The growing popularity of this site made its original domain name of demosthenes.info increasingly problematic: the name wasn’t readily associated with web development, and it was also difficult to spell and pronounce. Thus, this new domain, coupled with a design refresh, complete content updates, and significant performance improvements. Highlights of the new site include:

Updates Galore

  • Every article has had a thorough code review; most articles have been updated or rewritten. Completely outdated articles have been either redirected or marked as archived.
  • The site has been thoroughly link-checked; references that are outdated, or external links that return a 404, have been removed.

Improved CodePen Integration

  • Many more articles have an associated CodePen demo; links to pens are clearly marked for each article.

Enhanced Legibility

  • articles are typeset better, with improved clarity for sidenotes, steps and warnings.
  • code samples are tab-intented and color-coded for improved reading
  • coding articles have a meter to indicate their complexity and challenge for readers.

Improved Navigation

  • Navigation via reading lists. While it’s still possible to navigate the site via tags, are now the primary method of navigation to topics. Articles have been linked to the reading list in which they appear, and reading lists themselves link back to the appropriate articles that collect them together. Reading lists for HTML & CSS are feature-complete; and reading lists continue to be in development.
  • Simplified URLs. The URL structure has been cleaned up and improved.
  • Improved search. On-site search queries can now be three letters or more.
  • Better suggestions. Links appearing in the “feature bar” at the top of each page relate to the current subject.

Sleeker & Faster

The site as a whole is now much faster to load, gaining an average score of 97% on Google Pagespeed. This has been achieved through several techniques:

  • No dependencies. There’s no use of JQuery or any other framework anywhere on the site; demos that talk about JQuery still work, but actually use plain JavaScript underneath.
  • Optimised images. Images are optimised in both size and format. WebP images are served to Chrome users.
  • No social media plugins. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ buttons are plain links without active JavaScript or beacons, drawing on microdata-enhanced article markup.

On average, pages are around 10% of their original fully-loaded DOM size, with an average load time of less than three seconds on mobile with a 3G connection.

Specialisation

thenewcode.com concentrates exclusively on web development; articles not related to this topic have been relocated. For example. my writing on technology and culture is now published on massiveheadcanon.com. Comments from demosthenes.info have been forwarded into the appropriate articles; links elsewhere on the web should forward correctly once the DNS changes propogate worldwide, but you are encouraged to update any links you might have on your own site(s).

RSS Reader?

An RSS feed is maintained for this site; the old demosthenes.info feed will continue to work for at least six months.

…and more to come

There are further improvements to make to the site; with over 1000 articles, there’s also almost certainly something I’ve left forgotten or undone. I look forward to providing more features, and reading your feedback and suggestions!

Enjoy this piece? I invite you to follow me at twitter.com/dudleystorey to learn more.