three.js is a very capable Javascript 3D engine. There are a ton of cool examples out there to learn from, but sadly little in the way of documentation.

This article aims to give you a macro view of three.js, hopefully bestowing you with enough context to explore the parts that excite you in more depth, on your own.

I’d like to start off by asking what seems like quite a simple question: What is the difference between data and information? And taking it a step further, where does knowledge fit into this definition? Not as easy to answer as you might expect, is it! Before we start getting our hands dirty and creating some awesome data visualisations, it’s going to be useful to learn the definitions of – and difference between – these three words.

In this article I’ll be showing you how to make a quick app that gets your location and at your request stores the information to your browser, as well as showing you how to use drag and drop to send a short tweet. This is all made possible thanks to the javascript APIs being developed at the moment in the new HTML5 specification.

There are a lot of CoffeeScript guides out there. I’ve even written some myself. When I was asked to contribute to the 12 Devs of Xmas with a piece on CoffeeScript, I was keen but knew I needed to take a different angle on it. So I’ve decided that instead of slowly introducing you to CoffeeScript from the base up and writing some typical “Hello World” (does anyone learn from that, really?) I’ve taken a simple piece of JavaScript I’ve written, and together we’ll convert it to CoffeeScript. The original JavaScript and the CoffeeScript rewrite will be available from Github so you can play around to your heart’s content.

Keeping track of UI state in web applications can get very complicated very quickly. Data is coming and going; the user is opening and closing components, selecting, filtering and rearranging; and just relying on DOM inspection to understand where things are is likely to end in frustration. Trust me, I’ve been there.