Don Burks

My Current Stack

I thought I would give a peek into my current go-to scaffolding for a backend GraphQL server.

How I ported my Jekyll blog to Gatsby

Recently, I ported my blog over to Gatsby, after using Jekyll for two years. However, I didn't want to lose all of my posts. So, being an enterprising developer, I decided that I would write some scripts to convert the (remarkably similar but slightly different) posts from one to the other.

GraphQL Security Talk at Fullstack London 2019

I recently gave a talk at Fullstack London 2019 about GraphQL Security. Here is a link to the slides and some packages I referenced in my talk.

Why I am leaving Lighthouse

I'm making a big career change, and leaving the amazing team at Lighthouse Labs to get back to my role as a full-time technologist.

JS Wickedness

Much like the famous WAT talk, this post explores some of the oddities and creative applications of JS that make it 'fun' to work with.

JSConfBP Presentation

I had the privilege of speaking at JSConfBP this year, and wanted to share my slides with everyone.

E-Book has Launched

Please check out my latest work! The e-book has launched!

The Progress and Meter Tags

In my ongoing set of posts about various obscure HTML5 tags, this post goes into the progress and meter tags.

Announcing My E-book

I'm going to be publishing an e-book!

The Dialog Tag

Looking behind the proverbial curtain into the functionality of the dialog tag in HTML5.

HTML and CSS

I have some strong opinions about HTML and CSS, and I wanted to get them out there for the world to see.

Address Tag

Exploring what the HTML5 address tag is all about.

LSD - The secret to coding

This is a debugging and spec'ing method I have used for years in working with coding, and so I'm going to share it with you now.

Template Tags

Learning to work with the new HTML5 template tags, including what they give you and what they don't.

What is Programming?

An introspective look at some of the philosophy of programming, according to me.

MkObj - VanillaJS Library for Instance-safe objects

A JavaScript Library for creating Instance-Safe Objects using Prototypal Mixin Inheritance.

The Mind of a Developer

In this post, I talk about some of the common misconceptions that plague those in the developer world when it comes to mental health.

Elephants!

Recently when collaborating on a project with some students at Lighthouse Labs, I was asked to help debug a script that would save form values between page loads, so that the user wouldn’t have to re-populate the form. This piqued my interest, and so the sleeves were both literally and metaphorically rolled up so as to dive in and help with this project.

First Sentence jQuery Plugin

This jQuery plugin will apply a class to the semantically first sentence of text in an HTML element.

Relative Date Strings in PHP

This is about working with dates in PHP, something that has driven me nuts for years.

Object Constructors vs. Object Literals – Theory and Practice

Deep-dive into the differences between object constructors and object literals in JavaScript.

Fixing Common jQuery Animation Mistakes

jQuery Notification Plugin – jQuery.Bart

How jQuery.Bart Was Built

Looks like another plugin was built, and so I wanted to take you behind the scenes and talk about the why and the how.

You’re not from around here, are you? – The Same Origin Policy

The conclusion to how (and why) I build jqLSAdmin

Building jqLSAdmin – Part 2

The backstory behind building the jqLSAdmin localStorage bookmarklet - Part 1

Building jqLSAdmin – Part 1

I build a bookmarklet for working with localStorage.

Lifting the Lid on localStorage

Starting to dig into the potential and possibilities of working with localStorage.

jQuery Memory Game

A plugin I wrote which generates a jQuery memory game. Lots of fun, for the whole family!

Making Text 3D

A plugin to generate a 3d text effect.

Great Wisdom

A koan for closures

Dumb Tinkering, Revisited

A tag team effort to make a cool plugin based on a CSS Tricks article

That’s using your head…er()

This one includes some PHP, but it lets us delve into how you can dynamically generate JS on the back-end

Logical Looping

Last installment in the 5 Things series, with an emphasis on looping

Cash in on Caching (aka The This or That Debate)

Fourth installment of the 5 Things series - This time we look at how jQuery does caching, and what the benefits are

Testing Type

Third in the 5 Things series, this post focuses on the way the jQuery library tests the type of objects.

Explicit Equivalence

Second in the 5 Things series, this one is about testing equivalence, explicitly.

Building Better Objects

First in the 5 Things Everyone Could Learn From the jQuery Source series, focusing on object creation/composition.

5 Things Everyone Could Learn From the jQuery Source

A five-part series on things gleaned from the jQuery2.0 source code, including good coding practices and interesting uses of JS.