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Simple Image Placeholders with SVG
27.1.2020
A little open-source utility from Tyler Sticka that returns a data URL of an SVG to use as an image placeholder as needed.
I like the idea of self-running utilities like that, rather than depending on some third-party service, like placekitten or whatever. Not that I'd advocate for feature...
“Browser Functions”
26.1.2020
Serverless functions are fairly straightforward. Put a bit of back-end language code, like Node, in the cloud and communicate with it via URL. But what if that URL didn't run a back-end language, it ran an actual browser? Richard Young:
We can now do full stack development using just Web APIs....
Flexible Captioned Slanted Images
25.1.2020
The end result of Eric Meyer's tutorial on creating this row of slanted images is pretty classy. But it's more about the journey than the destination (there isn't even really an isolated demo for it). Eric does an amazing job at talking it through like a thought process.
We did that recently, only...
Playwright
24.1.2020
So Microsoft launches a Node-based browser automation project called Playwright. It allows you to spin up a headless version of a browser and control it. Go here! Click something! Take a screenshot! That kind of stuff. Particularly useful for testing.
It's just like Google's Puppeteer, only...
Bundling JavaScript for Performance: Best Practices
24.1.2020
Performance advice from David Calhoun on how many scripts to load on a page for best performance:
[...] some of your vendor dependencies probably change slower than others. react and react-dom probably change the slowest, and their versions are always paired together, so they...
What’s the Difference Between Width/Height in CSS and Width/Height HTML attributes?
24.1.2020
Some HTML elements accept width and height as attributes. Some do not. For example:
<!-- valid, works, is a good idea --<img width="500" height="400" src="..." alt="..."<iframe width="600" height="400" src="..."</iframe<svg width="20" height="20"</svg<!-- not valid...
Min and Max Width/Height in CSS
24.1.2020
Here's a nice deep dive into min-width / min-height / max-width / max-height from Ahmad Shadeed. I like how Ahmad applies the properties to real-world design situations in addition to explaining how it works. In the very first demo, for example, he shows a button where min-width is used as a method...
Building Multi-Directional Layouts
23.1.2020
There are some new features in CSS that can assist us with building layouts for different directions and languages with ease. This article is about CSS logical properties and values (e.g. margin-inline-start).  These are a W3C working draft that still going under heavy editing, but have...
Component-Level CMSs
23.1.2020
When a component lives in an environment where the data queries populating it live nearby, there is a pretty direct line between the visual component and the database where that exact content lives. That is opening up doors to site editing experiences that travel that line. We're starting to...
This Page is Designed to Last
23.1.2020
Jeff Huang, while going through his collection of bookmarks, sadly finds a lot of old pages gone from the internet. Bit rot. It's pretty bad. Most of what gets published on the web disappears. Thankfully, the Internet Archive gets a lot of it. Jeff has seven things that he thinks will help make...
Build a dynamic JAMstack app with GatsbyJS and FaunaDB
23.1.2020
In this article, we explain the difference between single-page apps (SPAs) and static sites, and how we can bring the advantages of both worlds together in a dynamic JAMstack app using GatsbyJS and FaunaDB. We will build an application that pulls in some data from FaunaDB during build time...
Amelia Wattenberger’s The CSS Cascade
23.1.2020
If you're on a small screen, remind yourself to check it out on a big screen when you have the chance.
Did you know that styles from an active transition beat !important rules, but styles from an active animation do not? I definitely did not.
Or that there are "origins" that are almost like...
The Web in 2020: Extensibility and Interoperability
22.1.2020
In the past few years, we’ve seen a lot of change and diversion in regard to web technologies. In 2020, I foresee us as a web community heading toward two major trends/goals: extensibility and interoperability. Let’s break those down.
Extensibility
Extensibility describes...
Bad accessibility equals bad quality
22.1.2020
Here’s a smart post from Manuel Matuzovic where he digs into why accessibility is so important for building websites:
Web accessibility is not just about keyboard users, color contrast or screen readers. Accessibility is a perfect indicator for the quality of a website. Accessibility is strongly...
Hamburger ☰ Heaven
22.1.2020
A pleasant little romp through iconography and culture from Sophia Lucero. The "hamburger" menu icon we're familiar with now is really a sign from Taoist cosmology.
Besides ☰, which represents heaven 天, we have ☱ for lake/marsh 澤, ☲ for fire 火, ☳ for thunder 雷, ☴ for wind 風, ☵ for water 水,...
Edgium
22.1.2020
January 15th, 2020 was the day Microsoft Edge went Chromium. A drop in browser engine diversity. There is a strong argument to be made that's not good for an ecosystem. Looked at another way, perhaps not so bad:
Perhaps diversity has just moved scope. Rather than the browser engines themselves...
Searching the Jamstack
22.1.2020
Here's Raymon Camden on adding site search functionality to a site that is statically hosted. A classic trick! Just shoot 'em to Google and scope the results to your site:
<form action="https://www.google.com/search" method="get"<input type="search" name="q"...
JAMstack vs. Jamstack
21.1.2020
It's just a word to evoke the idea that serving as much as you can statically while using client-side code and hitting serverless APIs for any needs after that.
The "official website" changed their language from JAMstack (evoking the JavaScript, APIs, and Markup acronym) to Jamstack. It's nothing...
What makes a site JAMstack?
21.1.2020
I admit I didn’t know the ins and outs of what the Jamstack is until recently, despite having heard the term so frequently. I think I’m not alone in this. It’s an elusive term — how is it different from what came before, especially considering it shares so many similarities? Thankfully, Divya...
positionstack
21.1.2020
(This is a sponsored post.)
Say you have an address that your user typed in, like
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, USA
and now you need more information about it. Maybe you need the proper country code. Maybe you need the latitude and longitude. Maybe you need the postal code....