JavaScript

An umlaut too far

Unicode is everywhere. But in some places, it’s still safest to use the good old ASCII character set, and in this post we’ll look at Unicode normalization as a way to get there.

December 19 2023Java, JavaScript, Unicode

Some letters are more equal than others

In the previous post, we looked at how full-text search works, treating all symbols in the index as equally important. But that’s not always how it works in practice — for instance, matches on whole words are usually better than matches on word fragments. This can be solved with weighting, which is today’s topic.

November 21 2023JavaScript, Search

Fulltext search from scratch

Imagine, all of Shakespeare’s collected works hidden in a box of alphabet biscuits. That’s roughly the approach we’ll take as we build a tiny search engine in JavaScript to understand how full-text search works.

November 7 2023JavaScript, Search

First-Class Analytics

Web analytics for 100% of users without dreadful consent dialogs is possible — here’s how.

July 6 2023HTML, JavaScript

Simpler and Better Modals

All modern browsers now include a built-in building block that helps us create accessible modals with less code. If you, like me, had no idea this existed, then this post is for you.

June 7 2023CSS, HTML, JavaScript

JavaScript Coercion 101

Developers love pointing out the madness in JavaScript, like [] + 2 === "2", but if your job is to write code in this language, or languages that compile to JavaScript without hiding this behavior (for example TypeScript and ClojureScript), you will save a lot of time debugging and coding by understanding why things are the way they are.

November 27 2019JavaScript