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JS Questions

Answers to Front-end Job Interview Questions - JS Questions. Pull requests for suggestions and corrections are welcome!

Explain event delegation

Event delegation is a technique involving adding event listeners to a parent element instead of adding them to the descendant elements. The listener will fire whenever the event is triggered on the descendant elements due to event bubbling up the DOM. The benefits of this technique are:

  • Memory footprint goes down because only one single handler is needed on the parent element, rather than having to attach event handlers on each descendant.
  • There is no need to unbind the handler from elements that are removed and to bind the event for new elements.
References

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Explain how this works in JavaScript

There's no simple explanation for this; it is one of the most confusing concepts in JavaScript. A hand-wavey explanation is that the value of this depends on how the function is called. I have read many explanations on this online, and I found Arnav Aggrawal's explanation to be the clearest. The following rules are applied:

  1. If the new keyword is used when calling the function, this inside the function is a brand new object.
  2. If apply, call, or bind are used to call/create a function, this inside the function is the object that is passed in as the argument.
  3. If a function is called as a method, such as obj.method() — this is the object that the function is a property of.
  4. If a function is invoked as a free function invocation, meaning it was invoked without any of the conditions present above, this is the global object. In a browser, it is the window object. If in strict mode ('use strict'), this will be undefined instead of the global object.
  5. If multiple of the above rules apply, the rule that is higher wins and will set the this value.
  6. If the function is an ES2015 arrow function, it ignores all the rules above and receives the this value of its surrounding scope at the time it is created.

For an in-depth explanation, do check out his article on Medium.

References

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Explain how prototypal inheritance works

This is an extremely common JavaScript interview question. All JavaScript objects have a prototype property, that is a reference to another object. When a property is accessed on an object and if the property is not found on that object, the JavaScript engine looks at the object's prototype, and the prototype's prototype and so on, until it finds the property defined on one of the prototypes or until it reaches the end of the prototype chain. This behavior simulates classical inheritance, but it is really more of delegation than inheritance.

References

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What do you think of AMD vs CommonJS?

Both are ways to implement a module system, which was not natively present in JavaScript until ES2015 came along. CommonJS is synchronous while AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition) is obviously asynchronous. CommonJS is designed with server-side development in mind while AMD, with its support for asynchronous loading of modules, is more intended for browsers.

I find AMD syntax to be quite verbose and CommonJS is closer to the style you would write import statements in other languages. Most of the time, I find AMD unnecessary, because if you served all your JavaScript into one concatenated bundle file, you wouldn't benefit from the async loading properties. Also, CommonJS syntax is closer to Node style of writing modules and there is less context-switching overhead when switching between client side and server side JavaScript development.

I'm glad that with ES2015 modules, that has support for both synchronous and asynchronous loading, we can finally just stick to one approach. Although it hasn't been fully rolled out in browsers and in Node, we can always use transpilers to convert our code.

References

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Explain why the following doesn't work as an IIFE: function foo(){ }();. What needs to be changed to properly make it an IIFE?

IIFE stands for Immediately Invoked Function Expressions. The JavaScript parser reads function foo(){ }(); as function foo(){ } and ();, where the former is a function declaration and the latter (a pair of brackets) is an attempt at calling a function but there is no name specified, hence it throws Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ).

Here are two ways to fix it that involves adding more brackets: (function foo(){ })() and (function foo(){ }()). These functions are not exposed in the global scope and you can even omit its name if you do not need to reference itself within the body.

You might also use void operator: void function foo(){ }();. Unfortunately, there is one issue with such approach. The evaluation of given expression is always undefined, so if your IIFE function returns anything, you can't use it. An example:

// Don't add JS syntax to this code block to prevent Prettier from formatting it.
const foo = void function bar() { return 'foo'; }();

console.log(foo); // undefined
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What's the difference between a variable that is: null, undefined or undeclared? How would you go about checking for any of these states?

Undeclared variables are created when you assign a value to an identifier that is not previously created using var, let or const. Undeclared variables will be defined globally, outside of the current scope. In strict mode, a ReferenceError will be thrown when you try to assign to an undeclared variable. Undeclared variables are bad just like how global variables are bad. Avoid them at all cost! To check for them, wrap its usage in a try/catch block.

function foo() {
  x = 1; // Throws a ReferenceError in strict mode
}

foo();
console.log(x); // 1

A variable that is undefined is a variable that has been declared, but not assigned a value. It is of type undefined. If a function does not return any value as the result of executing it is assigned to a variable, the variable also has the value of undefined. To check for it, compare using the strict equality (===) operator or typeof which will give the 'undefined' string. Note that you should not be using the abstract equality operator to check, as it will also return true if the value is null.

var foo;
console.log(foo); // undefined
console.log(foo === undefined); // true
console.log(typeof foo === 'undefined'); // true

console.log(foo == null); // true. Wrong, don't use this to check!

function bar() {}
var baz = bar();
console.log(baz); // undefined

A variable that is null will have been explicitly assigned to the null value. It represents no value and is different from undefined in the sense that it has been explicitly assigned. To check for null, simply compare using the strict equality operator. Note that like the above, you should not be using the abstract equality operator (==) to check, as it will also return true if the value is undefined.

var foo = null;
console.log(foo === null); // true
console.log(typeof foo === 'object'); // true

console.log(foo == undefined); // true. Wrong, don't use this to check!

As a personal habit, I never leave my variables undeclared or unassigned. I will explicitly assign null to them after declaring if I don't intend to use it yet. If you use a linter in your workflow, it will usually also be able to check that you are not referencing undeclared variables.

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What is a closure, and how/why would you use one?

A closure is the combination of a function and the lexical environment within which that function was declared. The word "lexical" refers to the fact that lexical scoping uses the location where a variable is declared within the source code to determine where that variable is available. Closures are functions that have access to the outer (enclosing) function's variables—scope chain even after the outer function has returned.

Why would you use one?

References

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Can you describe the main difference between a .forEach loop and a .map() loop and why you would pick one versus the other?

To understand the differences between the two, let's look at what each function does.

forEach

  • Iterates through the elements in an array.
  • Executes a callback for each element.
  • Does not return a value.
const a = [1, 2, 3];
const doubled = a.forEach((num, index) => {
  // Do something with num and/or index.
});

// doubled = undefined

map

  • Iterates through the elements in an array.
  • "Maps" each element to a new element by calling the function on each element, creating a new array as a result.
const a = [1, 2, 3];
const doubled = a.map(num => {
  return num * 2;
});

// doubled = [2, 4, 6]

The main difference between .forEach and .map() is that .map() returns a new array. If you need the result, but do not wish to mutate the original array, .map() is the clear choice. If you simply need to iterate over an array, forEach is a fine choice.

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What's a typical use case for anonymous functions?

They can be used in IIFEs to encapsulate some code within a local scope so that variables declared in it do not leak to the global scope.

(function() {
  // Some code here.
})();

As a callback that is used once and does not need to be used anywhere else. The code will seem more self-contained and readable when handlers are defined right inside the code calling them, rather than having to search elsewhere to find the function body.

setTimeout(function() {
  console.log('Hello world!');
}, 1000);

Arguments to functional programming constructs or Lodash (similar to callbacks).

const arr = [1, 2, 3];
const double = arr.map(function(el) {
  return el * 2;
});
console.log(double); // [2, 4, 6]
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How do you organize your code? (module pattern, classical inheritance?)

In the past, I used Backbone for my models which encourages a more OOP approach, creating Backbone models and attaching methods to them.

The module pattern is still great, but these days, I use React/Redux which utilize a single-directional data flow based on Flux architecture. I would represent my app's models using plain objects and write utility pure functions to manipulate these objects. State is manipulated using actions and reducers like in any other Redux application.

I avoid using classical inheritance where possible. When and if I do, I stick to these rules.

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What's the difference between host objects and native objects?

Native objects are objects that are part of the JavaScript language defined by the ECMAScript specification, such as String, Math, RegExp, Object, Function, etc.

Host objects are provided by the runtime environment (browser or Node), such as window, XMLHTTPRequest, etc.

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Difference between: function Person(){}, var person = Person(), and var person = new Person()?

This question is pretty vague. My best guess at its intention is that it is asking about constructors in JavaScript. Technically speaking, function Person(){} is just a normal function declaration. The convention is to use PascalCase for functions that are intended to be used as constructors.

var person = Person() invokes the Person as a function, and not as a constructor. Invoking as such is a common mistake if it the function is intended to be used as a constructor. Typically, the constructor does not return anything, hence invoking the constructor like a normal function will return undefined and that gets assigned to the variable intended as the instance.

var person = new Person() creates an instance of the Person object using the new operator, which inherits from Person.prototype. An alternative would be to use Object.create, such as: Object.create(Person.prototype).

function Person(name) {
  this.name = name;
}

var person = Person('John');
console.log(person); // undefined
console.log(person.name); // Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'name' of undefined

var person = new Person('John');
console.log(person); // Person { name: "John" }
console.log(person.name); // "john"
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What's the difference between .call and .apply?

Both .call and .apply are used to invoke functions and the first parameter will be used as the value of this within the function. However, .call takes in comma-separated arguments as the next arguments while .apply takes in an array of arguments as the next argument. An easy way to remember this is C for call and comma-separated and A for apply and an array of arguments.

function add(a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

console.log(add.call(null, 1, 2)); // 3
console.log(add.apply(null, [1, 2])); // 3

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Explain Function.prototype.bind.

Taken word-for-word from MDN:

The bind() method creates a new function that, when called, has its this keyword set to the provided value, with a given sequence of arguments preceding any provided when the new function is called.

In my experience, it is most useful for binding the value of this in methods of classes that you want to pass into other functions. This is frequently done in React components.

References

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When would you use document.write()?

document.write() writes a string of text to a document stream opened by document.open(). When document.write() is executed after the page has loaded, it will call document.open which clears the whole document (<head> and <body> removed!) and replaces the contents with the given parameter value. Hence it is usually considered dangerous and prone to misuse.

There are some answers online that explain document.write() is being used in analytics code or when you want to include styles that should only work if JavaScript is enabled. It is even being used in HTML5 boilerplate to load scripts in parallel and preserve execution order! However, I suspect those reasons might be outdated and in the modern day, they can be achieved without using document.write(). Please do correct me if I'm wrong about this.

References

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What's the difference between feature detection, feature inference, and using the UA string?

Feature Detection

Feature detection involves working out whether a browser supports a certain block of code, and running different code depending on whether it does (or doesn't), so that the browser can always provide a working experience rather crashing/erroring in some browsers. For example:

if ('geolocation' in navigator) {
  // Can use navigator.geolocation
} else {
  // Handle lack of feature
}

Modernizr is a great library to handle feature detection.

