Welcome to - most likely - my last Links For You post of 2023. Who knows though, I'm off for nearly ten days at the end of the month so I'll probably have the time to keep on blogging. (If I can tear myself away from Assassin's Creed Odyssey.) I absolutely love this particular series of posts on my blog and will be continuing it in the new year. Let's get into the links.

A Great Collection of Visual Studio Code Tips

One common theme for video games are blog posts along the lines of, "Ten things I wish I knew before starting So and So." In general, these posts are spoiler-free and focus on game mechanics folks may not be aware of. I typically Google for these before I start any new game as a way to ensure I don't miss them either. In that vein, Bryan Braun wrote "Things I wish someone would have told me about configuring VSCode". As someone who has used VS Code for years, I definitely recommend giving this a read as I ran into things I didn't know myself. It's short, sweet, and useful.

Background Sync for Web Apps

The Background Synchronization API is one of those APIs that seem really useful, but you don't see a lot of people talking about it. While part of the PWA suite of tools, it's a fairly complex API. Danny Moerkerke gives us not one, but two in-depth posts on the topic: "Background Sync Is A PWA Super Power" and "Background Sync Is A PWA Super Power - Part 2". You may want to check out his other posts as he has done some great PWA posts.

An Example of HTML Web Components

On Mastodon lately, there has been a lot of talk on "HTML" Web Components. These are components that enhance existing HTML which means they can progressively enhance content and present at least something to the end user even when JavaScript is disabled or slow to load. Back in November, Jim Nielsen wrote a good introduction to the concept, and you should read that first, but once you have, then read this good example: "HTML Web Components: An Example".

For Fun...

Last year my wife and I went to a "Christmas popup" at a local restaurant and it was wonderful. While there, the restaurant was playing some music that felt like a hip, techno update to classic Christmas songs. Now - I'm incredibly conservative when it comes to Christmas music, so what I just wrote would have sounded horrible to me. But it was really fun and kinda cool. I Shazamed it and they were playing this album. Enjoy.