JavaScript tips

 I use Douglas Crockford's 'JSMin' minifier a lot. I modified it to keep newlines so I can look through the results. You can find it at:       ' https://github.com/Bert-Beckwith/myjsmin ' 'jsmin.c' is a small C program that removes JavaScript comments and excess whitespace. I often comment out old code rather than remove the code, so I use 'JSMin' to look at what is left. Afterwards I say ':g/^$/d' in 'vim' to remove blank lines. I really should just remove the old code and learn to use my source control system better. I also use 'JSMin' to minify my game, partly so that the input to 'UglifyJS' is smaller. I use an online version of 'UglifyJS' as my Linux system at home is a bit too old to run it. 'JSMin' is small and fast - I can run it in the background whilst playing my game.

 Breaking coding down into small steps can make coding boring. People sometimes say you should break down programming into small steps so as to 'keep it simple'. I have got into the habit of coding in very small steps because I am often tired in the evenings when I am coding. I spent several weeks adding an option to the settings page of my game.  Previously I might have done the whole thing in one evening. However, I work on around 7 or 8 improvements to my game at any one time. I use a very old browser at home where I have no connection to the Internet, so I need to visit my local library to test on modern browsers.  Also my game takes several minutes to load on my 25-year old Pentium computer.

 My game looked strange when I tested it on mobile phones run by 'appetize.io'. There was a thick border around the boards of players. And the game seemed to hang when I pressed a button. I thought maybe Chrome was adding an outline when an 'input' element got the focus. So I tried setting 'outline: 0'. This did not fix the problem. However, when I tested my game on mobile phones at 'browserstack.com' then everything looked fine. I realised that maybe there was a problem at 'appetize.io'. However, 'browserstack.com' only gives you one free minute per device.  Whereas 'appetize.io' gives you 30 free minutes a month. 'appetize.io' worked fine for tablets. This was a few months ago. Now my game looks fine on mobiles run by 'appetize.io'.

 I have been adding screenshots to the manifests of my webpages that are Progressive Web Apps (PWA). Chrome suggests doing this in the 'Application' panel of the 'developer tools'. However Chrome only shows these screenshots as small 'thumbnail' images when you go to install the PWA. It seems each set of screenshots shown needs to have the same 'aspect ratio'.

 I have been removing obvious 'abbr' tags from my 'tips' page I had a lot of fun looking up abbreviations but apparently it is bad style as it interrupts the flow of the reader. This can be especially bad for screen readers. For example, I was showing the abbreviation for 'PC' and '3d'. I also now only mention an abbreviation once the first time it is appears in a tip rather than repeating the abbreviation in the same tip. I still repeat abbreviations in different tips as someone might be reading just one tip.  I am now removing unnecessary links for websites mentioned in the tips.  When I started writing the tips, I thought the idea of HTML, being 'hyper-text', was to have lots of links. So I added a link for every website, book and organistion that I mentioned.  But over time, the number of links grew to be over 500.  Again, the links, being blue and underline, interrupt the flow of the reader. I thought the page would be more inviting with lot...

 I have been adding 'smooth scrolling' to my pages which have internal links. I add this to my CSS:     :root { scroll-behavior:smooth; }  The browser now shows moving through the page to get to the link. This even works on Firefox and on the old Chrome for Windows7. Sometimes the page scrolls very quickly when I come 'back' to a page where I had gone to a link. I turn 'smooth scrolling' off when the user has asked for 'reduced motion'. I learnt about this from reading the book: 'Responsive Web Design with HTML and CSS' by Ben Frain. I found the book in a branch of my local library. I find different books in the different branches.