Feature Inference

Feature inference checks for a feature just like feature detection, but uses another function because it assumes it will also exist, e.g.:

if (document.getElementsByTagName) {
  element = document.getElementById(id);
}

This is not really recommended. Feature detection is more foolproof.

UA String

This is a browser-reported string that allows the network protocol peers to identify the application type, operating system, software vendor or software version of the requesting software user agent. It can be accessed via navigator.userAgent. However, the string is tricky to parse and can be spoofed. For example, Chrome reports both as Chrome and Safari. So to detect Safari you have to check for the Safari string and the absence of the Chrome string. Avoid this method.

References

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Explain Ajax in as much detail as possible.

Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a set of web development techniques using many web technologies on the client side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send data to and retrieve from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows for web pages, and by extension web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly substitute use JSON instead of XML, due to the advantages of JSON being native to JavaScript.

The XMLHttpRequest API is frequently used for the asynchronous communication or these days, the fetch API.

References

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Ajax?

Advantages

  • Better interactivity. New content from the server can be changed dynamically without the need to reload the entire page.
  • Reduce connections to the server since scripts and stylesheets only have to be requested once.
  • State can be maintained on a page. JavaScript variables and DOM state will persist because the main container page was not reloaded.
  • Basically most of the advantages of an SPA.

Disadvantages

  • Dynamic webpages are harder to bookmark.
  • Does not work if JavaScript has been disabled in the browser.
  • Some webcrawlers do not execute JavaScript and would not see content that has been loaded by JavaScript.
  • Basically most of the disadvantages of an SPA.

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Explain how JSONP works (and how it's not really Ajax).

JSONP (JSON with Padding) is a method commonly used to bypass the cross-domain policies in web browsers because Ajax requests from the current page to a cross-origin domain is not allowed.

JSONP works by making a request to a cross-origin domain via a <script> tag and usually with a callback query parameter, for example: https://example.com?callback=printData. The server will then wrap the data within a function called printData and return it to the client.

<!-- https://mydomain.com -->
<script>
function printData(data) {
  console.log(`My name is ${data.name}!`);
}
</script>

<script src="https://example.com?callback=printData"></script>
// File loaded from https://example.com?callback=printData
printData({ name: 'Yang Shun' });

The client has to have the printData function in its global scope and the function will be executed by the client when the response from the cross-origin domain is received.

JSONP can be unsafe and has some security implications. As JSONP is really JavaScript, it can do everything else JavaScript can do, so you need to trust the provider of the JSONP data.

These days, CORS is the recommended approach and JSONP is seen as a hack.

References

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Have you ever used JavaScript templating? If so, what libraries have you used?

Yes. Handlebars, Underscore, Lodash, AngularJS, and JSX. I disliked templating in AngularJS because it made heavy use of strings in the directives and typos would go uncaught. JSX is my new favorite as it is closer to JavaScript and there is barely any syntax to learn. Nowadays, you can even use ES2015 template string literals as a quick way for creating templates without relying on third-party code.

const template = `<div>My name is: ${name}</div>`;

However, do be aware of a potential XSS in the above approach as the contents are not escaped for you, unlike in templating libraries.

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Explain "hoisting".

Hoisting is a term used to explain the behavior of variable declarations in your code. Variables declared or initialized with the var keyword will have their declaration "moved" up to the top of the current scope, which we refer to as hoisting. However, only the declaration is hoisted, the assignment (if there is one), will stay where it is.

Note that the declaration is not actually moved - the JavaScript engine parses the declarations during compilation and becomes aware of declarations and their scopes. It is just easier to understand this behavior by visualizing the declarations as being hoisted to the top of their scope. Let's explain with a few examples.

// var declarations are hoisted.
console.log(foo); // undefined
var foo = 1;
console.log(foo); // 1

// let/const declarations are NOT hoisted.
console.log(bar); // ReferenceError: bar is not defined
let bar = 2;
console.log(bar); // 2

Function declarations have the body hoisted while the function expressions (written in the form of variable declarations) only has the variable declaration hoisted.

// Function Declaration
console.log(foo); // [Function: foo]
foo(); // 'FOOOOO'
function foo() {
  console.log('FOOOOO');
}
console.log(foo); // [Function: foo]

// Function Expression
console.log(bar); // undefined
bar(); // Uncaught TypeError: bar is not a function
var bar = function() {
  console.log('BARRRR');
};
console.log(bar); // [Function: bar]

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Describe event bubbling.

When an event triggers on a DOM element, it will attempt to handle the event if there is a listener attached, then the event is bubbled up to its parent and the same thing happens. This bubbling occurs up the element's ancestors all the way to the document. Event bubbling is the mechanism behind event delegation.

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What's the difference between an "attribute" and a "property"?

Attributes are defined on the HTML markup but properties are defined on the DOM. To illustrate the difference, imagine we have this text field in our HTML: <input type="text" value="Hello">.

const input = document.querySelector('input');
console.log(input.getAttribute('value')); // Hello
console.log(input.value); // Hello

But after you change the value of the text field by adding "World!" to it, this becomes:

console.log(input.getAttribute('value')); // Hello
console.log(input.value); // Hello World!
References

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Why is extending built-in JavaScript objects not a good idea?

Extending a built-in/native JavaScript object means adding properties/functions to its prototype. While this may seem like a good idea at first, it is dangerous in practice. Imagine your code uses a few libraries that both extend the Array.prototype by adding the same contains method, the implementations will overwrite each other and your code will break if the behavior of these two methods is not the same.

The only time you may want to extend a native object is when you want to create a polyfill, essentially providing your own implementation for a method that is part of the JavaScript specification but might not exist in the user's browser due to it being an older browser.

References

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Difference between document load event and document DOMContentLoaded event?

The DOMContentLoaded event is fired when the initial HTML document has been completely loaded and parsed, without waiting for stylesheets, images, and subframes to finish loading.

window's load event is only fired after the DOM and all dependent resources and assets have loaded.

References

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What is the difference between == and ===?

== is the abstract equality operator while === is the strict equality operator. The == operator will compare for equality after doing any necessary type conversions. The === operator will not do type conversion, so if two values are not the same type === will simply return false. When using ==, funky things can happen, such as:

1 == '1'; // true
1 == [1]; // true
1 == true; // true
0 == ''; // true
0 == '0'; // true
0 == false; // true

My advice is never to use the == operator, except for convenience when comparing against null or undefined, where a == null will return true if a is null or undefined.

var a = null;
console.log(a == null); // true
console.log(a == undefined); // true
References

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Explain the same-origin policy with regards to JavaScript.

The same-origin policy prevents JavaScript from making requests across domain boundaries. An origin is defined as a combination of URI scheme, hostname, and port number. This policy prevents a malicious script on one page from obtaining access to sensitive data on another web page through that page's Document Object Model.

References

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Make this work:

duplicate([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]); // [1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5]
function duplicate(arr) {
  return arr.concat(arr);
}

duplicate([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]); // [1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5]

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Why is it called a Ternary expression, what does the word "Ternary" indicate?

"Ternary" indicates three, and a ternary expression accepts three operands, the test condition, the "then" expression and the "else" expression. Ternary expressions are not specific to JavaScript and I'm not sure why it is even in this list.

References

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What is "use strict";? What are the advantages and disadvantages to using it?

'use strict' is a statement used to enable strict mode to entire scripts or individual functions. Strict mode is a way to opt into a restricted variant of JavaScript.

Advantages:

  • Makes it impossible to accidentally create global variables.
  • Makes assignments which would otherwise silently fail to throw an exception.
  • Makes attempts to delete undeletable properties throw (where before the attempt would simply have no effect).
  • Requires that function parameter names be unique.
  • this is undefined in the global context.
  • It catches some common coding bloopers, throwing exceptions.
  • It disables features that are confusing or poorly thought out.

Disadvantages:

  • Many missing features that some developers might be used to.
  • No more access to function.caller and function.arguments.
  • Concatenation of scripts written in different strict modes might cause issues.

Overall, I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages, and I never had to rely on the features that strict mode blocks. I would recommend using strict mode.

References

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Create a for loop that iterates up to 100 while outputting "fizz" at multiples of 3, "buzz" at multiples of 5 and "fizzbuzz" at multiples of 3 and 5.

Check out this version of FizzBuzz by Paul Irish.

for (let i = 1; i <= 100; i++) {
  let f = i % 3 == 0,
    b = i % 5 == 0;
  console.log(f ? (b ? 'FizzBuzz' : 'Fizz') : b ? 'Buzz' : i);
}

I would not advise you to write the above during interviews though. Just stick with the long but clear approach. For more wacky versions of FizzBuzz, check out the reference link below.

References

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Why is it, in general, a good idea to leave the global scope of a website as-is and never touch it?

Every script has access to the global scope, and if everyone uses the global namespace to define their variables, collisions will likely occur. Use the module pattern (IIFEs) to encapsulate your variables within a local namespace.

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Why would you use something like the load event? Does this event have disadvantages? Do you know any alternatives, and why would you use those?

The load event fires at the end of the document loading process. At this point, all of the objects in the document are in the DOM, and all the images, scripts, links and sub-frames have finished loading.

The DOM event DOMContentLoaded will fire after the DOM for the page has been constructed, but do not wait for other resources to finish loading. This is preferred in certain cases when you do not need the full page to be loaded before initializing.

TODO.

References

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Explain what a single page app is and how to make one SEO-friendly.

The below is taken from the awesome Grab Front End Guide, which coincidentally, is written by me!

Web developers these days refer to the products they build as web apps, rather than websites. While there is no strict difference between the two terms, web apps tend to be highly interactive and dynamic, allowing the user to perform actions and receive a response to their action. Traditionally, the browser receives HTML from the server and renders it. When the user navigates to another URL, a full-page refresh is required and the server sends fresh new HTML to the new page. This is called server-side rendering.

However, in modern SPAs, client-side rendering is used instead. The browser loads the initial page from the server, along with the scripts (frameworks, libraries, app code) and stylesheets required for the whole app. When the user navigates to other pages, a page refresh is not triggered. The URL of the page is updated via the HTML5 History API. New data required for the new page, usually in JSON format, is retrieved by the browser via AJAX requests to the server. The SPA then dynamically updates the page with the data via JavaScript, which it has already downloaded in the initial page load. This model is similar to how native mobile apps work.

The benefits:

  • The app feels more responsive and users do not see the flash between page navigations due to full-page refreshes.
  • Fewer HTTP requests are made to the server, as the same assets do not have to be downloaded again for each page load.
  • Clear separation of the concerns between the client and the server; you can easily build new clients for different platforms (e.g. mobile, chatbots, smart watches) without having to modify the server code. You can also modify the technology stack on the client and server independently, as long as the API contract is not broken.

