A simple utility to execute a callback when a webfont loads.  Demo

This uses the CSS Font Loading Module when available (currently in Chrome 35+ and Opera 22+). When that isn’t available, it uses a very similar approach to the one used in the TypeKit Web Font Loader (which is currently 7.1KB GZIP).

Basically, it creates an element with a font stack including the web font and a default serif/sans-serif typeface. It then uses a test string and measures the dimensions of the element at a certain interval. When the dimensions are different than the default fallback fonts, the font is considered to have loaded successfully.

If you’d like a full polyfill for the CSS Font Loading Module, follow along with Bram Stein’s Font Loader. I believe the specification has changed since he launched this polyfill, but he’s working on an updated version. 

Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 4.0 Preview 1 has been released. This release contains improvements and updates to the Microsoft.Data.SqlClient data provider for SQL Server. 

AutoMapper has been a popular library in the .NET open source community for a long time. As their site says:

AutoMapper is a simple little library built to solve a deceptively complex problem - getting rid of code that mapped one object to another. This type of code is rather dreary and boring to write, so why not invent a tool to do it for us? 

Minimalistic but perfect custom scrollbar plugin  Demo

perfect means...

• There should be no css change on any original element.
• The scrollbar should not affect the original design layout.
• The design of the scrollbar should be (nearly) fully customizable.
• If the size of the container or the content changes, the scrollbar size and position should be able to change.
• New! It should work with vanilla JavaScript and major tools like NPM or Browserify.

SQL Server 2019 introduces support for the widely used UTF-8 character encoding. This has been a longtime requested feature and can be set as a database-level or column-level default encoding for Unicode string data.  

Big news: a new version of the NuGet clients has been released! This is version 3.3 of the client, with a new command-line and Visual Studio 2015 extension available for use. 

Sometimes, in order to get rapid feedback, it’s useful to throw together a prototype that has literally nothing going on in the backend, but lets the user get a sense of how the application would flow. The problem, of course, is that once users see such a thing, they can’t always tell the difference between smoke and mirrors and the real thing.