If you combine the features “property value shorthand” and “destructuring”, ECMAScript 6 gives you an elegant way to handle multiple return values. This blog post explains why that is useful and how it works.

Allen Wirfs-Brock, editor of the ECMAScript 6 specification, recently mentioned on Twitter that the schedule for ECMAScript 6 has changed slightly.

Integers lead an odd life in JavaScript. In the ECMAScript specification, they only exist conceptually: All numbers are always floating point and integers are ranges of numbers without decimal fractions (for details, consult “Integers in JavaScript” in “Speaking JavaScript”). In this blog post, I explain how to check whether a value is an integer.

JavaScript OOP is baffling: on one hand, there is a simple core, on the other hand, there are some really weird things going on. I’ve been pondering for a long time how to explain it well and I think the best way to do so is via four layers: single objects, prototype chains, constructors, constructor inheritance. The first two layers are JavaScript’s simple OOP core, layers 3 and 4 are where the complications start.

This blog post explains what new array methods ECMAScript 6 will bring and how to use them in current browsers.

Note: I’m using the terms constructor and class interchangeably.

The Web Components community has a new site: WebComponents.org. Quoting Addy Osmani:

WebComponents.org is the home for the community to learn and discuss Web Components.

The site had previously been soft-launched at webcomponents.github.io and is now online at the final URL. It’s good to have a single site with a simple URL where one can look up information related to this important technology. The site’s twitter account is @Web_Components.

Guest blog post by Rodney Rehm

You may find yourself in a situation requiring you to know the DOM context of the JavaScript that is currently executing. The DOM context of a running JavaScript is the <script> element that caused the JavaScript to be executed in the first place. With HTML5 the WhatWG introduced document.currentScript, which this article will use to explain simple techniques to make use of DOM context.

In JavaScript, the special variable this is relatively complicated, because it is available everywhere, not just in object-oriented settings. This blog post explains how this works and where it can cause problems, concluding with best practices.