The downsides:

  • Heavier initial page load due to the loading of framework, app code, and assets required for multiple pages.
  • There's an additional step to be done on your server which is to configure it to route all requests to a single entry point and allow client-side routing to take over from there.
  • SPAs are reliant on JavaScript to render content, but not all search engines execute JavaScript during crawling, and they may see empty content on your page. This inadvertently hurts the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your app. However, most of the time, when you are building apps, SEO is not the most important factor, as not all the content needs to be indexable by search engines. To overcome this, you can either server-side render your app or use services such as Prerender to "render your javascript in a browser, save the static HTML, and return that to the crawlers".
References

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What is the extent of your experience with Promises and/or their polyfills?

Possess working knowledge of it. A promise is an object that may produce a single value sometime in the future: either a resolved value or a reason that it's not resolved (e.g., a network error occurred). A promise may be in one of 3 possible states: fulfilled, rejected, or pending. Promise users can attach callbacks to handle the fulfilled value or the reason for rejection.

Some common polyfills are $.deferred, Q and Bluebird but not all of them comply with the specification. ES2015 supports Promises out of the box and polyfills are typically not needed these days.

References

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What are the pros and cons of using Promises instead of callbacks?

Pros

  • Avoid callback hell which can be unreadable.
  • Makes it easy to write sequential asynchronous code that is readable with .then().
  • Makes it easy to write parallel asynchronous code with Promise.all().

Cons

  • Slightly more complex code (debatable).
  • In older browsers where ES2015 is not supported, you need to load a polyfill in order to use it.

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What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of writing JavaScript code in a language that compiles to JavaScript?

Some examples of languages that compile to JavaScript include CoffeeScript, Elm, ClojureScript, PureScript, and TypeScript.

Advantages:

  • Fixes some of the longstanding problems in JavaScript and discourages JavaScript anti-patterns.
  • Enables you to write shorter code, by providing some syntactic sugar on top of JavaScript, which I think ES5 lacks, but ES2015 is awesome.
  • Static types are awesome (in the case of TypeScript) for large projects that need to be maintained over time.

Disadvantages:

  • Require a build/compile process as browsers only run JavaScript and your code will need to be compiled into JavaScript before being served to browsers.
  • Debugging can be a pain if your source maps do not map nicely to your pre-compiled source.
  • Most developers are not familiar with these languages and will need to learn it. There's a ramp up cost involved for your team if you use it for your projects.
  • Smaller community (depends on the language), which means resources, tutorials, libraries, and tooling would be harder to find.
  • IDE/editor support might be lacking.
  • These languages will always be behind the latest JavaScript standard.
  • Developers should be cognizant of what their code is being compiled to — because that is what would actually be running, and that is what matters in the end.

Practically, ES2015 has vastly improved JavaScript and made it much nicer to write. I don't really see the need for CoffeeScript these days.

References

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What tools and techniques do you use for debugging JavaScript code?

References

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What language constructions do you use for iterating over object properties and array items?

For objects:

  • for loops - for (var property in obj) { console.log(property); }. However, this will also iterate through its inherited properties, and you will add an obj.hasOwnProperty(property) check before using it.
  • Object.keys() - Object.keys(obj).forEach(function (property) { ... }). Object.keys() is a static method that will lists all enumerable properties of the object that you pass it.
  • Object.getOwnPropertyNames() - Object.getOwnPropertyNames(obj).forEach(function (property) { ... }). Object.getOwnPropertyNames() is a static method that will lists all enumerable and non-enumerable properties of the object that you pass it.

For arrays:

  • for loops - for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++). The common pitfall here is that var is in the function scope and not the block scope and most of the time you would want block scoped iterator variable. ES2015 introduces let which has block scope and it is recommended to use that instead. So this becomes: for (let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++).
  • forEach - arr.forEach(function (el, index) { ... }). This construct can be more convenient at times because you do not have to use the index if all you need is the array elements. There are also the every and some methods which will allow you to terminate the iteration early.

Most of the time, I would prefer the .forEach method, but it really depends on what you are trying to do. for loops allow more flexibility, such as prematurely terminate the loop using break or incrementing the iterator more than once per loop.

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Explain the difference between mutable and immutable objects.

  • What is an example of an immutable object in JavaScript?
  • What are the pros and cons of immutability?
  • How can you achieve immutability in your own code?

TODO

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Explain the difference between synchronous and asynchronous functions.

Synchronous functions are blocking while asynchronous functions are not. In synchronous functions, statements complete before the next statement is run. In this case, the program is evaluated exactly in order of the statements and execution of the program is paused if one of the statements take a very long time.

Asynchronous functions usually accept a callback as a parameter and execution continue on the next line immediately after the asynchronous function is invoked. The callback is only invoked when the asynchronous operation is complete and the call stack is empty. Heavy duty operations such as loading data from a web server or querying a database should be done asynchronously so that the main thread can continue executing other operations instead of blocking until that long operation to complete (in the case of browsers, the UI will freeze).

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What is event loop? What is the difference between call stack and task queue?

The event loop is a single-threaded loop that monitors the call stack and checks if there is any work to be done in the task queue. If the call stack is empty and there are callback functions in the task queue, a function is dequeued and pushed onto the call stack to be executed.

If you haven't already checked out Philip Robert's talk on the Event Loop, you should. It is one of the most viewed videos on JavaScript.

References

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Explain the differences on the usage of foo between function foo() {} and var foo = function() {}

The former is a function declaration while the latter is a function expression. The key difference is that function declarations have its body hoisted but the bodies of function expressions are not (they have the same hoisting behavior as variables). For more explanation on hoisting, refer to the question above on hoisting. If you try to invoke a function expression before it is defined, you will get an Uncaught TypeError: XXX is not a function error.

Function Declaration

foo(); // 'FOOOOO'
function foo() {
  console.log('FOOOOO');
}

Function Expression

foo(); // Uncaught TypeError: foo is not a function
var foo = function() {
  console.log('FOOOOO');
};
References

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What are the differences between variables created using let, var or const?

Variables declared using the var keyword are scoped to the function in which they are created, or if created outside of any function, to the global object. let and const are block scoped, meaning they are only accessible within the nearest set of curly braces (function, if-else block, or for-loop).

function foo() {
  // All variables are accessible within functions.
  var bar = 'bar';
  let baz = 'baz';
  const qux = 'qux';

  console.log(bar); // bar
  console.log(baz); // baz
  console.log(qux); // qux
}

console.log(bar); // ReferenceError: bar is not defined
console.log(baz); // ReferenceError: baz is not defined
console.log(qux); // ReferenceError: qux is not defined
if (true) {
  var bar = 'bar';
  let baz = 'baz';
  const qux = 'qux';
}

// var declared variables are accessible anywhere in the function scope.
console.log(bar); // bar
// let and const defined variables are not accessible outside of the block they were defined in.
console.log(baz); // ReferenceError: baz is not defined
console.log(qux); // ReferenceError: qux is not defined

var allows variables to be hoisted, meaning they can be referenced in code before they are declared. let and const will not allow this, instead throwing an error.

console.log(foo); // undefined

var foo = 'foo';

console.log(baz); // ReferenceError: can't access lexical declaration 'baz' before initialization

let baz = 'baz';

console.log(bar); // ReferenceError: can't access lexical declaration 'bar' before initialization

const bar = 'bar';

Redeclaring a variable with var will not throw an error, but 'let' and 'const' will.

var foo = 'foo';
var foo = 'bar';
console.log(foo); // "bar"

let baz = 'baz';
let baz = 'qux'; // Uncaught SyntaxError: Identifier 'baz' has already been declared

let and const differ in that let allows reassigning the variable's value while const does not.

// This is fine.
let foo = 'foo';
foo = 'bar';

// This causes an exception.
const baz = 'baz';
baz = 'qux';
References

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What are the differences between ES6 class and ES5 function constructors?

Let's first look at example of each:

// ES5 Function Constructor
function Person(name) {
  this.name = name;
}

// ES6 Class
class Person {
  constructor(name) {
    this.name = name;
  }
}

For simple constructors, they look pretty similar.

The main difference in the constructor comes when using inheritance. If we want to create a Student class that subclasses Person and add a studentId field, this is what we have to do in addition to the above.

// ES5 Function Constructor
function Student(name, studentId) {
  // Call constructor of superclass to initialize superclass-derived members.
  Person.call(this, name);

  // Initialize subclass's own members.
  this.studentId = studentId;
}

Student.prototype = Object.create(Person.prototype);
Student.prototype.constructor = Student;

// ES6 Class
class Student extends Person {
  constructor(name, studentId) {
    super(name);
    this.studentId = studentId;
  }
}

It's much more verbose to use inheritance in ES5 and the ES6 version is easier to understand and remember.

References

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Can you offer a use case for the new arrow => function syntax? How does this new syntax differ from other functions?

TODO

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What advantage is there for using the arrow syntax for a method in a constructor?

TODO

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What is the definition of a higher-order function?

A higher-order function is any function that takes one or more functions as arguments, which it uses to operate on some data, and/or returns a function as a result. Higher-order functions are meant to abstract some operation that is performed repeatedly. The classic example of this is map, which takes an array and a function as arguments. map then uses this function to transform each item in the array, returning a new array with the transformed data. Other popular examples in JavaScript are forEach, filter, and reduce. A higher-order function doesn't just need to be manipulating arrays as there are many use cases for returning a function from another function. Function.prototype.bind is one such example in JavaScript.

Map

Let say we have an array of names which we need to transform each string to uppercase.

const names = ['irish', 'daisy', 'anna'];

The imperative way will be as such:

const transformNamesToUppercase = function(names) {
  const results = [];
  for (let i = 0; i < names.length; i++) {
    results.push(names[i].toUpperCase());
  }
  return results;
};
transformNamesToUppercase(names); // ['IRISH', 'DAISY', 'ANNA']

Use .map(transformerFn) makes the code shorter and more declarative.

const transformNamesToUppercase = function(names) {
  return names.map(name => name.toUpperCase());
};
transformNamesToUppercase(names); // ['IRISH', 'DAISY', 'ANNA']
References

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Can you give an example for destructuring an object or an array?

Destructuring is an expression available in ES6 which enables a succinct and convenient way to extract values of Objects or Arrays and place them into distinct variables.

Array destructuring

// Variable assignment.
const foo = ['one', 'two', 'three'];

const [one, two, three] = foo;
console.log(one); // "one"
console.log(two); // "two"
console.log(three); // "three"
// Swapping variables
let a = 1;
let b = 3;

[a, b] = [b, a];
console.log(a); // 3
console.log(b); // 1

Object destructuring

// Variable assignment.
const o = { p: 42, q: true };
const { p, q } = o;

console.log(p); // 42
console.log(q); // true
References

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ES6 Template Literals offer a lot of flexibility in generating strings, can you give an example?

