The Objective Blog

Keep up with what we're thinking, reading, and doing.

Fusion Radar: June 13, 2012

June 19th, 2012 - by brittany - Salt Lake City, Utah

Markdown-Here

Markdown-Here is an extension for Thunderbird, Firefox, and Chrome, that allows you to write emails in Markdown and render before sending. The creator, like most of us no doubt, felt it tedious to use the WYSIWYG editor in email clients and switched to using Markdown in the Github in-browser editor and then copying it into his email. This was also too tedious so he created a tool that allows you to write Markdown right in an email. It simplifies styling, and allows for syntax highlighting.

Even if you aren’t a developer this tool is helpful. It will take you less time to learn the Markdown symbols than it would to edit every email you write in a day with the WYSIWYG editor.

LLJS: Low-Level JavaScript

Low-Level JavaScript (formerly *JS) is “the bastard child of JavaScript and C.” It allows you to write CPU- and memory-optimized JavaScript code by using binary data instead of standard JS objects and types. It achieves CPU- and memory-optimization by allowing you to manage your memory explicitly, which cuts down on timed used by the JavaScript garbage collector. LLJS also cuts down on time by chaining several property accesses together and compiling them into a single memory access.

This tool isn’t the be-all-end-all to better performance, but in those instances when you need top performance it may be helpful.

Icenium

Icenium is cross-platform mobile development tool. It allows you to create native apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Kindle Fire using HTML5 and JavaScript. While there have been several tools over the last few years that claim to allow developers to develop native apps with web languages, Icenium’s features list convinced us to look into it. Icenium uses cloud services to manage all of your platform dependencies, which means you don’t have to worry about multiple software development kits. Also, because it uses the cloud, it allows you to access your code anytime from anywhere. The best feature Icenium has claimed is that you can see your changes in real time, which means no wasted time waiting while testing.

Laravel

Laravel is a PHP framework that claims to be a “clean and classy framework…freeing you from spaghetti code.” It was built because Taylor Otwell wanted a framework that was up-to-date with the latest PHP 5.3 but that had enough documentation to allow anyone and everyone to learn it. Laravel’s community has grown quite significantly since its release last year and can be used as a resource, either through forums or providing bundles (packaged, shared Laravel code). The documentation is compelling because it shows the power and flexibility of the framework.

GMaps.js

Gmaps.js is a JavaScript library that allows you to “use the potential of Google Maps in a simple way,” without extensive documentation or large amounts of code. Gmaps.js allows you to modify maps with map events and markers, add services (geolocation and geocoding), add overlays, customize routes, implement static maps, create table layers, create geo fences and more. With all of these features able to be implemented with minimal code we can’t think of too many mapping tools that are more comprehensive and easy to use.