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Lessons Learned from a Year of Testing the Web Platform
30.7.2019
Mike Pennisi:
The web-platform-tests project is a massive suite of tests (over one million in total) which verify that software (mostly web browsers) correctly implement web technologies. It’s as important as it is ambitious: the health of the web depends on a plurality of interoperable...
Getting design system customization just right
29.7.2019
I had a little rant in me a few months ago about design systems: "Who Are Design Systems For?" My main point was that there are so many public and open source ones out there that choosing one can feel like choosing new furniture for your house. You just measure up what you need and what you like...
The Guardian digital design system
29.7.2019
Here’s a fascinating look at The Guardian’s design system with a step-by-step breakdown of what's gone into it and what options are available to designers and developers. It shows us how the team treats colors, typography, layouts, and visual cues like rules and borders.
I’ve been struggling...
Telling the Story of Graphic Design
26.7.2019
Let me just frame this for you: we're going to take a piece of production UI from a Sketch file, break it down into pieces of information and then build it up into a story we tell our friends. Our friends might be hearing, or seeing, or touching the story so we are going to interpret and translate...
Datalist is for suggesting values without enforcing values
26.7.2019
Have you ever had a form that needed to accept a short, arbitrary bit of text? Like a name or whatever. That's exactly what <input type="text"> is for. There are lots of different input types (and modes!), and picking the right one is a great idea.
But this little story is about something...
Weekly news: Truncating muti-line text, calc() in custom property values, Contextual Alternates
26.7.2019
In this week's roundup, WebKit's method for truncating multi-line text gets some love, a note on calculations using custom properties, and a new OpenType feature that prevents typographic logjams.
The post Weekly news: Truncating muti-line text, calc() in custom property values, Contextual...
My Favorite Netlify Features
25.7.2019
👋 Hey folks! Silvestar pitched this post to us because he is genuinely enthusiastic about JAMstack and all of the opportunities it opens up for front-end development. We wanted to call that out because, although some of the points in here might come across as sponsored content and Netlify...
Responsive Iframes
25.7.2019
Say you wanted to put the CSS-Tricks website in an <iframe>. You'd do that like this:
<iframe src="https://css-tricks.com"></iframe>
Without any other styling, you'd get a rectangle that is 300x150 pixels in size. That's not even in the User Agent stylesheet, it's just some...
How Google PageSpeed Works: Improve Your Score and Search Engine Ranking
25.7.2019
In this article, we uncover how PageSpeed calculates it’s critical speed score.
It’s no secret that speed has become a crucial factor in increasing revenue and lowering abandonment rates. Now that Google uses page speed as a ranking factor, many organizations have become laser-focused...
What I Like About Vue
25.7.2019
Dave Rupert digs into some of his favorite Vue features and one particular issue that he has with React:
I’ve come to realize one thing I don’t particularly like about React is jumping into a file, reading the top for the state, jumping to the bottom to find the render function, then following...
Zdog
24.7.2019
David DeSandro has loads of super cool JavaScript libraries he's created over the years. His latest is Zdog, a "round, flat, designer-friendly pseudo-3D engine for canvas & SVG." It's only been about a month since he dropped it (although, like any good library, it's been simmering) and it...
Don’t comma-separate :focus-within if you need deep browser support
24.7.2019
I really like :focus-within. It's a super useful selector that allows you to essentially select a parent element when any of its children are in focus.
Say you wanted to reveal some extra stuff when a <div> is hovered...
div:hover {
.extra-stuff {
/* reveal it */
}
}
That's...
Unsuck It
23.7.2019
Julia Carrie Wong and Matthew Cantor's How to speak Silicon Valley: 53 essential tech-bro terms explained was pretty hilarious. A little something in there to offend everyone.
Speaking of kinda douchey words, I'm reminded of one of my favorite sites on the internet: Unsuck It. Not only does...
Pseudo Code
23.7.2019
Yonatan Doron wrote a post on Medium not long ago called "Art of Code — Why you should write more Pseudo Code." Love that title, as a fan of pseudo code myself. That is, writing "code" that describes something you want to do or communicate, but that isn't of any particular language and doesn't...
Zoom, CORS, and the Web
23.7.2019
It's sorta sad by funny that that big Zoom vulnerability thing was ultimately related to web technology and not really the app itself.
There is this idea of custom protocols or "URL schemes." So, like gittower:// or dropbox:// or whatever. A native app can register them, then URLs that hit them...
CSS :not() with Multiple Classes
22.7.2019
Say you want to select an element when it doesn't have a certain class. That's what the :not() selector is for.
body:not(.home) {
}
But what if there are multiple classes you want to avoid?
There are no logical combinators with :not(), like and or or, but you can chain them, which...
A Beginner’s Journey to Launching a Website
22.7.2019
In September 2018, I was just a few months into my journey of learning web development. As I'm sure is the case with many new developers, it was a big task for me to learn not only the basic skills required, but also keeping current with the fast-moving industry. Just as I was getting to the level...
CSS Animation Libraries
22.7.2019
There are an awful lot of libraries that want to help you animate things on the web. These aren't really libraries that help you with the syntax or the technology of animations, but rather are grab-and-use as-is libraries. Want to apply a class like "animate-flip-up" and watch an element, uhhh...
How I Created a Code Beautifier in Two Days
19.7.2019
I recently drew up a wireframe for a code beautifier. The next day, I decided to turn it into a real tool. The whole project took less than two days to complete.
I'd been thinking about building a new code beautifier for a while. The idea isn't unique, but every time I use someone else's tool,...
What the Web Needs Now (and how ARTIFACT is here for it)
19.7.2019
I recently had the pleasure of joining Dave Rupert, Chris Coyier, and Chris Ferdinandi on the Shop Talk Show to talk about the upcoming ARTIFACT Conference (Austin, TX on Sept. 30 – Oct. 1, 2019). ARTIFACT is an intimate gathering of web designers and developers where we discuss ways to build...