybara provides execute_script and evaluate_script to execute JavaScript code in a Selenium-controlled browser. This however is not a good solution for asynchronous JavaScript.

Enter evaluate_async_script, which allows you to execute some asynchronous code and wait until it finishes. There is a timeout of a couple of seconds, so it will not wait forever.

Use it like this:

page.evaluate_async_script(<<~JS)
  let [done] = arguments
  doSomethingAsynchronous().then(() => {
    done() // call this to indicate we're done
  })
J...

When we write a form with date fields, we often use graphical data picker like Rome to get a consistent calendar popup on all browsers.

When you integrate a date picker popup, remember to also set autocomplete="off" on the text input that opens the calendar on click. Otherwise the autocomplete suggestions will cover the calendar box and make it unusable:

If you are using a tool like Unpoly you might want to set autocomplete="off" i...

Your development machine is usually on a very good network connection.
To test how your application behaves on a slow network (e.g. mobile), you can simulate limited bandwidth.

Chrome

• Open the dev tools (Ctrl+Shift+I or F12) and switch to the "Network" tab
• In the row below the dev tool tabs, there's a throttling dropdown which reads "Online" by default.
• Inside the dropdown, you will find a few presets and an option to add your own download/upload/latency settings.

Firefox

• Open the dev tools (Ctrl+Shift+I or F12) and switc...

Hide/Show Drawer

You can press Escape to show/hide the drawer.

Fast Navigation with Command Menu

Use Ctrl + Shift + p to open Command Menu, where you can switch to different panels, toggle settings etc.

Reorder DevTools panels and Drawer tabs and combine them by moving them up and down to and from the Drawer.

Right click on any tab and then choose Move to top / Move to bottom

Change DevTools layout from auto to always horizontal or vertical.

Click on Settings > Preferences > Panel Layout, Choose between Horizontal / Ve...

tl;dr

In Chrome DevTools in the Layouts tab you have handy options to debug CSS Flexbox and Grid. Including:

• Display size and lines along with labels
• Changing their attributes
• Change how overlay is colored and fastly switch nested elements in the Elements panel

This guide will only cover some example gif recordings on how to use with Grid, since it's basically straight forward to apply this for Flexbox by yourself afterwards.

For this purpose a the link to documentation and a simple code pen have been added...

While in CSS zero is usually referenced without specifying a unit (e.g. padding: 0), you must not use a unitless zero in calc functions.

You would probably not write something like calc(1rem + 0) yourself, but it might be the result of a CSS preprocessor (like Sass) or when using custom properties.

The following is invalid:

.example {
  --extra-padding: 0;
  padding: calc(1rem + var(--extra-padding));
}

That is simply because it is unsupported, as per docum...

One-line takeaways

• Don’t override native browser (or OS) shortcuts.
• Support standard shortcuts that don’t contradict the previous rule, and use one or two letter shortcuts for other actions.
• Always have a consistent system.
• Pay maximum attention to discoverability.

Variable fonts are popular for two reasons: they expand design possibilities and improve website performance. While the former statement is definitely true since variable fonts do provide infinite typographical choices, the latter only holds under certain conditions.

If you're frequently switching between projects, you might be annoyed by RubyMines behavior of opening the last project on startup.
After all loading a project takes a few seconds as files are scanned and the RubyMine index is rebuilt. If you switch to another project after startup this time is doubled.

A saner default might be to open RubyMine with a dialog to choose the project to open.

This can be set under Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Project > Reopen projects on startup.

Switching to other projects

A helpful dialog...

RubyMine comes with a nice way to grep through your project's files: The finder (ctrl + shift + f). Don't be discouraged about the notice 100+ matches in n+ files if your searched keyword is too general or widely used in your project.

RubyMine comes with a few ways to narrow down the resulting list, don't hesitate to apply those filters to speed up your search. Your keybinding might vary based on your personal settings.

File mask (alt + k)

If you already know the file extension of your ...

