TypeScript 2.3 is the latest version in the quarterly release cycle from the TypeScript team. This release contains several useful additions to TypeScript which we have already started to leverage within some of our current projects.

Last month we looked at various approaches to scaling enterprise development, and the challenges found within development organizations in our Time for InnerSource? post. This month we continue looking at the need for InnerSource by taking a closer look at the Law of Diminishing Returns.

dojox/gfx is Dojo 1.x’s vector graphics library, with support for SVG, Canvas, and other legacy rendering environments through a drawing API based on the semantics of SVG. This API also provides the foundation for dojox/charting. Often the biggest challenge in working with vector graphics is the large number of possible configuration settings and permutations.

Over the past several months, the SitePen team has been hard at work on Dojo 2 along with the tools and infrastructure to support it. Part of that infrastructure, and one of the major priorities for Dojo 2, is to have top notch developer documentation, complete with examples, tutorials, and API documentation.

While the SitePen team is widely known for its expertise in building JavaScript and TypeScript applications, providing support and training to enterprise teams, and for helping create Dojo and Intern, it also has a fair amount of insight and expertise with helping teams be more effective.

In our recent post about the key features in ES2017, I was reminded just how much the standards process has changed in the past 15 years. As someone who tried to get involved early to improve standards, the process was broken and I was quickly discouraged.

As many of you know, Dojo 2 is being built on TypeScript. Many of us involved in Dojo 2 believe that TypeScript brings several advantages to developing with web technologies these days.

InnerSource is a series of strategies and tactics from the open source world that help companies share source code across teams.

As we near the finalization of the proposal, it’s looking like ES8 is going to deliver much more than the simple updates of its ES7 predecessor! We wanted to take a few moments to highlight our 5 favorite things about the upcoming 2017 release.

Functional programming and reactive programming principles are not new to JavaScript, but their adoption has recently become widespread across most modern frameworks and toolkits.

The TypeScript team recently announced the TypeScript 2.2 release candidate which will contain key improvements to the TypeScript language. Most notably, are the introduction of the object type and improved support for mixins and composable classes.

The techniques involved in creating modern web applications are continually evolving. It can be difficult to separate out the ones that are truly improving how web applications are developed from those experiments that, while often interesting, are ultimately not worth investing in.

Web applications can be deployed to many environments, including desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. We can even deploy web applications natively using a wrapper such as Apache Cordova to gain access to device features such as GPS, battery, and accelerometer data.

The motivation for Intern 4 is to make it easier to author tests with ES6+ features within tests, with or without transpilation. Want to skim? Here’s the Intern Roadmap which lists our high level status for each Intern release going forward.

Introducing Milestone Mayhem With years of building large scale web apps, we’ve experienced almost everything that goes right and wrong during software development projects. So we created Milestone Mayhem, a card game that reflects the challenges and successes with app development.

It’s been two very active years since the release of ES6, and we’ve seen pretty substantial changes in how we build JavaScript applications. While some complain of fatigue, there’s never been a more exciting time to be a JavaScript engineer.

To quote professional zoologist Jim Fowler, “The biggest challenge is how to affect public attitudes and make people care.” When a small startup has a big idea, they run into an even bigger challenge.

As the new year starts to unfold, it’s time to take a quick look at the things our team at SitePen resolves to do this year.

Thanks to a generous Mozilla Open Source Support program award, Intern has expanded its testing ecosystem to include new and robust sets of tools. Engineers can now easily write tests to benchmark sections of code, test for accessibility (a11y) support, and test for visual differences.

The TypeScript team has just announced the release of TypeScript 2.1 which contains several long-awaited features (pun intended) for Dojo 2.