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scrapestack: An API for Scraping Sites
12.11.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
Not every site has an API to access data from it. Most don't, in fact. If you need to pull that data, one approach is to "scrape" it. That is, load the page in web browser (that you automate), find what you are looking for in the DOM, and take it.
You can do this...
A Super Weird CSS Bug That Affects Text Selection
12.11.2019
You know how you can style (to some degree) selected text with ::selection? Well, Jeff Starr uncovered a heck of a weird CSS bug.
If you:
Leave that selector empty
Link it from an external stylesheet (rather than <style> block)
Selecting text will have no style at all....
Pac-Man… in CSS!
11.11.2019
You all know famous Pac-Man video game, right? The game is fun and building an animated Pac-Man character in HTML and CSS is just as fun! I’ll show you how to create one while leveraging the powers of the clip-path property.
See the Pen
Animated Pac-Man by Maks Akymenko (@maximakymenko)
...
Disabled buttons suck
11.11.2019
In this oldie but goodie, Hampus Sethfors digs into why disabled buttons are troubling for usability reasons and he details one example where this was pretty annoying for him. The same has happened to me recently where I clicked a button that looked like a secondary button and... nothing happened....
Two-Value Display Syntax (and Sometimes Three)
8.11.2019
You know the single-value syntax: .thing { display: block; }. The value "block" being a single value. There are lots of single values for display. For example, inline-flex, which is like flex in that it becomse a flex container, but behaves like an inline-level element rather than a block-level...
Diana Smith’s Pure CSS Artwork “Lace”
8.11.2019
Diana is at it again with her absolutely unbelievable CSS paintings. This latest one is called Lace. Past paintings are Francine, Vignes, and Zigario.
She wrote for us last year if you'd like a little insight into her thinking.
Andy Baio looked at the painting in a variety of older...
Working with Fusebox and React
8.11.2019
If you are searching for an alternative bundler to webpack, you might want to take a look at FuseBox. It builds on what webpack offers — code-splitting, hot module reloading, dynamic imports, etc. — but code-splitting in FuseBox requires zero configuration by default (although webpack will offer...
Weekly Platform News: Web Apps in Galaxy Store, Tappable Stories, CSS Subgrid
8.11.2019
In this week's roundup: Firefox gains locksmith-like powers, Samsung's Galaxy Store starts supporting Progressive Web Apps, CSS Subgrid is shipping in Firefox 70, and a new study confirms that users prefer to tap into content rather than scroll through it.
Let's get into the news.
Securely...
Location, Privilege and Performant Websites
7.11.2019
Here’s a wonderful reminder from Stephanie Stimac about web performance. She writes about a recent experience of moving to an area with an unreliable network and how this caused problems for her as she tried to figure out what was happening during a power blackout:
Assuming all of your customers...
Query JSON documents in the Terminal with GROQ
7.11.2019
JSON documents are everywhere today, but they are rarely structured the way you want them to be. They often include too much data, have weirdly named fields, or place the data in unnecessary nested objects. Graph-Relational Object Queries (GROQ) is a query language (like SQL, but different) which...
Optimizing Images for Users with Slow Network Speeds
7.11.2019
For every website, page load time is a critical factor that can make or break the business. Thanks to the better user experience that comes with a fast-loading webpage, those who focus on page load optimization enjoy better conversion rates, better SEO, better retention, and lower bounce rates.
And...
Some Things You Oughta Know When Working with Viewport Units
6.11.2019
David Chanin has a quickie article summarizing a problem with setting an element's height to 100vh in mobile browsers and then also positioning something on the bottom of that.
Summarized in this graphic:
The trouble is that Chrome isn't taking the address bar (browser chrome) into account when...
What is super() in JavaScript?
6.11.2019
What's happening when you see some JavaScript that calls super()?.In a child class, you use super() to call its parent’s constructor and super.<methodName> to access its parent’s methods. This article will assume at least a little familiarity with the concepts of constructors and child...
Netlify CMS Open Authoring
6.11.2019
I like the term "Git-backed CMS." That term works for an emerging style of CMS that looks and behaves much like any other CMS, with a fascinating twist: it doesn't actually store any data for you. These CMSs are connected to a Git repo where the data lives in flat files (e.g. Markdown). You teach...
Show Search Button when Search Field is Non-Empty
5.11.2019
I think the :placeholder-shown selector is tremendously cool. It allows you to select the placeholder of an input (<input placeholder="...">) when that placeholder is present. Meaning, the input does not yet have any value. You might think input[value] could do that, or help match on...
Making a Chart? Try Using Mobx State Tree to Power the Data
5.11.2019
Who loves charts? Everyone, right? There are lots of ways to create them, including a number of libraries. There’s D3.js, Chart.js, amCharts, Highcharts, and Chartist, to name only a few of many, many options.
But we don’t necessary need a chart library to create charts. Take Mobx-state-tree (MST)...
Float Element in the Middle of a Paragraph
4.11.2019
Say you want to have an image (or any other element) visually float left into a paragraph of text. But like... in the middle of the paragraph, not right at the top. It's doable, but it's certainly in the realm of CSS trickery!
One thing you can do is slap the image right in the middle of...
The Trick to Animating the Dot on the Letter “i”
4.11.2019
Here’s the trick: by combining the Turkish letter "ı" and the period "." we can create something that looks like the letter "i," but is made from two separate elements. This opens us up to some fun options to style or animate the dot of the letter independently from the stalk. Worried about...
Become a Front-End Master in 2020 With These 10 Project Ideas
1.11.2019
This is a little updated cross-post from a quickie article I wrote on DEV. I'm publishing here 'cuz I'm all IndieWeb like that.
I love this post by Simon Holdorf. He's got some ideas for how to level up your skills as a front-end developer next year. Here they are:
Build a movie search app using...
A Look at JAMstack’s Speed, By the Numbers
1.11.2019
People say JAMstack sites are fast — let’s find out why by looking at real performance metrics! We’ll cover common metrics, like Time to First Byte (TTFB) among others, then compare data across a wide section of sites to see how different ways to slice those sites up compare.
First, I’d like...