TODO

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Can you give an example of a curry function and why this syntax offers an advantage?

Currying is a pattern where a function with more than one parameter is broken into multiple functions that, when called in series, will accumulate all of the required parameters one at a time. This technique can be useful for making code written in a functional style easier to read and compose. It's important to note that for a function to be curried, it needs to start out as one function, then broken out into a sequence of functions that each accepts one parameter.

function curry(fn) {
  if (fn.length === 0) {
    return fn;
  }

  function _curried(depth, args) {
    return function(newArgument) {
      if (depth - 1 === 0) {
        return fn(...args, newArgument);
      }
      return _curried(depth - 1, [...args, newArgument]);
    };
  }

  return _curried(fn.length, []);
}

function add(a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

var curriedAdd = curry(add);
var addFive = curriedAdd(5);

var result = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5].map(addFive); // [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
References

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What are the benefits of using spread syntax and how is it different from rest syntax?

ES6's spread syntax is very useful when coding in a functional paradigm as we can easily create copies of arrays or objects without resorting to Object.create, slice, or a library function. This language feature is used often in Redux and rx.js projects.

function putDookieInAnyArray(arr) {
  return [...arr, 'dookie'];
}

const result = putDookieInAnyArray(['I', 'really', "don't", 'like']); // ["I", "really", "don't", "like", "dookie"]

const person = {
  name: 'Todd',
  age: 29,
};

const copyOfTodd = { ...person };

ES6's rest syntax offers a shorthand for including an arbitrary number of arguments to be passed to a function. It is like an inverse of the spread syntax, taking data and stuffing it into an array rather than unpacking an array of data, and it works in function arguments, as well as in array and object destructuring assignments.

function addFiveToABunchOfNumbers(...numbers) {
  return numbers.map(x => x + 5);
}

const result = addFiveToABunchOfNumbers(4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10); // [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]

const [a, b, ...rest] = [1, 2, 3, 4]; // a: 1, b: 2, rest: [3, 4]

const { e, f, ...others } = {
  e: 1,
  f: 2,
  g: 3,
  h: 4,
}; // e: 1, f: 2, others: { g: 3, h: 4 }
References

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How can you share code between files?

This depends on the JavaScript environment.

On the client (browser environment), as long as the variables/functions are declared in the global scope (window), all scripts can refer to them. Alternatively, adopt the Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD) via RequireJS for a more modular approach.

On the server (Node.js), the common way has been to use CommonJS. Each file is treated as a module and it can export variables and functions by attaching them to the module.exports object.

ES2015 defines a module syntax which aims to replace both AMD and CommonJS. This will eventually be supported in both browser and Node environments.

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References

Why you might want to create static class members?

Static class members (properties/methods) are not tied to a specific instance of a class and have the same value regardless of which instance is referring to it. Static properties are typically configuration variables and static methods are usually pure utility functions which do not depend on the state of the instance.

References

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Other Answers

Topics Based

#spread-vs-rest-operators

Rest parameter: collects all remaining elements into an array. When using rest arguments, you are collapsing all remaining arguments of a function into one array:

var [c, ...m] = [1,2,3,4,5]; // m -> [2,3,4,5] Here ...m is a collector, it collects the rest of the parameters. Internally when we write:

var [c, ...m] = [1,2,3,4,5]; JavaScript does following

var c = 1, m = [2, 3, 4, 5];

function add(x, y) { return x + y; }

add(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) // returns 3

function add(...args) { let result = 0;

for (let arg of args) result += arg;

return result }

add(1) // returns 1 add(1,2) // returns 3 add(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) // returns 15

function xyz(x, y, ...z) { console.log(x, ' ', y); // hey hello

console.log(z); // ["wassup", "goodmorning", "hi", "howdy"] console.log(z[0]); // wassup console.log(z.length); // 4 }

xyz("hey", "hello", "wassup", "goodmorning", "hi", "howdy")

Before rest parameters existed, to get all the arguments in a function we used arguments which is an array-likeobject.

function someFunction() { return arguments; }

someFunction("joykare", 100, false);

someFunction returns the arguments and their indexes, [Arguments] { '0': 'joykare', '1': 100, '2': false }.

The downside of using the arguments keyword is that, it returns an array-like object; this means you essentially cannot perform any array-methods like; Array.filer, Array.map. Another pitfall, is that we cannot use arguments in arrow functions.

#Spread operator: allows iterables( arrays / objects / strings ) to be expanded into single arguments/elements.

The spread operator allows us to expand elements.

you are expanding a single variable into more:

var params = [ "hello", true, 7 ]; var other = [ 1, 2, ...params ]; // other => [1,2,"hello", true, 7] Here, ...params spreads so as to assing all of its elements to other

Internally javaScript does following

var other = [1, 2].concat(params);

const arr = ["Joy", "Wangari", "Warugu"]; const newArr = ["joykare", ...arr];

const myNames = [...arr, "joykare"];

We can use the spread operator to copy an array.

const arr = [1, 2, 3]; const arr2 = [...arr];

Explain how prototypal inheritance works

This is an extremely common JavaScript interview question. All JavaScript objects have a prototype property, that is a reference to another object. When a property is accessed on an object and if the property is not found on that object, the JavaScript engine looks at the object's prototype, and the prototype's prototype and so on, until it finds the property defined on one of the prototypes or until it reaches the end of the prototype chain. This behavior simulates classical inheritance, but it is really more of delegation than inheritance.

#Javascripts:

var - The scope of a variable declared with the keyword var is its current execution context. Let - let are block scoped and not function scoped.

#Hoisting functions

Function declarations

hoisted(); // Output: "This function has been hoisted."

function hoisted() { console.log('This function has been hoisted.'); };

Function expressions

Function expressions, however are not hoisted.

expression(); // Ouput: TypeError: expression is not a function

var expression = function hoisting() { console.log('Will this work?'); };

https://scotch.io/tutorials/understanding-hoisting-in-javascript

async / await promises callbacks

#Async/await

Async/await is a new way to write asynchronous code. Previous options for asynchronous code are callbacks and promises. Async/await is actually built on top of promises. It cannot be used with plain callbacks or node callbacks. Async/await is, like promises, non blocking. Async/await makes asynchronous code look and behave a little more like synchronous code. This is where all its power lies.

const makeRequest = () => getJSON() .then(data => { console.log(data) return "done" })

makeRequest()

const makeRequest = async () => { console.log(await getJSON()) return "done" }

makeRequest()

#closures

A closure is an inner function that has access to the outer (enclosing) function’s variables—scope chain. The closure has three scope chains: - it has access to its own scope (variables defined between its curly brackets). - it has access to the outer function’s variables. - it has access to the global variables.

Closure means that an inner function always has access to the vars and parameters of its outer function, even after the outer function has returned.

Inner function can access variables and parameters of an outer function. It is useful in hiding implementation detail in JavaScript.

function showName (firstName, lastName) { var nameIntro = "Your name is "; // this inner function has access to the outer function's variables, including the parameter function makeFullName () {
return nameIntro + firstName + " " + lastName;
}

return makeFullName (); }

showName ("Michael", "Jackson"); // Your name is Michael Jackson

function OuterFunction() {

var outerVariable = 100;

function InnerFunction() {
    alert(outerVariable);
}

return InnerFunction;

} var innerFunc = OuterFunction();

innerFunc(); // 100

function Counter() { var counter = 0;

function IncreaseCounter() {
    return counter += 1;
};

return IncreaseCounter;

}

var counter = Counter(); alert(counter()); // 1 alert(counter()); // 2 alert(counter()); // 3 alert(counter()); // 4

In the above example, return InnerFunction; returns InnerFunction from OuterFunction when you call OuterFunction(). A variable innerFunc reference the InnerFunction() only, not the OuterFunction(). So now, when you call innerFunc(), it can still access outerVariable which is declared in OuterFunction(). This is called Closure.

#IIFE

IIFE is a function expression that automatically invokes after completion of the definition. The parenthesis () plays important role in IIFE pattern. use () operator to call this anonymous function immediately after completion of its definition. (function () { //write your js code here })();

Adcvantages:

Do not create unnecessary global variables and functions Functions and variables defined in IIFE do not conflict with other functions & variables even if they have same name. Organize JavaScript code. Make JavaScript code maintainable.

#this():

The following four rules applies to this in order to know which object is referred by this keyword.

Global Scope Object's Method call() or apply() method bind() method

Arrow Functions

Arrow function was introduced in ES6 using a new syntax for declaring functions called the arrow syntax. This new syntax uses less verbose syntax.

Arrow function can easily identified by the arrow symbol ‘ => ’ from where it gets its name. As part the syntax and rules for writing arrow functions is that the parameters come before the arrow element and the main body of the function comes after.

Arrow functions are always anonymous, and you need to assign them to a variable, so you can refer to them.

Advantage

There are numerous advantages of using arrow functions over other function declaration methods:

-They are much less verbose -Do not need to use parentheses for single parameters -The body of the function does not need to be placed inside a block if it is only one line -If the return statement is the only statement in the body of the function, the return keyword is not required -They do not bind their own value of this to the function

Example:

const square = x => x*x; In this example the ‘x’ did not need to be in parentheses because is only one parameter; multiple parameters needs to go inside parentheses.

Example with two parameters:

const add = (x,y) => x = y; But if the function does not require any parameters you can use empty parameters before the arrow symbol:

const hello = ( ) => alert(‘Hello World!’); In all these examples the function fits onto one line, so there is no need to put them inside a block. But for longer functions you will require to use curly brackets to define the body of the function and the return keywork at the end.

const tax = (salary) => { const taxable = salary – 5000; const lowerRate = 0.25 * taxable; taxable = taxable -15000; const higherRate = 0.4 * taxable; return lowerRate + higherRate; } As you can see the benefit of using arrow functions is lost when using it in a longer function. Arrow functions are a better fit for short and anonymous functions.

1. Can you name two programming paradigms important for JavaScript app developers?

JavaScript is a multi-paradigm language, supporting imperative/procedural programming along with OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) and functional programming. JavaScript supports OOP with prototypal inheritance.

Good to hear:

Prototypal inheritance (also: prototypes, OLOO). Functional programming (also: closures, first class functions, lambdas). Red flags:

No clue what a paradigm is, no mention of prototypal oo or functional programming. Learn More:

The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 1 — Prototypal OO. The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 2 — Functional Programming.

