Pedro Canterini pcanterini

OS X Screencast to animated GIF

This gist shows how to create a GIF screencast using only free OS X tools: QuickTime, ffmpeg, and gifsicle.

Instructions

To capture the video (filesize: 19MB), using the free "QuickTime Player" application:

Zero downtime deploys with unicorn + nginx + runit + rvm + chef

Below are the actual files we use in one of our latest production applications at Agora Games to achieve zero downtime deploys with unicorn. You've probably already read the GitHub blog post on Unicorn and would like to try zero downtime deploys for your application. I hope these files and notes help. I am happy to update these files or these notes if there are comments/questions. YMMV (of course).

Other application notes:

Our application uses MongoDB, so we don't have database migrations to worry about as with MySQL or postgresql. That does not mean that we won't have to worry about issues with the database with indexes being built in MongoDB or what have you.
We use capistrano for deployment.

Salient points for each file:

Frontend Development

Attention: the list was moved to

https://github.com/dypsilon/frontend-dev-bookmarks

This page is not maintained anymore, please update your bookmarks.

How to set up stress-free SSL on an OS X development machine

One of the best ways to reduce complexity (read: stress) in web development is to minimize the differences between your development and production environments. After being frustrated by attempts to unify the approach to SSL on my local machine and in production, I searched for a workflow that would make the protocol invisible to me between all environments.

Most workflows make the following compromises:

Use HTTPS in production but HTTP locally. This is annoying because it makes the environments inconsistent, and the protocol choices leak up into the stack. For example, your web application needs to understand the underlying protocol when using the secure flag for cookies. If you don't get this right, your HTTP development server won't be able to read the cookies it writes, or worse, your HTTPS production server could pass sensitive cookies over an insecure connection.
Use production SSL certificates locally. This is annoying

CSS Layout Debugger

A tweet-sized debugger for visualizing your CSS layouts. Outlines every DOM element on your page a random (valid) CSS hex color.

One-line version to paste in your DevTools

Use $$ if your browser aliases it:

~ 108 byte version

##Setup your server (this would ideally be done with automated provisioning)

add a deploy user with password-less ssh see this gist
install forever npm install -g forever

##Install flightplan

npm install -g flightplan
in your project folder npm install flightplan --save-dev
create a flightplan.js file

What forces layout / reflow

All of the below properties or methods, when requested/called in JavaScript, will trigger the browser to synchronously calculate the style and layout*. This is also called reflow or layout thrashing, and is common performance bottleneck.

Generally, all APIs that synchronously provide layout metrics will trigger forced reflow / layout. Read on for additional cases and details.

Element APIs

Getting box metrics

elem.offsetLeft, elem.offsetTop, elem.offsetWidth, elem.offsetHeight, elem.offsetParent

	# Gemfile
	gem "puma"

	# Procfile
	web: bundle exec puma -p $PORT -e $RACK_ENV -C config/puma.rb

	# add to config block config/environments/production.rb
	config.threadsafe!

	# get rid of NewRelic after_fork code, if you were doing this:

	// Future versions of Hyper may add additional config options,
	// which will not automatically be merged into this file.
	// See https://hyper.is#cfg for all currently supported options.

	module.exports = {
	config: {
	// default font size in pixels for all tabs
	fontSize: 14,

	// font family with optional fallbacks

	/* bling.js */
	window.$ = document.querySelector.bind(document);
	window.$$ = document.querySelectorAll.bind(document);
	Node.prototype.on = window.on = function(name, fn) { this.addEventListener(name, fn); };
	NodeList.prototype.__proto__ = Array.prototype;
	NodeList.prototype.on = function(name, fn) { this.forEach((elem) => elem.on(name, fn)); };