Search
Preloading Pages Just Before They are Needed
27.9.2019
The typical journey for a person browsing a website: view a page, click a link, browser loads new page. That's assuming no funny business like a Single Page App, which still follows that journey, but the browser doesn't load a new page — the client fakes it for the sake of a snappier...
A Codebase and a Community
27.9.2019
I woke up one morning and realized that I had it all wrong. I discovered that code and design are unable to solve every problem on a design systems team, even if many problems can be solved by coding and designing in a dark room all day. Wait, huh? How on earth does that make any sense? Well...
What happens when you open a new install of browsers for the 1st time?
27.9.2019
Interesting research from Jonathan Sampson, where he watches the network requests a browser makes the very first time you launch it on a fresh install, and otherwise do nothing. This gives you a little insight into what kind of information that browser wants to collect and disseminate.
This...
Weekly Platform News: Layout Shifts, Stalled High-Bitrate Videos, Screenshots in Firefox
26.9.2019
In this week's roundup: fighting shifty layouts, some videos might be a bit stalled, and a new way to take screenshots in Firefox.
Let's get into the news!
Identifying the causes of layout shifts during page load
You can now use WebPageTest to capture any layout shifts that occur on your website...
Meeting GraphQL at a Cocktail Mixer
26.9.2019
GraphQL and REST are two specifications used when building APIs for websites to use. REST defines a series of unique identifiers (URLs) that applications use to request and send data. GraphQL defines a query language that allows client applications to specify precisely the data they need from...
Paperform
26.9.2019
Buy or build is a classic debate in technology. Building things yourself might feel less expensive because there is no line item on your credit card bill, but has cost in the form of time. Buying things, believe it or not, is usually less expensive when it comes to technology that isn't your core...
A Dark Mode Toggle with React and ThemeProvider
25.9.2019
I like when websites have a dark mode option. Dark mode makes web pages easier for me to read and helps my eyes feel more relaxed. Many websites, including YouTube and Twitter, have implemented it already, and we’re starting to see it trickle onto many other sites as well.
In this tutorial, we’re...
Thinking in React Hooks
25.9.2019
Amelia Wattenberger has written this wonderful and interactive piece about React Hooks and details how they can clean up code and remove all those troubling lifecycle events:
React introduced hooks one year ago, and they've been a game-changer for a lot of developers. There are tons of how-to...
Filtering Data Client-Side: Comparing CSS, jQuery, and React
24.9.2019
Say you have a list of 100 names:
<ul>
<li>Randy Hilpert</li>
<li>Peggie Jacobi</li>
<li>Ethelyn Nolan Sr.</li>
<!-- and then some -->
</ul>
...or file names, or phone numbers, or whatever. And you want to filter them...
An Explanation of How the Intersection Observer Watches
24.9.2019
There have been several excellent articles exploring how to use this API, including choices from authors such as Phil Hawksworth, Preethi, and Mateusz Rybczonek, just to name a few. But I’m aiming to do something a bit different here. I had an opportunity earlier in the year to present the VueJS...
Browser Engine Diversity
24.9.2019
We lost Opera when they went Chrome in 2013. Same deal with Edge when it also went Chrome earlier this year. Mike Taylor called these changes a "Decreasingly Diverse Browser Engine World" in a talk I'd like to see.
So all we've got left is Chrome-stuff, Firefox-stuff, and Safari-stuff. Chrome...
Get Geographic Information from an IP Address for Free
24.9.2019
Say you need to know what country someone visiting your website is from, because you have an internationalized site and display different things based on that country. You could ask the user. You might want to have that functionality anyway to make sure your visitors have control, but surely they...
Link Underlines That Animate Into Block Backgrounds
23.9.2019
It's a cool little effect. The default link style has an underline (which is a good idea) and then on :hover you see the underline essentially thicken up turning into almost what it would have looked liked if you used a background-color on the link instead.
Here's an example of the effect on...
Static First: Pre-Generated JAMstack Sites with Serverless Rendering as a Fallback
23.9.2019
You might be seeing the term JAMstack popping up more and more frequently. I’ve been a fan of it as an approach for some time.
One of the principles of JAMstack is that of pre-rendering. In other words, it generates your site into a collection of static assets in advance, so that it can be served...
Random Notes from a JAMstack Roundtable
23.9.2019
I hosted a JAMstack roundtable discussion at Web Unleashed this past weekend. Just a few random notes from that experience.
I was surprised at first that there really is confusion that the "M" in Jamstack stands for "Markdown" (the language that compiles to HTML) rather than "Markup" (the "M"...
Variable Fonts Link Dump!
21.9.2019
There's been a ton of great stuff flying around about variable fonts lately (our tag has loads of stuff as well). I thought I'd round up all the new stuff I hadn't seen before.
Google fonts has a beta of hosted variable fonts and the announcement demo is on CodePen.
Speaking of Google Fonts...
UX Considerations for Web Sharing
20.9.2019
From trashy clickbait sites to the most august of publications, share buttons have long been ubiquitous across the web. And yet it is arguable that these buttons aren’t needed. All mobile browsers — Firefox, Edge, Safari, Chrome, Opera Mini, UC Browser, Samsung Internet — make it easy to share...
Table with Expando Rows
20.9.2019
"Expando Rows" is a concept where multiple related rows in a <table> are collapsed until you open them. You'd call that "progressive disclosure" in interaction design parlance.
After all these years on CSS-Tricks, I have a little better eye for what the accessibility concerns of...
Weekly Platform News: Emoji String Length, Issues with Rounded Buttons, Bundled Exchanges
19.9.2019
In this week's roundup, the string length of two emojis is not always equal, something to consider before making that rounded button, and we may have a new way to share web apps between devices, even when they are offline.
The JavaScript string length of emoji characters
A single rendered emoji...
Buddy on CSS-Tricks
19.9.2019
Here's a little direct product endorsement for ya: I literally use Buddy for deployment on all my projects.
Buddy isn't just a deployment tool, we'll get to that, but it's something that Buddy does very well and definitely a reason you might look at picking it up yourself if you're looking around...