2. What is functional programming?

Functional programming produces programs by composing mathematical functions and avoids shared state & mutable data. Lisp (specified in 1958) was among the first languages to support functional programming, and was heavily inspired by lambda calculus. Lisp and many Lisp family languages are still in common use today.

Functional programming is an essential concept in JavaScript (one of the two pillars of JavaScript). Several common functional utilities were added to JavaScript in ES5.

Good to hear:

Pure functions / function purity. Avoid side-effects. Simple function composition. Examples of functional languages: Lisp, ML, Haskell, Erlang, Clojure, Elm, F Sharp, OCaml, etc… Mention of features that support FP: first-class functions, higher order functions, functions as arguments/values. Red flags:

No mention of pure functions / avoiding side-effects. Unable to provide examples of functional programming languages. Unable to identify the features of JavaScript that enable FP. Learn More:

The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 2. The Dao of Immutability. Composing Software. The Haskell School of Music.

3. What is the difference between classical inheritance and prototypal inheritance?

Class Inheritance: instances inherit from classes (like a blueprint — a description of the class), and create sub-class relationships: hierarchical class taxonomies. Instances are typically instantiated via constructor functions with the new keyword. Class inheritance may or may not use the class keyword from ES6.

Prototypal Inheritance: instances inherit directly from other objects. Instances are typically instantiated via factory functions or Object.create(). Instances may be composed from many different objects, allowing for easy selective inheritance.

In JavaScript, prototypal inheritance is simpler & more flexible than class inheritance. Good to hear:

Classes: create tight coupling or hierarchies/taxonomies. Prototypes: mentions of concatenative inheritance, prototype delegation, functional inheritance, object composition. Red Flags:

No preference for prototypal inheritance & composition over class inheritance. Learn More:

The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 1 — Prototypal OO. Common Misconceptions About Inheritance in JavaScript.

#4. What are the pros and cons of functional programming vs object-oriented programming? OOP Pros: It’s easy to understand the basic concept of objects and easy to interpret the meaning of method calls. OOP tends to use an imperative style rather than a declarative style, which reads like a straight-forward set of instructions for the computer to follow.

OOP Cons: OOP Typically depends on shared state. Objects and behaviors are typically tacked together on the same entity, which may be accessed at random by any number of functions with non-deterministic order, which may lead to undesirable behavior such as race conditions.

FP Pros: Using the functional paradigm, programmers avoid any shared state or side-effects, which eliminates bugs caused by multiple functions competing for the same resources. With features such as the availability of point-free style (aka tacit programming), functions tend to be radically simplified and easily recomposed for more generally reusable code compared to OOP.

FP also tends to favor declarative and denotational styles, which do not spell out step-by-step instructions for operations, but instead concentrate on what to do, letting the underlying functions take care of the how. This leaves tremendous latitude for refactoring and performance optimization, even allowing you to replace entire algorithms with more efficient ones with very little code change. (e.g., memoize, or use lazy evaluation in place of eager evaluation.)

Computation that makes use of pure functions is also easy to scale across multiple processors, or across distributed computing clusters without fear of threading resource conflicts, race conditions, etc…

FP Cons: Over exploitation of FP features such as point-free style and large compositions can potentially reduce readability because the resulting code is often more abstractly specified, more terse, and less concrete.

More people are familiar with OO and imperative programming than functional programming, so even common idioms in functional programming can be confusing to new team members.

FP has a much steeper learning curve than OOP because the broad popularity of OOP has allowed the language and learning materials of OOP to become more conversational, whereas the language of FP tends to be much more academic and formal. FP concepts are frequently written about using idioms and notations from lambda calculus, algebras, and category theory, all of which requires a prior knowledge foundation in those domains to be understood.

Good to hear:

Mentions of trouble with shared state, different things competing for the same resources, etc… Awareness of FP’s capability to radically simplify many applications. Awareness of the differences in learning curves. Articulation of side-effects and how they impact program maintainability. Awareness that a highly functional codebase can have a steep learning curve. Awareness that a highly OOP codebase can be extremely resistant to change and very brittle compared to an equivalent FP codebase. Awareness that immutability gives rise to an extremely accessible and malleable program state history, allowing for the easy addition of features like infinite undo/redo, rewind/replay, time-travel debugging, and so on. Immutability can be achieved in either paradigm, but a proliferation of shared stateful objects complicates the implementation in OOP. Red flags:

Unable to list disadvantages of one style or another — Anybody experienced with either style should have bumped up against some of the limitations. Learn More:

The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 1 — Prototypal OO. The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 2 — Functional Programming.

5. When is classical inheritance an appropriate choice?

The answer is never, or almost never. Certainly never more than one level. Multi-level class hierarchies are an anti-pattern. I’ve been issuing this challenge for years, and the only answers I’ve ever heard fall into one of several common misconceptions. More frequently, the challenge is met with silence.

“If a feature is sometimes useful and sometimes dangerous and if there is a better option then always use the better option.” ~ Douglas Crockford Good to hear:

Rarely, almost never, or never. A single level is sometimes OK, from a framework base-class such as React.Component. “Favor object composition over class inheritance.” Learn More:

The Two Pillars of JavaScript Part 1 — Prototypal OO. JS Objects — Inherited a Mess.

6. When is prototypal inheritance an appropriate choice?

There is more than one type of prototypal inheritance:

Delegation (i.e., the prototype chain). Concatenative (i.e. mixins, Object.assign()). Functional (Not to be confused with functional programming. A function used to create a closure for private state/encapsulation). Each type of prototypal inheritance has its own set of use-cases, but all of them are equally useful in their ability to enable composition, which creates has-a or uses-a or can-do relationships as opposed to the is-a relationship created with class inheritance.

Good to hear:

In situations where modules or functional programming don’t provide an obvious solution. When you need to compose objects from multiple sources. Any time you need inheritance. Red flags:

No knowledge of when to use prototypes. No awareness of mixins or Object.assign(). Learn More:

“Programming JavaScript Applications”: Prototypes section.

7. What does “favor object composition over class inheritance” mean?

This is a quote from “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software”. It means that code reuse should be achieved by assembling smaller units of functionality into new objects instead of inheriting from classes and creating object taxonomies.

In other words, use can-do, has-a, or uses-a relationships instead of is-a relationships.

Good to hear:

Avoid class hierarchies. Avoid brittle base class problem. Avoid tight coupling. Avoid rigid taxonomy (forced is-a relationships that are eventually wrong for new use cases). Avoid the gorilla banana problem (“what you wanted was a banana, what you got was a gorilla holding the banana, and the entire jungle”). Make code more flexible. Red Flags:

Fail to mention any of the problems above. Fail to articulate the difference between composition and class inheritance, or the advantages of composition. Learn More:

Introducing the Stamp Specification

Move Over, class: Composable Factory Functions Are Here medium.com

8. What are two-way data binding and one-way data flow, and how are they different?

Two way data binding means that UI fields are bound to model data dynamically such that when a UI field changes, the model data changes with it and vice-versa.

One way data flow means that the model is the single source of truth. Changes in the UI trigger messages that signal user intent to the model (or “store” in React). Only the model has the access to change the app’s state. The effect is that data always flows in a single direction, which makes it easier to understand.

One way data flows are deterministic, whereas two-way binding can cause side-effects which are harder to follow and understand.

Good to hear:

React is the new canonical example of one-way data flow, so mentions of React are a good signal. Cycle.js is another popular implementation of uni-directional data flow. Angular is a popular framework which uses two-way binding. Red flags:

No understanding of what either one means. Unable to articulate the difference. Learn more:

9. What are the pros and cons of monolithic vs microservice architectures?

A monolithic architecture means that your app is written as one cohesive unit of code whose components are designed to work together, sharing the same memory space and resources.

A microservice architecture means that your app is made up of lots of smaller, independent applications capable of running in their own memory space and scaling independently from each other across potentially many separate machines.

Monolithic Pros: The major advantage of the monolithic architecture is that most apps typically have a large number of cross-cutting concerns, such as logging, rate limiting, and security features such audit trails and DOS protection.

When everything is running through the same app, it’s easy to hook up components to those cross-cutting concerns.

There can also be performance advantages, since shared-memory access is faster than inter-process communication (IPC).

Monolithic cons: Monolithic app services tend to get tightly coupled and entangled as the application evolves, making it difficult to isolate services for purposes such as independent scaling or code maintainability.

Monolithic architectures are also much harder to understand, because there may be dependencies, side-effects, and magic which are not obvious when you’re looking at a particular service or controller.

Microservice pros: Microservice architectures are typically better organized, since each microservice has a very specific job, and is not concerned with the jobs of other components. Decoupled services are also easier to recompose and reconfigure to serve the purposes of different apps (for example, serving both the web clients and public API).

They can also have performance advantages depending on how they’re organized because it’s possible to isolate hot services and scale them independent of the rest of the app.

Microservice cons: As you’re building a new microservice architecture, you’re likely to discover lots of cross-cutting concerns that you did not anticipate at design time. A monolithic app could establish shared magic helpers or middleware to handle such cross-cutting concerns without much effort.

In a microservice architecture, you’ll either need to incur the overhead of separate modules for each cross-cutting concern, or encapsulate cross-cutting concerns in another service layer that all traffic gets routed through.

Eventually, even monolthic architectures tend to route traffic through an outer service layer for cross-cutting concerns, but with a monolithic architecture, it’s possible to delay the cost of that work until the project is much more mature.

Microservices are frequently deployed on their own virtual machines or containers, causing a proliferation of VM wrangling work. These tasks are frequently automated with container fleet management tools.

Good to hear:

Positive attitudes toward microservices, despite the higher initial cost vs monolthic apps. Aware that microservices tend to perform and scale better in the long run. Practical about microservices vs monolithic apps. Structure the app so that services are independent from each other at the code level, but easy to bundle together as a monolithic app in the beginning. Microservice overhead costs can be delayed until it becomes more practical to pay the price. Red flags:

Unaware of the differences between monolithic and microservice architectures. Unaware or impractical about the additional overhead of microservices. Unaware of the additional performance overhead caused by IPC and network communication for microservices. Too negative about the drawbacks of microservices. Unable to articulate ways in which to decouple monolithic apps such that they’re easy to split into microservices when the time comes. Underestimates the advantage of independently scalable microservices.

10. What is asynchronous programming, and why is it important in JavaScript?

Synchronous programming means that, barring conditionals and function calls, code is executed sequentially from top-to-bottom, blocking on long-running tasks such as network requests and disk I/O.

Asynchronous programming means that the engine runs in an event loop. When a blocking operation is needed, the request is started, and the code keeps running without blocking for the result. When the response is ready, an interrupt is fired, which causes an event handler to be run, where the control flow continues. In this way, a single program thread can handle many concurrent operations.

