DEV Community: Anthony Ciccarello

Multi-engine site search

Anthony Ciccarello — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 08:52:26 +0000

I added the /search page to my site with a form supporting multiple search engines. The hope is to give visitors a bit more choice in what companies to interact with.

The challenge was managing different query param for different sites.

DuckDuckGo doesn't support multiple q= params, but does accept sites=
Ecosia doesn't support a sites= param but does support multiple q= params (albeit with an extra comma requiring a space)
Google does support a as_sitesearch= param but that was dropped with the addition of another q= param.

By adding several different hidden form fields, I was able to cover each engine (almost) seamlessly.
Then the only difference was the form action would could be defined on the button.
The final result is as follows:

<form rel="search" method="get">
    <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="ciccarello.me"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="q" value="site:ciccarello.me "/>
    <input type="text" name="q" placeholder="Search"/>
    <button type="submit" formaction="https://ecosia.com/search">Search with Ecosia</button>
    <button type="submit" formaction="https://www.google.com/search">Search with Google</button>
    <button type="submit" formaction="https://duckduckgo.com/">Search with DuckDuckGo</button>
</form>

Why I Got a Twitter Account

Anthony Ciccarello — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 01:55:48 +0000

My friends and family often ask me about my Twitter account which is
frequently filled with web development specific comments like this:

Anthony Ciccarello

@ajciccarello

I never cease to be impressed with the number of @npmjs packages @sindresorhus authors. Appearing in 5 of the 20 search results I see.

17:49 PM - 29 Jun 2017

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For the majority of people who are not familiar with npm or the work of Sindre Sorhus, don't worry. You are not expected to get it. Tweets like this are not directed at the general public but rather at a specific software developer who has done a lot of work for the JavaScript community. While Twitter is a vast community, it was the chatter of unique communities within the Twitterverse that ultimately pulled me in.

For many years I didn't see the point of Twitter. Facebook had done a good job of adding features to make Twitter technically unnecessary. Facebook allows public posts and allows you to follow people without friending them. So from my perspective, if I wanted to let the world what I was eating for lunch I could just post it on Facebook. But social groups have different cultures and Facebook had already developed a reputation for close-knit private sharing.

Meanwhile, the more I dove into front-end web development, the more references I saw to conversations on Twitter by high-profile developers. Blog posts frequently referred to recommendations or controversies that were being discussed 140 characters at a time. It was this active community of developers sharing ideas in an informal medium that really intrigued me.

So I created an account. At first, I just followed other people. It was really interesting to see the topics that other software developers were discussing. At the time I was the only frontend developers on my team and wasn't connected with people who were trying out technologies like Webpack, so hearing the experiences of other developers was valuable to me.

Kent C. Dodds 🧢

@kentcdodds

@arahansen I have no need of gulp plugins. Everything I do is with webpack. I just fire it off with npm scripts.

19:11 PM - 17 Dec 2015

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As time went on, I became more comfortable and started engaging more with the platform. Attending ng-conf was a turning point for me because almost all of the speakers were using their Twitter account as their public profile. I began to see more how the platform provided an opportunity to engage with leaders in the community.

Anthony Ciccarello

@ajciccarello

Impressed with the @code snippets shown at #ngconf . Nice work @John_Papa

17:11 PM - 04 May 2016

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Following ng-conf I started connecting more with developers through Twitter. Sometimes it was simply re-tweeting a post I thought deserved more attention (even if I signaled Twitter's algorithms more than the few followers I had). But other times I asked questions of people in the web development community I would not have normally contacted. In this way Twitter has opened up a world of professional advice and information.

Since joining Twitter, I've expanded my use to include sharing interesting links or sending feedback to the public relations employees of companies I've interacted with. However, I still see Twitter as a professional tool. It offers the opportunity to glean from software developers who care about improving the web platform. These individuals fill a mentorship role that isn't always readily available within work organizations and provide an outside perspective that has helped me make decisions at work.

