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Awesome Analytics with Keen.io (Sponsored)
21.2.2019
As a young developer, I would often make decisions based on what I considered to be common sense or what I would envision appealed to users. What a mistake. As I’ve become more experienced as a developer and a businessman, I’ve realized that analytics are the best way to make...
Building a Landing Page Fast Using the Visual Composer Website Builder (Sponsored)
20.2.2019
What if it were possible to build a landing page from top to bottom, including a header and a footer, and do so without any need for writing code? And even if it was possible, could you reasonably expect to do so as easily and quickly as putting together a puzzle designed for children...
Welcome to My New Office
19.2.2019
My first professional web development was at a small print shop where I sat in a windowless cubical all day. I suffered that boxed in environment for almost five years before I was able to find a remote job where I worked from home. The first thing I told myself when leaving that first...
Using Slack Slash Commands to Send Data from Slack into Google Sheets
18.2.2019
Since I work from home, most of my daily work interactions happen through Slack. It’s my equivalent to the water cooler. A place to hang out and discuss ideas with friends. I’m part of a book recommendations channel. People share books all the time, but they disappear quickly, lost in a sea...
Script & Style Show on iTunes!
11.2.2019
Last year Todd Gardner of TrackJS and I debuted our YouTube web show (podcast): The Script & Style Show. It was an amazing first year of guests, including Chris Coyier, Kyle Simpson, Jason Laster, Max Lynch, Dylan Schiemann, and more! And the show will only get better! I’m happy...
CSS :placeholder-shown
4.2.2019
One of the first plugins that would hit a new framework in the early days of JavaScript frameworks was a placeholder plugin, which is why we were so excited when HTML5 brought us the placeholder attribute. Then CSS lovers like me were thrilled when the CSS spec allowed us to style placeholders....
Set Desktop Wallpaper from Command Line on Mac
31.1.2019
Whenever I need to accomplish a basic task that typically calls for interacting with a UI, I challenge myself to complete the task from command line. After all, most UIs are simply a mask over basic commands, especially when it comes to the operating system. Suddenly I feel like an automation...
Mac Dark Mode from Command Line
30.1.2019
One of the best professional decisions I ever made was switching to a dark text editor theme. I suffered from horrible headaches for years, partially caused by late night coding sessions with blindingly bright computer screens. Recently Apple implemented a dark OS theme which helps my eyes,...
Slide an Image to Reveal Text with CSS Animations
29.1.2019
I want to take a closer look at the CSS animation property and walk through an effect that I used on my own portfolio website: making text appear from behind a moving object. Here’s an isolated example if you’d like to see the final product.
Here’s what we're going to work with:
See the...
How to Change Animated GIF Speed
29.1.2019
Comedians would tell you that timing is the most important part of any joke. The same could be said about animated GIFs; whether they’re used as a meme or to illustrate a process, the speed of an animated GIF can effect its effectiveness. With that idea in mind, I set about trying to figure...
prefers-color-scheme: CSS Media Query
28.1.2019
One device and app feature I’ve come to appreciate is the ability to change between light and dark modes. If you’ve ever done late night coding or reading, you know how amazing a dark theme can be for preventing eye strain and the headaches that result. macOS recently implemented...
React indeterminate
22.1.2019
I’ve fallen in love with React.js and JSX over the years; state-based rendering and a logical workflow have made me see the light of this modern framework. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes get a bit frustrated that the “simple” things seem harder than they should...
The Great Divide
21.1.2019
Let’s say there is a divide happening in front-end development. I feel it, but it's not just in my bones. Based on an awful lot of written developer sentiment, interviews Dave Rupert and I have done on ShopTalk, and in-person discussion, it’s, as they say... a thing.
The divide is between people...
STAR Apps: A New Generation of Front-End Tooling for Development Workflows
18.1.2019
Product teams from AirBnb and New York Times to Shopify and Artsy (among many others) are converging on a new set of best practices and technologies for building the web apps that their businesses depend on. This trend reflects core principles and solve underlying problems that we may share, so...
Amazing User Agent API with userstack
17.1.2019
We do our best to design and code websites so that they look and perform the way they should regardless of device or browser, but the truth is we sometimes we need to code for specific device, browser, or crawler. Whether it’s a quick hack or a simply wanting to display different content...
In Defense of Utility-First CSS
15.1.2019
A rather full-throated argument (or rather, response to arguments against) utility (atomic) CSS from Sarah Dayan. I wondered recently if redesigns were potentially a weakness of these types of systems (an awful lot of tearing down classes) which Sarah acknowledges and recommends more abstraction...
JavaScript Labels
15.1.2019
No matter how long you’ve been a JavaScript developer, there will always be language features that you didn’t know about until you saw them in a fringe piece of code. Your reaction generally is a bit like: One of those features I see developers quizically trying to figure out...
Colorized Brackets for IDE
13.1.2019
Coders treat their text editors and IDE’s like fragile beings, and for good reason: we spend a ton of time in them and having our tweaks and extensions can make us incredibly productive for our personal workflows. I always love hearing about what extensions and workflows other developers...
Git Checkout at Previous Timeframe
9.1.2019
In the past I’ve blogged about checking out branches created on a specific date as well as sorting git branches by date, but one frequent usage of git and dates is checking out a commit at a given time in the past. For example, I often say “Weird, this feature was working a month...
Toggling Animations On and Off
9.1.2019
A nicely detailed tutorial by Kirupa that gets into how you might provide a UI with persisted options that control whether animations run or not.
The trick is custom properties that control the movement:
body {
--toggle: 0;
--playState: "paused";
}
Which are used within animations...