Javascript

I keep meaning to run this but always forget the flag. There’s no npm update-all or anything – it’s just: npm update -g The -g tells npm to operate on the global package registry instead of the local node_modules. Without it, npm update only touches packages listed in your project’s package.json, which is the default behaviour and what you want most of the time. One thing to bear in mind: npm update won’t bump you to a new major version, even if one’s available. It respects the semver range in whatever pinned your package – so if you installed commander@2.x and 4.x is out, you’ll stay on 2.x. If you actually want to upgrade majors, you need to be explicit: ...

Sometimes you want to hide a column in a DataTable but keep its data in the DOM – maybe you need it for export, for a tooltip, or for some other operation that happens after the table renders. Removing the column entirely means losing that data, which isn’t always an option. The fix is embarrassingly simple: CSS. The setup Add a class to the column you want to hide using the sClass option in your DataTables initialisation: ...

I’ve been working on something called BottomToolBar. It’s a small piece of JavaScript that drops a scrolling bar into the bottom of your browser window – the kind you see on news channels, the one that runs along the bottom of the screen with headlines and images. I thought it might be useful for websites. How it works The bar sits at the bottom of the viewport, fixed in place, always on top of everything else. Content scrolls through it from right to left (or left to right, your call), separated by images – usually a logo or icon. It pulls text and images from a server, so you can update what it shows without touching the page itself. ...

I was reading through some job listings recently and noticed a pattern. The same skills keep appearing, and the ones that were important five years ago are shifting. Not disappearing entirely, but moving around. Here’s what I think developers should be focusing on right now if they want to stay employable over the next few years. This isn’t exhaustive. There are plenty of specialisms and niches I’m ignoring deliberately. I’m thinking about mainstream development work, the kind most people do. ...