Issue #511  (Kindle Hilites, JS Libs, Testing, AI Tools)05/04/23

Here's a cool new feature on Amazon's website that might help you when deciding what programming book to buy next. This feature isn't just for programming books, but for books in general, particularly popular books.

If you visit the product page for any book, you'll notice Amazon has recently added a section called "Popular Highlights in this book". The website explains:

"Kindle readers can highlight text to save their favourite concepts, topics and passages to their Kindle app or device. The Popular Highlights below are some of the most common ones that Kindle readers have saved."

As an example, here's a screen cap of the reader highlights from the product page for JavaScript: The Definitive Guide:

Notice it tells you how many times each quote has been highlighted by Kindle readers.

As I mentioned, this could influence your decision to buy a book. For example, if you're looking for a book with lots of practical advice and not so heavy on extensive theory, this might help. The nature of the quotes being highlighted might suggest what kind of content the book contains overall. You probably shouldn't base your decision to buy the book solely on these quotes because there's always the chance the highlights are not representative of the book as a whole.

I should also point out that the Popular Highlights section doesn't appear on every book page. It seems to be for popular books that have enough Kindle highlights to warrant inclusion. And if you're a Kindle user, then you'll already be familiar with this concept because it's something embedded into the Kindle system itself. You'll see these highlights while reading a Kindle book (which many people apparently find annoying).

As bad as the feature sounds for actually reading the book, I think it's a good feature for product pages and might be helpful for picking out appropriate tech books.

Now on to this week's tools!
 

JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks

LiveViewJS
A simple yet powerful framework for LiveViews in Node.js and Deno that allows you to SPA experiences with real-time and multi-player functionality.

HatTip
Instead of writing server code that only works with Express.js, write server code that can be deployed anywhere: AWS, Cloudflare Workers, Vercel, VPS, etc.

Analog
A full-stack meta-framework for Angular apps, powered by Vite, with support for server-side rendering (SSR), static site generation (SSG), file-based routing and API (server) routes.

Chartr
Level up your office small talk with the #1 visual newsletter from our friends at Chartr. Join 300,000+ who love snackable charts and easy-to-remember data insights on business, tech, and society.   SPONSORED  

viem
A set of lightweight, composable, and type-safe modules modules that enable you to build reliable apps and libraries that interface with Ethereum.

Actio
A modern, batteries-included Node.js (Typescript) framework for your backend applications.

refine.new
A browser-based tool that allows you to create enterprise-ready apps using Refine, the popular React-based framework.

Superflare
An experimental full-stack toolkit for Cloudflare Workers that features a relational ORM for D1 databases, utilities for R2 storage, and lots more, that works best with Remix.

Nano JSX
A lightweight, SSR-first 1kb JSX library with no virtual DOM, no dependencies, and supports Node and Deno.

Starbeam
A reactive library that makes reactive programming simple and fun, and it works with your existing JavaScript framework.

Promptable
A library that enables you to build powerful AI applications with LLMs and Embeddings providers such as OpenAI, Hugging Face, Cohere, and Anthropic.

HNDL
A Node framework that features no middleware, strong types, simple routing, async by default, and no dependencies.

Testing and Debugging Tools

Pythagora
Generate integration tests for your Node.js app by recording server activity without writing a single line of code.

debugNEXT
A feature-enhanced TypeScript drop-in replacement for a popular Node.js debugging utility called "debug".

Accessibility Checker
A free online ADA and WCAG compliance checker that identifies web accessibility issues and gives instructions for fixing them, just enter a URL.

Chartr
Level up your office small talk with the #1 visual newsletter from our friends at Chartr. Join 300,000+ who love snackable charts and easy-to-remember data insights on business, tech, and society.    SPONSORED  

Jest OpenTelemetry
Write, build, and run integration tests based on OpenTelemetry traces with Jest-like syntax.

highlight.io
An open source, full-stack monitoring platform that offers error monitoring, session replay, logging, and more.

Check HTML Links
A fast CLI tool that checks for broken links or link references in HTML pages.

Hermione
A utility for integration testing of web pages using WebdriverIO and Mocha.

Chronos
A comprehensive developer tool that monitors the health and web traffic of servers, microservices, containers, and AWS, enabling you to see real-time data monitoring and receive automated notifications over Slack or email.

blip
An older tool that allows you to see your Internet latency on PC, laptop, tablet, phone, etc.

Restfox
An offline-first web HTTP client for API testing, debugging, prototyping, etc.

Lost Pixel
A holistic visual regression testing solution for your front end that includes first-class integration with Storybook, Ladle, and other front-end libraries.
 

AI and ChatGPT Tools

openplayground
An LLM playground you can run on your laptop that allows you to use any model from OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Forefront, HuggingFace, Aleph Alpha, and llama.cpp.

ChatGPT Prompts
A Node.js ChatGPT prompts library with 140+ prompts, that extends the unofficial Node.js client for OpenAI's GPT-3 API.

The Intelligence Age
Stay informed and ahead of the AI curve. Join 25,000 getting the highest signal news, tools, ideas, and more in AI. Written by AI professionals from NASA, Stanford, and Goldman Sachs.   SPONSORED 

AI Playground
An interactive tool where you can start typing a prompt for a selected AI model, then hit Run Playground to see the results.

AgentGPT
Assemble, configure, and deploy autonomous AI Agents in your browser.

OpenAI Streams
Tools for working with OpenAI streams in Node.js and TypeScript.

RegExGPT
An online tool that lets you generate regex patterns by inputting an example of the text to transform and another input for the expected result. You can also use natural language to explain the pattern.

Bing Chat API
A Node.js client for the unofficial Bing Chat API. It's like ChatGPT on steroids.

writeout.ai
An open-source PHP-based app that uses the recently released OpenAI Whisper API to transcribe and translate audio files.

CoDescribe.app
A free AI developer tool that facilitates the process of writing code by providing tools to document, explain, optimize, and translate your code.
 

Commercial Apps and Classifieds

A Tweet for Thought

In case you didn't know, WebGPU (the successor to WebGL) is a thing now, with current browser support behind flags.
   

Send Me Your Tools!

Made something? Send links via Direct Message on Twitter @WebToolsWeekly (details here). No tutorials or articles, please. If you have any suggestions for improvement or corrections, feel free to reply to this email.
 

Before I Go...

If you're considering buying tickets to a concert, sporting event, or similar, you might want to check out A View From My Seat, which has user-added photos or videos from specific seats in the venue, so you can see if the seats you're purchasing will be to your liking in terms of distance, view, etc.

Thanks to all for subscribing and reading!

Keep tooling,
Louis
webtoolsweekly.com
@LouisLazaris