Twitter is a great way to tap into public conversations. Occasionally I add my voice but there are a lot of conversations going on that don't matter to me. As a web developer, I have found a niche where I feel comfortable. In this space, Twitter has become a great resource to learn more about industry standards and where the software community is headed. So while many might be confused by what I share, I want to continue to engage with the part of Twitter that has helped me to grow as a software engineer.

Daniel Ehrenberg

@littledan

TC39 is recommending that JS programmers use semicolons at the end of statements in code, rather than relying on ASI.
github.com/tc39/ecma262/p…

18:38 PM - 11 Jan 2018

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Cover Image: Scrub Jay - Photo by Ken Goulding on Unsplash
Originally published Jan 29, 2018

Migrating an Angular 1 application to @types

Anthony Ciccarello — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 04:51:56 +0000

I upgraded an application at work to use @types instead of Typings today.
Unfortunately I had trouble finding information on the differences between the
two systems. Many things that were supposed to " work with no
change"
didn't seem to be but eventually I was able to please the TypeScript compiler.
Since information online seemed to be lacking I thought I'd jot down a few
quick notes on what I learned.

Global types are only types (not the global object)

After installing the angular types, all of my references to the global angular
object started throwing compilation errors. This confounded me because all of
the information I read said that global types should still work. Additionally
I was still able to use types like angular.IScope without any issues. What I
didn't realize was that the @types definitions did not include the global
object. To be able to use angular.module(...) or angular.copy(...) in my
ES2015 modules I needed to import angular into the file using the following
syntax.

import * as angular from 'angular';

Libraries can mess with the global types

Our project is using a library called ng-metadata to allow writing our Angular 1 application in a style in line
with Angular 2. This has made our development much easier. Because the project
depended on the Angular 1 typings, the type definitions from @types conflicted
with the library. Thankfully, ng-metadata had already
fixed the issue, however I
didn't realize that some of the compilation errors were due to the library. It
wasn't until I updated ng-metadata that 3/4 of the compilation errors went
away.

You should use imports instead of global types

Something I learned while migrating was that you don't need to use the global
types. In fact I would recommend importing your types to shorten how many
characters it takes to define variables and to clarify where the types are
coming from. This was apparently supported using Typings but I learn it while
I was trying to fix some of the compilation errors I was seeing.

Instead of using the global typings

let $httpBackend: angular.IHttpBackendService;
let $state: angular.ui.IStateService;

Import the types at the beginning of the file

import { IHttpBackendService } from "angular";
import { IStateService } from "angular-ui-router";

let $httpBackend: IHttpBackendService;
let $state: IStateService;

While this pattern does add more imports at the beginning of your files, it is
clear where the types are being defined.

I hope others are able to have an easier time migrating to the new @types
system. It seems like a great way to simplify type management (especially for
libraries) but the migration was not as painless as I would have hoped.
Projects starting with @types shouldn't encounter the issues that I have since
the compiler won't let them go down a path that the raw DefinitelyTyped
definitions let us go. But for those who want to migrate, give yourself some
time to sort out the kinks.

_Originally published Nov 16, 2016

Automate Mojave Dark mode configuration

Anthony Ciccarello — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 04:45:13 +0000

If you like to automate your macOS configuration via bash scripts and have recently
setup Mojave, you may be wondering how to enable dark mode, the configuration
is called "AppleInterfaceStyle" and can be set using the following command.

defaults write "Apple Global Domain" "AppleInterfaceStyle" "Dark"

If you would like to revert back to the default (light) theme, delete the key.

defaults delete "Apple Global Domain" "AppleInterfaceStyle"

Both enabling and disabling will require a restart of your computer to take
affect. If you would like to try out the theme immediately, open the General
tab of the mac preferences.

open /System/Library/PreferencePanes/Appearance.prefPane

Originally published Sep 25, 2018