 Resources from Laurie Barth in 2024

A series of lessons to help you get more familiar with modern JavaScript syntax.

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

ES6 and Beyond

Learn how to use the features of `gatsby-theme-blog` version 2.0.

Gatsby is a blazing fast static site generator built with React. Gatsby gives you all of the modern JavaScript tools you want; set up and ready to go out of the box.

gatsby

Blog Theme 2.0

This is an example of how to use the flat method available on the array prototype in JavaScript.

Flatten a Nested Array in JavaScript with Array.prototype.flat

Use these functions in order to flip back and forth between an Object and an Array.

Convert an Object to an Array and back again with Object.entries and Object.fromEntries

Use the spread operator to copy a flat object. Note that this is a shallow copy.

Copy an Object with the Spread Operator

Use the spread operator to merge multiple arrays. This example uses two, but the same pattern can be used.

Merge Arrays using the Spread Operator

Using the spread operator you can merge objects. This example uses two objects, but the syntax is the same for more. Note that duplicate keys will be overridden.

Merge Objects with JavaScript's Spread Operator

Use the flatMap function to both map and flatten at the same time.

Array.prototype.flatMap from ES2019

Arrays can be iterated through using both for...in and for...of, but there are differences. This video shows that for...of accesses the values of each element and for...in accesses the indexes of each element.

For...in Loop vs. For...of Loop

Cascading Style Sheets bring order and beauty to our applications.

Use the hover pseudo-class to apply conditional styling when a user interacts with an element but has not yet activated it.

Conditionally Apply Style on Hover with the CSS Hover Pseudo-class

Use the focus pseudo-class to assign conditional styling when I user selects an element.

Conditionally Style an Element with the Focus Pseudo-class

Use the focus-within pseudo-class to conditionally assign styling to a parent element when its child receives focus.

Conditionally Assign Style to a Parent Element with Focus-Within Pseudo-class

Use nested destructuring to access the value of an object within an object.

Nested Destructuring for Objects

Visual Studio Code is an integrated development environment (IDE) built and maintained by Microsoft. It is offered free of charge.

vscode

Determine whether a keybinding in VS Code is duplicated and change the binding to a unique set of keys so you can use the shortcut.

Find and Fix Keybinding Clashes in VS Code

Use the Peacock extension to assign colors to the border of each VS code window or project.

Apply Colors to your VS Code border to Differentiate Between Windows

Learn how to use splice with one, two or three+ arguments.
With one argument splice removes all elements past that index.
With two arguments it removes the number of elements specified past the first argument index.
With three+ arguments it removes the elements specified and adds all elements passed into the function.

Add and Remove Elements in an Array Using Splice

You can use optional chaining to access properties of an object. If the parent property exists, it acts as a typical dot accessor. If not, optional chaining prevents an error from being thrown and instead returns undefined.

Safely Access a Property on a JavaScript Object with Optional Chaining

You can use optional chaining to access elements in an array. If the array is null or undefined, attempting to access an element with optional chaining prevents an error from being thrown, returning undefined instead.

Safely Access a Property on a JavaScript Array with Optional Chaining

Set up `gatsby-theme-blog` in order to add pre-built blog functionality to your Gatsby site.

Install and Configure Gatsby Blog Theme

Use the built-in `prismPreset` option to add prism highlighting to `gatsby-theme-blog`.

Note that this is only available in Blog Theme 2.0 and beyond.

Add Prism Highlighting to a Gatsby Blog Theme site

MDX is an authorable format that lets you seamlessly use JSX in your markdown documents. You can import components, like interactive charts or notifications, and export metadata. This makes writing long-form content with components a blast.



Laurie Barth walks us through MDX v2's syntax by trying to break it. She starts at markdown syntax and takes us through increasingly complex applications of MDX, including passing dynamic props to .mdx files imported into other .mdx files.

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Instructors

Content Type

Laurie Barth

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