User interfaces are asynchronous by nature, and spend most of their time waiting for user input to interrupt the event loop and trigger event handlers.

Node is asynchronous by default, meaning that the server works in much the same way, waiting in a loop for a network request, and accepting more incoming requests while the first one is being handled.

This is important in JavaScript, because it is a very natural fit for user interface code, and very beneficial to performance on the server.

Good to hear:

An understanding of what blocking means, and the performance implications. An understanding of event handling, and why its important for UI code. Red flags:

Unfamiliar with the terms asynchronous or synchronous. Unable to articulate performance implications or the relationship between asynchronous code and UI code.

What is Big O notation, and why is it useful? What is the DOM? What is the event loop? What is a closure? How does prototypal inheritance work, and how is it different from classical inheritance? (this is not a useful question IMO, but a lot of people like to ask it) How does this work? What is event bubbling and how does it work? (this is also a bad question IMO, but a lot of people like to ask it too) Describe a few ways to communicate between a server and a client. Describe how a few network protocols work at a high level (IP, TCP, HTTP/S/2, UDP, RTC, DNS, etc.) What is REST, and why do people use it? My website is slow. Walk me through diagnosing and fixing it. What are some performance optimizations people use, and when should they be used? What frameworks have you used? What are the pros and cons of each? Why do people use frameworks? What kinds of problems do frameworks solve?

HTML Questions

Answers to Front-end Job Interview Questions - HTML Questions. Pull requests for suggestions and corrections are welcome!

What does a DOCTYPE do?

DOCTYPE is an abbreviation for DOCument TYPE.
A DOCTYPE is always associated to a DTD - for Document Type Definition.

A DTD defines how documents of a certain type should be structured (i.e. a button can contain a span but not a div), whereas a DOCTYPE declares what DTD a document supposedly respects (i.e. this document respects the HTML DTD).

For webpages, the DOCTYPE declaration is required. It is used to tell user agents what version of the HTML specifications your document respects.
Once a user agent has recognized a correct DOCTYPE, it will trigger the no-quirks mode matching this DOCTYPE for reading the document.
If a user agent doesn't recognize a correct DOCTYPE, it will trigger the quirks mode.

The DOCTYPE declaration for the HTML5 standards is <!DOCTYPE html>.

References

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How do you serve a page with content in multiple languages?

The question is a little vague, I will assume that it is asking about the most common case, which is how to serve a page with content available in multiple languages, but the content within the page should be displayed only in one consistent language.

When an HTTP request is made to a server, the requesting user agent usually sends information about language preferences, such as in the Accept-Language header. The server can then use this information to return a version of the document in the appropriate language if such an alternative is available. The returned HTML document should also declare the lang attribute in the <html> tag, such as <html lang="en">...</html>.

In the back end, the HTML markup will contain i18n placeholders and content for the specific language stored in YML or JSON formats. The server then dynamically generates the HTML page with content in that particular language, usually with the help of a back end framework.

References

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What kind of things must you be wary of when designing or developing for multilingual sites?

  • Use lang attribute in your HTML.
  • Directing users to their native language - Allow a user to change his country/language easily without hassle.
  • Text in images is not a scalable approach - Placing text in an image is still a popular way to get good-looking, non-system fonts to display on any computer. However, to translate image text, each string of text will need to have it's a separate image created for each language. Anything more than a handful of replacements like this can quickly get out of control.
  • Restrictive words/sentence length - Some content can be longer when written in another language. Be wary of layout or overflow issues in the design. It's best to avoid designing where the amount of text would make or break a design. Character counts come into play with things like headlines, labels, and buttons. They are less of an issue with free-flowing text such as body text or comments.
  • Be mindful of how colors are perceived - Colors are perceived differently across languages and cultures. The design should use color appropriately.
  • Formatting dates and currencies - Calendar dates are sometimes presented in different ways. Eg. "May 31, 2012" in the U.S. vs. "31 May 2012" in parts of Europe.
  • Do not concatenate translated strings - Do not do anything like "The date today is " + date. It will break in languages with different word order. Use a template string with parameters substitution for each language instead. For example, look at the following two sentences in English and Chinese respectively: I will travel on {% date %} and {% date %} 我会出发. Note that the position of the variable is different due to grammar rules of the language.
  • Language reading direction - In English, we read from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, in traditional Japanese, text is read up-to-down, right-to-left.
References

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What are data- attributes good for?

Before JavaScript frameworks became popular, front end developers used data- attributes to store extra data within the DOM itself, without other hacks such as non-standard attributes, extra properties on the DOM. It is intended to store custom data private to the page or application, for which there are no more appropriate attributes or elements.

These days, using data- attributes is not encouraged. One reason is that users can modify the data attribute easily by using inspect element in the browser. The data model is better stored within JavaScript itself and stay updated with the DOM via data binding possibly through a library or a framework.

References

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Consider HTML5 as an open web platform. What are the building blocks of HTML5?

  • Semantics - Allowing you to describe more precisely what your content is.
  • Connectivity - Allowing you to communicate with the server in new and innovative ways.
  • Offline and storage - Allowing webpages to store data on the client-side locally and operate offline more efficiently.
  • Multimedia - Making video and audio first-class citizens in the Open Web.
  • 2D/3D graphics and effects - Allowing a much more diverse range of presentation options.
  • Performance and integration - Providing greater speed optimization and better usage of computer hardware.
  • Device access - Allowing for the usage of various input and output devices.
  • Styling - Letting authors write more sophisticated themes.
References

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Describe the difference between a cookie, sessionStorage and localStorage.

All the above-mentioned technologies are key-value storage mechanisms on the client side. They are only able to store values as strings.

cookie localStorage sessionStorage
Initiator Client or server. Server can use Set-Cookie header Client Client
Expiry Manually set Forever On tab close
Persistent across browser sessions Depends on whether expiration is set Yes No
Sent to server with every HTTP request Cookies are automatically being sent via Cookie header No No
Capacity (per domain) 4kb 5MB 5MB
Accessibility Any window Any window Same tab
References

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Describe the difference between <script>, <script async> and <script defer>.

  • <script> - HTML parsing is blocked, the script is fetched and executed immediately, HTML parsing resumes after the script is executed.
  • <script async> - The script will be fetched in parallel to HTML parsing and executed as soon as it is available (potentially before HTML parsing completes). Use async when the script is independent of any other scripts on the page, for example, analytics.
  • <script defer> - The script will be fetched in parallel to HTML parsing and executed when the page has finished parsing. If there are multiple of them, each deferred script is executed in the order they were encoun­tered in the document. If a script relies on a fully-parsed DOM, the defer attribute will be useful in ensuring that the HTML is fully parsed before executing. There's not much difference in putting a normal <script> at the end of <body>. A deferred script must not contain document.write.

Note: The async and defer attrib­utes are ignored for scripts that have no src attribute.

References

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Why is it generally a good idea to position CSS <link>s between <head></head> and JS <script>s just before </body>? Do you know any exceptions?

Placing <link>s in the <head>

Putting <link>s in the head is part of the specification. Besides that, placing at the top allows the page to render progressively which improves the user experience. The problem with putting stylesheets near the bottom of the document is that it prohibits progressive rendering in many browsers, including Internet Explorer. Some browsers block rendering to avoid having to repaint elements of the page if their styles change. The user is stuck viewing a blank white page. It prevents the flash of unstyled contents.

Placing <script>s just before </body>

<script>s block HTML parsing while they are being downloaded and executed. Downloading the scripts at the bottom will allow the HTML to be parsed and displayed to the user first.

An exception for positioning of <script>s at the bottom is when your script contains document.write(), but these days it's not a good practice to use document.write(). Also, placing <script>s at the bottom means that the browser cannot start downloading the scripts until the entire document is parsed. One possible workaround is to put <script> in the <head> and use the defer attribute.

References

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What is progressive rendering?

Progressive rendering is the name given to techniques used to improve the performance of a webpage (in particular, improve perceived load time) to render content for display as quickly as possible.

It used to be much more prevalent in the days before broadband internet but it is still used in modern development as mobile data connections are becoming increasingly popular (and unreliable)!

Examples of such techniques:

  • Lazy loading of images - Images on the page are not loaded all at once. JavaScript will be used to load an image when the user scrolls into the part of the page that displays the image.
  • Prioritizing visible content (or above-the-fold rendering) - Include only the minimum CSS/content/scripts necessary for the amount of page that would be rendered in the users browser first to display as quickly as possible, you can then use deferred scripts or listen for the DOMContentLoaded/load event to load in other resources and content.
  • Async HTML fragments - Flushing parts of the HTML to the browser as the page is constructed on the back end. More details on the technique can be found here.
References

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Why you would use a srcset attribute in an image tag? Explain the process the browser uses when evaluating the content of this attribute.

You would use the srcset attribute when you want to serve different images to users depending on their device display width - serve higher quality images to devices with retina display enhances the user experience while serving lower resolution images to low-end devices increase performance and decrease data wastage (because serving a larger image will not have any visible difference). For example: <img srcset="small.jpg 500w, medium.jpg 1000w, large.jpg 2000w" src="..." alt=""> tells the browser to display the small, medium or large .jpg graphic depending on the client's resolution. The first value is the image name and the second is the width of the image in pixels. For a device width of 320px, the following calculations are made:

  • 500 / 320 = 1.5625
  • 1000 / 320 = 3.125
  • 2000 / 320 = 6.25

If the client's resolution is 1x, 1.5625 is the closest, and 500w corresponding to small.jpg will be selected by the browser.

If the resolution is retina (2x), the browser will use the closest resolution above the minimum. Meaning it will not choose the 500w (1.5625) because it is greater than 1 and the image might look bad. The browser would then choose the image with a resulting ratio closer to 2 which is 1000w (3.125).

srcsets solve the problem whereby you want to serve smaller image files to narrow screen devices, as they don't need huge images like desktop displays do — and also optionally that you want to serve different resolution images to high density/low-density screens.

References

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Have you used different HTML templating languages before?

Yes, Pug (formerly Jade), ERB, Slim, Handlebars, Jinja, Liquid, just to name a few. In my opinion, they are more or less the same and provide similar functionality of escaping content and helpful filters for manipulating the data to be displayed. Most templating engines will also allow you to inject your own filters in the event you need custom processing before display.

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Other Answers

CSS Questions

Answers to Front-end Job Interview Questions - CSS Questions. Pull requests for suggestions and corrections are welcome!

What is CSS selector specificity and how does it work?

