Two years ago, the folks at GitHub released a new text editor called Atom. They built it with web technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As part of this project they released Electron, a framework to write cross-platform desktop applications with web technologies.

Projects like Atom and Electron changed the way we think about the frontier between desktop and web apps. Let’s consider what frameworks like Electron make possible.

At Springload, we frequently organise internal training workshops. I have made the workshop material (largely based on NodeSchool) available publicly for others to reuse.

I love D3. D3 is amazing at making charts. D3 code is also quite hard to write – the learning curve is steep, and using the library expertly also requires expert knowledge of SVG. Instead of reinventing the wheel, here are reusable D3 charts I made while working on client projects at Springload.

We’ve been trialing new front-end tools and libraries over 2015 but our main stack has remained very stable. Starting a new project? Here are Springload’s picks, all available in our front-end starter kit.

Lately I’ve been very interested in the topic of exporting PNG or SVG assets from D3 charts created with SVG and CSS. This is a very important topic because those exports are often a big selling point of paid data visualizations libraries, and rightfully so – you can’t reuse a dynamic D3 chart as easily as a static asset.