If your app does not need to support IE11, you can use most ES6 features without a build step. Just deliver your plain JavaScript without transpilation through Babel or TypeScript, and modern browsers will run them natively.

Features supported by all modern browsers include:

• fat arrow functions (() => { expr })
• let / const
• class
• async / await
• Promises
• Generators
• Symbols
• Rest arguments (...args)
• Destructuring

You won't be able to use import and export, or use npm modules.

See this [ES6 compatibility mat...

Writing ruby methods that accept both optional and keyword arguments is dangerous and should be avoided. This confusing behavior will be deprecated in Ruby 2.7 and removed in Ruby 3, but right now you need to know about the following caveats.

Consider the following method

# DO NOT DO THIS

def colored_p(object = nil, color: 'red')
  switch_color_to(color)
  puts object.inspect
end


colored_p(['an array'])                   # ['an array'] (in red)
colored_p({ a: 'hash' }, color: 'blue')   # {:a=>'hash'} (in blue)
colored_p({ a: 'ha...

This can happen with a very simple model:

class Note
  has_many :attachments
end

Everything looks normal:

Note.all.to_a.size # => 8
Note.all.ids.size # => 8

Then .includes leads to weird results:

Note.all.includes(:attachments).to_a.size # => 8
Note.all.includes(:attachments).ids.size # => 12

If a note has 5 attachments, its id will be included 5 times.

With .preload it works as expected:

Note.all.preload(:attachments).to_a.size # => 8
Note.all.preload(:attachments).ids.size # => 8

Note

I crea...

Large Rails projects tend to define multiple custom ways to format Dates or DateTimes. This often leads to duplicated format strings, wrong formats and unnecessary introduction of new formats.

to_fs also supports to refer to those formats by name e.g. to_formatted_s(:iso_8601) or to_formatted_s(:short).
to_fs is an alias for to_formatted_s.

Those names are defined in Time::DATE_FORMATS and it's possible to add your own formats. There is a how to in the official [docs](https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/Date.html#method-i-t...

sass >= 1.35.0 has the option quietDeps and silenceDeprecations to silence deprecation warnings from dependencies.

• quietDeps: No deprecation warnings for dependencies e.g. Bootstrap
• silenceDeprecations: Allows to set a list of deprecation types you want to silence for your own code

Below there are a few examples for different build tools how to set the Sass options.

Webpacker

const sassLoaderConfig = environment.loaders.get('sass')
const...

CSS transitions are a simple animation framework that is built right into browsers. No need for Javascript here. They're supported by all browsers.

Basic usage

Transitions are used to animate the path between to property values. For example, to let the text color fade from red to green on hover, the following SASS is used (shorthand syntax):

.element
  color: red
  transition: color .1s
  
  &:hover
    color: green

This tells the browser "whenever the color of an .element changes...

If you ever wondered why a constant wasn't defined or wasn't available where you expected it to be, this article will help.

Also see Ruby constant lookup: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Authentication is a special part of web applications. On the one hand, it usually is a crucial security mechanism restrict access to certain people and roles. On the other hand, most users authenticate only once, so it is very unlikely to spot issues by accident.

So, here comes a quick checklist to help you verifying your authentication solution is all set.

• This should be default: use HTTPS with HSTS. The HSTS part is important.
• Use a reliable authentication solution, e.g. Clearance or [Devise...

When writing a Sass function, you may run into an error message that may be confusing:

@function rules may not contain style rules.

What Sass is trying to tell you is that a line in your Sass function is computing a result that is neither assigned to a variable nor returned.

Keep in mind that all functions in Sass return something, Sass does not mutate objects.

tl;dr

In Chrome DevTools in the Sources tab you can activate Event Listener Breakpoints for debugging events.

Example

The Event Listener Breakpoints in the Chrome DevTools can be quiet useful for debugging why and where code is handling specific events.

Here you can see a very simple example that shows what lines of code handle a click:

You can use this Code Pen if you want to try it yourself.

Limitation

...