The browser determines what styles to show on an element depending on the specificity of CSS rules. We assume that the browser has already determined the rules that match a particular element. Among the matching rules, the specificity, four comma-separate values, a, b, c, d are calculated for each rule based on the following:

  1. a is whether inline styles are being used. If the property declaration is an inline style on the element, a is 1, else 0.
  2. b is the number of ID selectors.
  3. c is the number of classes, attributes and pseudo-classes selectors.
  4. d is the number of tags and pseudo-elements selectors.

The resulting specificity is not a score, but a matrix of values that can be compared column by column. When comparing selectors to determine which has the highest specificity, look from left to right, and compare the highest value in each column. So a value in column b will override values in columns c and d, no matter what they might be. As such, specificity of 0,1,0,0 would be greater than one of 0,0,10,10.

In the cases of equal specificity: the latest rule is the one that counts. If you have written the same rule into your stylesheet (regardless of internal or external) twice, then the lower rule in your style sheet is closer to the element to be styled, it is deemed to be more specific and therefore will be applied.

I would write CSS rules with low specificity so that they can be easily overridden if necessary. When writing CSS UI component library code, it is important that they have low specificities so that users of the library can override them without using too complicated CSS rules just for the sake of increasing specificity or resorting to !important.

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What's the difference between "resetting" and "normalizing" CSS? Which would you choose, and why?

  • Resetting - Resetting is meant to strip all default browser styling on elements. For e.g. margins, paddings, font-sizes of all elements are reset to be the same. You will have to redeclare styling for common typographic elements.
  • Normalizing - Normalizing preserves useful default styles rather than "unstyling" everything. It also corrects bugs for common browser dependencies.

I would choose resetting when I have a very customized or unconventional site design such that I need to do a lot of my own styling and do not need any default styling to be preserved.

References

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Describe floats and how they work.

Float is a CSS positioning property. Floated elements remain a part of the flow of the page, and will affect the positioning of other elements (e.g. text will flow around floated elements), unlike position: absolute elements, which are removed from the flow of the page.

The CSS clear property can be used to be positioned below left/right/both floated elements.

If a parent element contains nothing but floated elements, its height will be collapsed to nothing. It can be fixed by clearing the float after the floated elements in the container but before the close of the container.

The .clearfix hack uses a clever CSS pseudo selector (:after) to clear floats. Rather than setting the overflow on the parent, you apply an additional class clearfix to it. Then apply this CSS:

.clearfix:after {
  content: ' ';
  visibility: hidden;
  display: block;
  height: 0;
  clear: both;
}

Alternatively, give overflow: auto or overflow: hidden property to the parent element which will establish a new block formatting context inside the children and it will expand to contain its children.

References

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Describe z-index and how stacking context is formed.

The z-index property in CSS controls the vertical stacking order of elements that overlap. z-index only affects elements that have a position value which is not static.

Without any z-index value, elements stack in the order that they appear in the DOM (the lowest one down at the same hierarchy level appears on top). Elements with non-static positioning (and their children) will always appear on top of elements with default static positioning, regardless of HTML hierarchy.

A stacking context is an element that contains a set of layers. Within a local stacking context, the z-index values of its children are set relative to that element rather than to the document root. Layers outside of that context — i.e. sibling elements of a local stacking context — can't sit between layers within it. If an element B sits on top of element A, a child element of element A, element C, can never be higher than element B even if element C has a higher z-index than element B.

Each stacking context is self-contained - after the element's contents are stacked, the whole element is considered in the stacking order of the parent stacking context. A handful of CSS properties trigger a new stacking context, such as opacity less than 1, filter that is not none, and transform that is notnone.

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Describe Block Formatting Context (BFC) and how it works.

A Block Formatting Context (BFC) is part of the visual CSS rendering of a web page in which block boxes are laid out. Floats, absolutely positioned elements, inline-blocks, table-cells, table-captions, and elements with overflow other than visible (except when that value has been propagated to the viewport) establish new block formatting contexts.

A BFC is an HTML box that satisfies at least one of the following conditions:

  • The value of float is not none.
  • The value of position is neither static nor relative.
  • The value of display is table-cell, table-caption, inline-block, flex, or inline-flex.
  • The value of overflow is not visible.

In a BFC, each box's left outer edge touches the left edge of the containing block (for right-to-left formatting, right edges touch).

Vertical margins between adjacent block-level boxes in a BFC collapse. Read more on collapsing margins.

References

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What are the various clearing techniques and which is appropriate for what context?

  • Empty div method - <div style="clear:both;"></div>.
  • Clearfix method - Refer to the .clearfix class above.
  • overflow: auto or overflow: hidden method - Parent will establish a new block formatting context and expand to contains its floated children.

In large projects, I would write a utility .clearfix class and use them in places where I need it. overflow: hidden might clip children if the children is taller than the parent and is not very ideal.

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Explain CSS sprites, and how you would implement them on a page or site.

CSS sprites combine multiple images into one single larger image. It is a commonly-used technique for icons (Gmail uses it). How to implement it:

  1. Use a sprite generator that packs multiple images into one and generate the appropriate CSS for it.
  2. Each image would have a corresponding CSS class with background-image, background-position and background-size properties defined.
  3. To use that image, add the corresponding class to your element.

Advantages:

  • Reduce the number of HTTP requests for multiple images (only one single request is required per spritesheet). But with HTTP2, loading multiple images is no longer much of an issue.
  • Advance downloading of assets that won't be downloaded until needed, such as images that only appear upon :hover pseudo-states. Blinking wouldn't be seen.
References

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How would you approach fixing browser-specific styling issues?

  • After identifying the issue and the offending browser, use a separate style sheet that only loads when that specific browser is being used. This technique requires server-side rendering though.
  • Use libraries like Bootstrap that already handles these styling issues for you.
  • Use autoprefixer to automatically add vendor prefixes to your code.
  • Use Reset CSS or Normalize.css.

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How do you serve your pages for feature-constrained browsers? What techniques/processes do you use?

  • Graceful degradation - The practice of building an application for modern browsers while ensuring it remains functional in older browsers.
  • Progressive enhancement - The practice of building an application for a base level of user experience, but adding functional enhancements when a browser supports it.
  • Use caniuse.com to check for feature support.
  • Autoprefixer for automatic vendor prefix insertion.
  • Feature detection using Modernizr.
  • Use CSS Feature queries @support

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What are the different ways to visually hide content (and make it available only for screen readers)?

These techniques are related to accessibility (a11y).

  • visibility: hidden. However, the element is still in the flow of the page, and still takes up space.
  • width: 0; height: 0. Make the element not take up any space on the screen at all, resulting in not showing it.
  • position: absolute; left: -99999px. Position it outside of the screen.
  • text-indent: -9999px. This only works on text within the block elements.
  • Metadata. For example by using Schema.org, RDF, and JSON-LD.
  • WAI-ARIA. A W3C technical specification that specifies how to increase the accessibility of web pages.

Even if WAI-ARIA is the ideal solution, I would go with the absolute positioning approach, as it has the least caveats, works for most elements and it's an easy technique.

References

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Have you ever used a grid system, and if so, what do you prefer?

I like the float-based grid system because it still has the most browser support among the alternative existing systems (flex, grid). It has been used in Bootstrap for years and has been proven to work.

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Have you used or implemented media queries or mobile-specific layouts/CSS?

Yes. An example would be transforming a stacked pill navigation into a fixed-bottom tab navigation beyond a certain breakpoint.

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Are you familiar with styling SVG?

Yes, there are several ways to color shapes (including specifying attributes on the object) using inline CSS, an embedded CSS section, or an external CSS file. Most SVG you'll find around the web use inline CSS, but there are advantages and disadvantages associated with each type.

Basic coloring can be done by setting two attributes on the node: fill and stroke. fill sets the color inside the object and stroke sets the color of the line drawn around the object. You can use the same CSS color naming schemes that you use in HTML, whether that's color names (that is red), RGB values (that is rgb(255,0,0)), Hex values, RGBA values, etc.

<rect x="10" y="10" width="100" height="100" stroke="blue" 
  fill="purple" fill-opacity="0.5" stroke-opacity="0.8"/>
References

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Can you give an example of an @media property other than screen?

Yes, there are four types of @media properties (including screen):

  • all - for all media type devices
  • print - for printers
  • speech - for screenreaders that "reads" the page out loud
  • screen - for computer screens, tablets, smart-phones etc.

Here is an example of print media type's usage:

@media print {
  body {
    color: black;
  }
}
References

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What are some of the "gotchas" for writing efficient CSS?

Firstly, understand that browsers match selectors from rightmost (key selector) to left. Browsers filter out elements in the DOM according to the key selector and traverse up its parent elements to determine matches. The shorter the length of the selector chain, the faster the browser can determine if that element matches the selector. Hence avoid key selectors that are tag and universal selectors. They match a large number of elements and browsers will have to do more work in determining if the parents do match.

BEM (Block Element Modifier) methodology recommends that everything has a single class, and, where you need hierarchy, that gets baked into the name of the class as well, this naturally makes the selector efficient and easy to override.

Be aware of which CSS properties trigger reflow, repaint, and compositing. Avoid writing styles that change the layout (trigger reflow) where possible.

References

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What are the advantages/disadvantages of using CSS preprocessors?

Advantages:

  • CSS is made more maintainable.
  • Easy to write nested selectors.
  • Variables for consistent theming. Can share theme files across different projects.
  • Mixins to generate repeated CSS.
  • Splitting your code into multiple files. CSS files can be split up too but doing so will require an HTTP request to download each CSS file.

Disadvantages:

  • Requires tools for preprocessing. Re-compilation time can be slow.

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Describe what you like and dislike about the CSS preprocessors you have used.

Likes:

  • Mostly the advantages mentioned above.
  • Less is written in JavaScript, which plays well with Node.

Dislikes:

  • I use Sass via node-sass, which is a binding for LibSass written in C++. I have to frequently recompile it when switching between node versions.
  • In Less, variable names are prefixed with @, which can be confused with native CSS keywords like @media, @import and @font-face rule.

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How would you implement a web design comp that uses non-standard fonts?

Use @font-face and define font-family for different font-weights.

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Explain how a browser determines what elements match a CSS selector.

This part is related to the above about writing efficient CSS. Browsers match selectors from rightmost (key selector) to left. Browsers filter out elements in the DOM according to the key selector and traverse up its parent elements to determine matches. The shorter the length of the selector chain, the faster the browser can determine if that element matches the selector.

For example with this selector p span, browsers firstly find all the <span> elements and traverse up its parent all the way up to the root to find the <p> element. For a particular <span>, as soon as it finds a <p>, it knows that the <span> matches and can stop its matching.

References

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Describe pseudo-elements and discuss what they are used for.

