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Is Web Design Easier or Harder Than it was 10 Years Ago?
20.12.2019
Is it harder or easier to build a website now than 10 years ago? Has the bar gone up or down? I don't have any data for you, but I can shell out some loosey-goosey opinions.
HTML
HTML5 was the only big HTML change in the last decade, and it wasn't particularly dramatic. It's cool it's the looser...
We are Programmers
22.11.2019
Building websites is programming. Writing HTML and CSS is programming. I am a programmer, and if you're here, reading CSS-Tricks, chances are you're a programmer, too.
The thing is, the details in programming layout with CSS are different, for example, than the details in programming API endpoints...
The New Good Ol’ Days
22.11.2019
Eighteen years into this game, I love to reminisce back to the good ol’ days of the early to mid-2000s when there was an explosion of creativity on the web. It felt fresh and unbridled, with boundaries expected to be pushed at every turn, and they were. This was mainly down to one thing, the thing...
Growing Accessibility Conversations
22.11.2019
I started this year on a new path at Knowbility — to help people and organizations create accessible content and apps. But what was exciting and helped motivate me more were two things:
WebAIM's Accessibility Analysis of One Million Page Homepages. With over 97% of sites having WCAG failure...
Everything and Nothing
22.11.2019
I've been thinking about the question for a solid month now. What about building websites has you interested this year? The question pervaded my solitary thoughts and played in the background during my conversations. I’d love to just tell you the answer I’ve come to, but the more interesting part...
Smarter Design Systems Tools
22.11.2019
What has me really excited about building websites is largely around design systems and the design tools we use to build them. Though, design systems are certainly not limited to websites.
Closing the Gap
In the ever-so-hot-right-now world of design systems, one of the most common phrases people...
How Building in the Open Can Change Our Industry
21.11.2019
I have to admit, I'm a developer who hasn't built a website. When I first read Chris's question, I sat in silence for at least a minute. Which technical topic did I want to discuss? A new library, programming language or best practice? Nothing, in particular, came to mind. Is that because I'm a...
Embrace the Political
21.11.2019
The tech industry has long held the belief that technology is apolitical. People are flawed, but the machines? They are neutral. They are pure.
This is ridiculous, of course. People make the machines. We write the algorithms that can't recognize dark skin tones. We decide to downplay or ignore...
What the web still is
21.11.2019
Being a pessimist is an easy thing to fall back on, and I’m trying to be better about it. As we close the year out, I thought it would be a good exercise to take stock of the state of the web and count our blessings.
Versatile
We don't use the internet to do just one thing. With more than...
The future is bright, because the future is static
20.11.2019
I've been doing this web thing for money for 10 years this year and although I haven’t been around as long as some folks, I feel like I've seen a few cycles come and go now, so let's say that hot new things are often cynically viewed, initially. This milestone of mine has also got me in...
The Typed Object Model
20.11.2019
I help write technical documentation and one feature I've been writing about this year that has really stood out is the Typed Object Model (or Typed OM). If you haven't come across it yet you would be forgiven as it's pretty new. It falls under the CSS Houdini suite of API's and on the surface...
Variations on Theme: Reinventing Type on the Web
20.11.2019
If anyone knows anything about me, it’s usually one of two things: that I have two outrageously fluffy dogs, or that I like fonts and typography. Like, really really like them. So while I am super excited about how well Tristan is doing with his hydrotherapy —we’re walking 50% further than he...
No, Absolutely Not
19.11.2019
I think the difference between a junior and senior front-end developer isn't in their understanding or familiarity with a particular tech stack, toolchain, or whether they can write flawless code. Instead, it all comes down to this: how they push back against bad ideas.
What I've learned this year...
JAMstack, Fugu, and Houdini
19.11.2019
What has me really excited about building websites recently is the fact that we, as front-end developers, have the power to do so much more. Only a few years ago, I would need a whole team of developers to accomplish what can now be done with just a few amazing tools.
Although...
Oh, the Places JavaScript Will Go
19.11.2019
I tend to be pretty vocal about the problems client-side JavaScript cause from a performance perspective. We're shipping more JavaScript than ever to our user's devices and the result is increasingly brittle and resource-intensive experiences. It's... not great.
But that doesn't mean I don't like...
The Tools are Here
19.11.2019
Heading into 2020, it occurs to me that I've now been making websites for 20 years. Looking back on that time, it seems as though our practices have been in near-constant churn, and that our progress did not always seem linear. But ultimately, even the missteps and tangents along the way have...
The Communal Cycle of Sharing
18.11.2019
What I'm interested in this year is how we're continuing to expand on tools, services, and shared side projects to collectively guide where we take the web next, and the way we're sharing that.
So many other mediums—mostly analog ones—have been around for ages and have a deeper history. In...
The Best Cocktail in Town
18.11.2019
I admit I've held in a lot of pent-up frustration about the direction web development has taken the past few years. There is the complexity. It requires a steep learning curve. It focuses more on more configuration than it does development.
That's not exactly great news for folks like me...
The Kind of Development I Like
18.11.2019
I'm turning 40 next year (yikes!) and even though I've been making websites for over 25 years, I feel like I'm finally beginning to understand the kind of development I like. Expectedly, these are not new revelations and my views can be summed up by two older Computer Science adages that pre-date...