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I absolutely love JavaScript and if you were aware of that already, you know me better than most other people in my life. That fact also keeps getting in the way of me writing to-the-point articles, like this one right now. It is the only language my mind speaks when left alone. I spend all my free time with it building cool UI designs that nearly never meet the public eye, and flashy projects to use when I’m finally out of things to talk about. Today is the day, that changes… a little bit…

Fallbacks for disabled JavaScript…

JavaScript is my favourite programming language of all. Yes, you read that right. It is a programming language and I think one is a fool if they believe otherwise. While it is the de facto client side scripting language of the web, JavaScript has also seen a lot of growth on the server side especially with the emergence of technologies like Node.js and applications built on it.

With such extensive use, you might think no person on the face of this earth would have it disabled in their browsers. Even if they did, having a severely limited Facebook should push them to live with whatever grievances they might have had. It appears, however, that a little over 1% of users disable their JavaScript. Some do it to prevent ads, some to avoid interference with their screen-readers and, of course, there are those who do web development with progressive enhancement in mind.

Peculiarities of EcmaScript 6 Symbol type…

EcmaScript, the de facto client-side scripting language most commonly implemented by the name JavaScript has had the official specifications of its 6th edition out in June this year. Web app development would be taken to a whole new level as browser vendors implement this new spec. One of the things I’m most interested in at the moment is the Symbol type.

Note: Symbols are a recent development and are only usable in current browsers. Edge and Firefox fully implement it while Chrome has most of Symbol’s features. Safari has not yet implemented symbols so do not use it in your production code just yet.

Fail proof access to JavaScript’s built-in types…

JavaScript is a beautiful programming language, the de facto client side scripting language of the web until something new comes along, which I don’t think will ever happen. It’s extremely elastic in that one can create user defined methods to use with built in objects like Functions, Arrays and even generic objects. It exposes DOM and HTML interfaces that one can extend as per the requirements of the web app they’re building.

It is so flexible that features not available in certain browsers, due to poor implementations of W3 standards or a complete disregard of their recommendations, could be added dynamically by writing JavaScript code that fills in those gaps, usually referred to as shims or polyfills. However, with this kind of malleability, it is also possible to overwrite built-in objects references.

The Truth About Toilet Swirl: Synced for you…

You’ve likely heard that the directionality of the water swirl in a toilet flush is due to the Coriolis effect. It rotates counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern. However, that’s not exactly accurate. While the Coriolis effect does happen, it’s not significant enough to influence a toilet swirl.

Smarter Every Day and Veritasium have teamed up to explain just that, except they’ve done something marvellous this time. There are two videos, one on each of their channels that have to be played simultaneously for you to have the maximum viewing enjoyment. Yes, it’s the easiest thing to do, but I’ve made it a bit easier for you.