A CSS pseudo-element is a keyword added to a selector that lets you style a specific part of the selected element(s). They can be used for decoration (:first-line, :first-letter) or adding elements to the markup (combined with content: ...) without having to modify the markup (:before, :after).

  • :first-line and :first-letter can be used to decorate text.
  • Used in the .clearfix hack as shown above to add a zero-space element with clear: both.
  • Triangular arrows in tooltips use :before and :after. Encourages separation of concerns because the triangle is considered part of styling and not really the DOM. It's not really possible to draw a triangle with just CSS styles without using an additional HTML element.
References

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Explain your understanding of the box model and how you would tell the browser in CSS to render your layout in different box models.

The CSS box model describes the rectangular boxes that are generated for elements in the document tree and laid out according to the visual formatting model. Each box has a content area (e.g. text, an image, etc.) and optional surrounding padding, border, and margin areas.

The CSS box model is responsible for calculating:

  • How much space a block element takes up.
  • Whether or not borders and/or margins overlap, or collapse.
  • A box's dimensions.

The box model has the following rules:

  • The dimensions of a block element are calculated by width, height, padding, borders, and margins.
  • If no height is specified, a block element will be as high as the content it contains, plus padding (unless there are floats, for which see below).
  • If no width is specified, a non-floated block element will expand to fit the width of its parent minus padding.
  • The height of an element is calculated by the content's height.
  • The width of an element is calculated by the content's width.
  • By default, paddings and borders are not part of the width and height of an element.
References

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What does * { box-sizing: border-box; } do? What are its advantages?

  • By default, elements have box-sizing: content-box applied, and only the content size is being accounted for.
  • box-sizing: border-box changes how the width and height of elements are being calculated, border and padding are also being included in the calculation.
  • The height of an element is now calculated by the content's height + vertical padding + vertical border width.
  • The width of an element is now calculated by the content's width + horizontal padding + horizontal border width.
  • Taking into account paddings and borders as part of our box model resonates better with how designers actually imagine content in grids.
References

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What is the CSS display property and can you give a few examples of its use?

  • none, block, inline, inline-block, table, table-row, table-cell, list-item.

TODO

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What's the difference between inline and inline-block?

I shall throw in a comparison with block for good measure.

block inline-block inline
Size Fills up the width of its parent container. Depends on content. Depends on content.
Positioning Start on a new line and tolerates no HTML elements next to it (except when you add float) Flows along with other content and allows other elements beside it. Flows along with other content and allows other elements beside it.
Can specify width and height Yes Yes No. Will ignore if being set.
Can be aligned with vertical-align No Yes Yes
Margins and paddings All sides respected. All sides respected. Only horizontal sides respected. Vertical sides, if specified, do not affect layout. Vertical space it takes up depends on line-height, even though the border and padding appear visually around the content.
Float - - Becomes like a block element where you can set vertical margins and paddings.

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What's the difference between a relative, fixed, absolute and statically positioned element?

A positioned element is an element whose computed position property is either relative, absolute, fixed or sticky.

  • static - The default position; the element will flow into the page as it normally would. The top, right, bottom, left and z-index properties do not apply.
  • relative - The element's position is adjusted relative to itself, without changing layout (and thus leaving a gap for the element where it would have been had it not been positioned).
  • absolute - The element is removed from the flow of the page and positioned at a specified position relative to its closest positioned ancestor if any, or otherwise relative to the initial containing block. Absolutely positioned boxes can have margins, and they do not collapse with any other margins. These elements do not affect the position of other elements.
  • fixed - The element is removed from the flow of the page and positioned at a specified position relative to the viewport and doesn't move when scrolled.
  • sticky - Sticky positioning is a hybrid of relative and fixed positioning. The element is treated as relative positioned until it crosses a specified threshold, at which point it is treated as fixed positioned.
References

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What existing CSS frameworks have you used locally, or in production? How would you change/improve them?

  • Bootstrap - Slow release cycle. Bootstrap 4 has been in alpha for almost 2 years. Add a spinner button component, as it is widely used.
  • Semantic UI - Source code structure makes theme customization extremely hard to understand. Its unconventional theming system is a pain to customize. Hardcoded config path within the vendor library. Not well-designed for overriding variables unlike in Bootstrap.
  • Bulma - A lot of non-semantic and superfluous classes and markup required. Not backward compatible. Upgrading versions breaks the app in subtle manners.

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Have you played around with the new CSS Flexbox or Grid specs?

Yes. Flexbox is mainly meant for 1-dimensional layouts while Grid is meant for 2-dimensional layouts.

Flexbox solves many common problems in CSS, such as vertical centering of elements within a container, sticky footer, etc. Bootstrap and Bulma are based on Flexbox, and it is probably the recommended way to create layouts these days. Have tried Flexbox before but ran into some browser incompatibility issues (Safari) in using flex-grow, and I had to rewrite my code using inline-blocks and math to calculate the widths in percentages, it wasn't a nice experience.

Grid is by far the most intuitive approach for creating grid-based layouts (it better be!) but browser support is not wide at the moment.

References

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Can you explain the difference between coding a website to be responsive versus using a mobile-first strategy?

Note that these two 2 approaches are not exclusive.

Making a website responsive means the some elements will respond by adapting its size or other functionality according to the device's screen size, typically the viewport width, through CSS media queries, for example, making the font size smaller on smaller devices.

@media (min-width: 601px) {
  .my-class {
    font-size: 24px;
  }
}
@media (max-width: 600px) {
  .my-class {
    font-size: 12px;
  }
}

A mobile-first strategy is also responsive, however it agrees we should default and define all the styles for mobile devices, and only add specific responsive rules to other devices later. Following the previous example:

.my-class {
  font-size: 12px;
}

@media (min-width: 600px) {
  .my-class {
    font-size: 24px;
  }
}

A mobile-first strategy has 2 main advantages:

  • It's more performant on mobile devices, since all the rules applied for them don't have to be validated against any media queries.
  • It forces to write cleaner code in respect to responsive CSS rules.

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How is responsive design different from adaptive design?

Both responsive and adaptive design attempt to optimize the user experience across different devices, adjusting for different viewport sizes, resolutions, usage contexts, control mechanisms, and so on.

Responsive design works on the principle of flexibility - a single fluid website that can look good on any device. Responsive websites use media queries, flexible grids, and responsive images to create a user experience that flexes and changes based on a multitude of factors. Like a single ball growing or shrinking to fit through several different hoops.

Adaptive design is more like the modern definition of progressive enhancement. Instead of one flexible design, adaptive design detects the device and other features and then provides the appropriate feature and layout based on a predefined set of viewport sizes and other characteristics. The site detects the type of device used and delivers the pre-set layout for that device. Instead of a single ball going through several different-sized hoops, you'd have several different balls to use depending on the hoop size.

References

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Have you ever worked with retina graphics? If so, when and what techniques did you use?

Retina is just a marketing term to refer to high resolution screens with a pixel ratio bigger than 1. The key thing to know is that using a pixel ratio means these displays are emulating a lower resolution screen in order to show elements with the same size. Nowadays we consider all mobile devices retina defacto displays.

Browsers by default render DOM elements according to the device resolution, except for images.

In order to have crisp, good-looking graphics that make the best of retina displays we need to use high resolution images whenever possible. However using always the highest resolution images will have an impact on performance as more bytes will need to be sent over the wire.

To overcome this problem, we can use responsive images, as specified in HTML5. It requires making available different resolution files of the same image to the browser and let it decide which image is best, using the html attribute srcset and optionally sizes, for instance:

<div responsive-background-image>  
  <img src="/images/test-1600.jpg"
    sizes="
      (min-width: 768px) 50vw,
      (min-width: 1024px) 66vw,
      100vw"
    srcset="
      /images/test-400.jpg 400w,
      /images/test-800.jpg 800w,
      /images/test-1200.jpg 1200w">
</div>

It is important to note that browsers which don't support HTML5's srcset (i.e. IE11) will ignore it and use src instead. If we really need to support IE11 and we want to provide this feature for performance reasons, we can use a JavaScript polyfill, e.g. Picturefill (link in the references).

For icons, I would also opt to use SVGs and icon fonts where possible, as they render very crisply regardless of resolution.

References

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Is there any reason you'd want to use translate() instead of absolute positioning, or vice-versa? And why?

translate() is a value of CSS transform. Changing transform or opacity does not trigger browser reflow or repaint but does trigger compositions; whereas changing the absolute positioning triggers reflow. transform causes the browser to create a GPU layer for the element but changing absolute positioning properties uses the CPU. Hence translate() is more efficient and will result in shorter paint times for smoother animations.

When using translate(), the element still occupies its original space (sort of like position: relative), unlike in changing the absolute positioning.

References

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Other Answers

High Order Functiions:

A higher-order function is a function that can take another function as an argument, or that returns a function as a result. A Higher-Order function is a function that receives a function as an argument or returns the function as output.

let total = 0, count = 1; while (count <= 10) { total += count; count += 1; } console.log(total);

console.log(sum(range(1, 10))); it is using below high order functions like .filter(), .map() and .reduce()

Let’s say we have an array of numbers and we want to create a new array which contains double of each value of the first array.

Without Higher-order function

const arr1 = [1, 2, 3]; const arr2 = []; for(let i = 0; i < arr1.length; i++) { arr2.push(arr1[i] * 2); } // prints [ 2, 4, 6 ] console.log(arr2); With Higher-order function map

const arr1 = [1, 2, 3]; const arr2 = arr1.map(function(item) { return item * 2; }); console.log(arr2);

The filter() method creates a new array with all elements that pass the test provided by the callback function.

const persons = [ { name: 'Peter', age: 16 }, { name: 'Mark', age: 18 }, { name: 'John', age: 27 }, { name: 'Jane', age: 14 }, { name: 'Tony', age: 24}, ]; const fullAge = []; for(let i = 0; i < persons.length; i++) { if(persons[i].age >= 18) { fullAge.push(persons[i]); } } console.log(fullAge);

With Higher-order function filter

const persons = [ { name: 'Peter', age: 16 }, { name: 'Mark', age: 18 }, { name: 'John', age: 27 }, { name: 'Jane', age: 14 }, { name: 'Tony', age: 24}, ]; const fullAge = persons.filter(person => person.age >= 18); console.log(fullAge);

The reduce method executes the callback function on each member of the calling array which results in a single output value.

With Higher-order function reduce

const arr = [5, 7, 1, 8, 4]; const sum = arr.reduce(function(accumulator, currentValue) { return accumulator + currentValue; }); // prints 25 console.log(sum);

Without Higher-order function

const arr = [5, 7, 1, 8, 4]; let sum = 0; for(let i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) { sum = sum + arr[i]; } // prints 25 console.log(sum);