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The Deal with the Section Element
15.1.2020
Two articles published the exact same day:
Bruce Lawson on Smashing Magazine: Why You Should Choose HTML5 <article> Over <section>
Adam Laki on Pine: The Difference Between <section> and <div> Element
They are comparing slightly different things, but they both...
CSS-Only Carousel
10.1.2020
It's kind of amazing how far HTML and CSS will take you when building a carousel/slideshow.
Setting some boxes in a horizontal row with flexbox is easy.
Showing only one box at a time with overflow and making it swipable with -webkit-overflow-scrolling is easy.
You can make the "slides" line...
let vs. const
9.1.2020
There are multiple ways to declare variables in JavaScript. We had var, and while that still works like it always has, it is generally said that let and const are replacements to the point we rarely (if ever) need var anymore. This doodle explanation does a pretty good job, if you need...
“All these things are quite easy to do, they just need somebody to sit down and just go through the website”
8.1.2020
I saw a video posted on Twitter from Channel 5 News in the UK (I have no idea what the credibility of them is, it's an ocean away from me) with anchor Claudia Liza asking Glen Turner and Kristina Barrick questions about website accessibility.
Apparently, they often post videos with captions,...
Wufoo + Zapier
31.12.2019
Wufoo has always been great with integrations. They have integrations with specific apps, like Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, and Typekit, but they also integrate with Zapier, which is sort of like an integration inside an integration.
That's kinda meta, but the idea is actually pretty...
Goals For 2020
30.12.2019
Every new year brings about a sense of optimism that the next 365 can bring about big, positive changes in different phases of life. That’s no exception for me and this blog. I did pretty well with last year’s goals, so I thought I’d push myself again with a new set of goals. Be...
Raw GraphQL Querying
20.12.2019
GraphQL has all kinds of awesome tooling built around it. But like everything on the web, it ultimately comes down to data shootin' across the ol' network and responses coming back. If you need to talk to a GraphQL API endpoint, you don't absolutely have to use some kind of framework or library...
Bitcoin History Part 22: The New Wealthy Elite
19.12.2019
“I am pretty confident we are the new wealthy elite, gentlemen, even with a sum as small as 10 bitcoins … The world just isn’t going to be the same and we have been blessed as the pioneers.” When these remarks were made in June of 2011, they seemed hopeful to the point...
The Typed Object Model
20.11.2019
I help write technical documentation and one feature I've been writing about this year that has really stood out is the Typed Object Model (or Typed OM). If you haven't come across it yet you would be forgiven as it's pretty new. It falls under the CSS Houdini suite of API's and on the surface...
Oh, the Places JavaScript Will Go
19.11.2019
I tend to be pretty vocal about the problems client-side JavaScript cause from a performance perspective. We're shipping more JavaScript than ever to our user's devices and the result is increasingly brittle and resource-intensive experiences. It's... not great.
But that doesn't mean I don't like...
The Communal Cycle of Sharing
18.11.2019
What I'm interested in this year is how we're continuing to expand on tools, services, and shared side projects to collectively guide where we take the web next, and the way we're sharing that.
So many other mediums—mostly analog ones—have been around for ages and have a deeper history. In...
When to Use SVG vs. When to Use Canvas
12.11.2019
SVG and canvas are both technologies that can draw stuff in web browsers, so they are worth comparing and understanding when one is more suitable than the other. Even a light understanding of them makes the choice of choosing one over the other pretty clear.
A little flat-color icon? That's...
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....
Digging Into the Preview Loading Animation in WordPress
22.10.2019
WordPress shipped the Block Editor (aka Gutenberg) back in version 5.0 and with it came a snazzy new post preview screen that shows the WordPress logo drawing itself while the preview loads.
That's what you get when saving a post draft and clicking the "Preview" button in the editor. How'd they...
Let’s Make a Fancy, but Uncomplicated Page Loader
15.10.2019
It’s pretty common to see a loading state on sites these days, particularly as progressive web apps and reactive sites are on the rise. It’s one way to improve "perceived" performance — that is, making it feel as though the site is loading faster than it actually is.
There’s no shortage of ways...
Recipes for Performance Testing Single Page Applications in WebPageTest
10.10.2019
WebPageTest is an online tool and an Open Source project to help developers audit the performance of their websites. As a Web Performance Evangelist at Theodo, I use it every single day. I am constantly amazed at what it offers to the web development community at large and the web performance folks...
A Snippet to See all SVGs in a Sprite
8.10.2019
I think of an SVG sprite as this:
<svg display="none">
<symbol id="icon-one"> ... <symbol>
<symbol id="icon-two"> ... <symbol>
<symbol id="icon-three"> ... <symbol>
</svg>
I was long a fan of that approach for icon systems...
Some Hands-On with the HTML Dialog Element
7.10.2019
This is me looking at the HTML <dialog> element for the first time. I've been aware of it for a while, but haven't taken it for a spin yet. It has some pretty cool and compelling features. I can't decide for you if you should use it in production on your sites, but I'd think it's starting...
Bankers Start to Recognize Bitcoin’s Role in Financial Evolution
29.9.2019
Digitization, disruption, blockchain, and frictionless payments. It’s amazing how prominent figures from the financial elite can provide a pretty detailed description of decentralized money without uttering “bitcoin” or “crypto.” But the fact of the matter is that...
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...