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JAMstack? More like SHAMstack.
5.6.2019
I'm a fan of the whole JAMstack thing. It seems like a healthy web movement. I'm looking forward to both of the upcoming conferences.
Of any web trend, #jamstack seems like it will be the least regrettable.
— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) May 22, 2019
I feel like the acronym might not...
Self-Host Your Static Assets
5.6.2019
Harry Roberts digs into why hosting assets on someone else’s servers (including CDNs) is not such a great idea if we want our websites to be lightning fast.
Harry writes:
One of the quickest wins—and one of the first things I recommend my clients do—to make websites faster can at first seem...
Movin’ Modals Along a Path
4.6.2019
Modals always be just appearin'. You might see one once in a while that slides in from one of the edges, or uses some kind of scale/opacity thing to appear from "above" or "below." But we can get weirder than that. Why not have them come in on an offset-path?
Just a swoopy arc is kinda fun.
...
Creating Animations Using React Spring
4.6.2019
Have you ever needed animation in your React application? Traditionally, implementing animation has not an easy feat to accomplish. But now, thanks to Paul Henschel, we there’s a new React tool just for that. react-spring inherits from animated and react-motion for interpolations, optimized...
Do you need an ICON ONLY button without screwing up the accessibility?
3.6.2019
The first consideration is: do you really? If you can, having text next to your icons is proven over and over again to be the most accessible and clearest UX (see Apple's latest blunder). But if you need to (and I get it, sometimes you need to), Sara Soueidan and Scott O'Hara have a pair...
Prevent Page Scrolling When a Modal is Open
3.6.2019
Please stop me if you've heard this one before. You open a modal, scroll through it, close it, and wind up somewhere else on the page than you were when you opened the modal.
That's because modals are elements on a page just like any other. It may stay in place (assuming that's what it's meant...
Material Theming: Making Material Your Own!
3.6.2019
The web is a beautiful, expressive medium that’s evolved over time as trends and technology have changed. Moments of delight and flair are what set companies apart from one another. At the same time, today’s top products rely on scalable, component-based design systems to efficiently develop...
Implementing Private Variables In JavaScript
1.6.2019
JavaScript (or ECMAScript) is the programming language that powers the web. Created in May 1995 by Brendan Eich, it’s found its place as a widely-used and versatile technology. Despite its success, it’s been met with its fair share of criticism, especially for idiosyncrasies. Things like objects...
Reducing motion with the picture element
31.5.2019
Here’s a bonafide CSS/HTML trick from Brad Frost and Dave Rupert where they use the <picture> element to switch out a GIF file with an image if the user has reduced motion enabled. This is how Brad goes about implementing that:
<picture>
<!-- This image will be loaded if...
A Practical Use Case for Vue Render Functions: Building a Design System Typography Grid
30.5.2019
This post covers how I built a typography grid for a design system using Vue render functions. Here’s the demo and the code. I used render functions because they allow you to create HTML with a greater level of control than regular Vue templates, yet surprisingly I couldn’t find very much when...
Customer Satisfaction Surveys with Wufoo
30.5.2019
I was once tasked to create a makeshift customer service survey that would allow an employee to receive a customer call and send a survey to the custom once the call ended. The goal was to track customer satisfaction, which is a totally legit thing to want.
There are some solutions out there that...
A Quick Look at the First Public Working Draft for Color Adjust Module 1
29.5.2019
We've been talking a lot about Dark Mode around here ever since Apple released it as a system setting in MacOS 10.14 and subsequently as part of Safari. It's interesting because of both what it opens up as as far as design opportunities as well as tailoring user experience based on actual user...
The difference between keyboard and screen reader navigation
29.5.2019
There are a few differences between keyboards and screen readers and Léonie Watson highlights of them:
When using the tab key, keyboard focus and screen reader focus are synchronised with each other. The rest of the time, screen reader users have an enormous range of commands at their disposal...
Creating Interactive Maps in WordPress with MapSVG
29.5.2019
The MapSVG plugin for WordPress allows you to create feature-rich, interactive maps quickly and through a smart admin UI. Interactive maps are a common request for projects when you need to visualize impact over particular locations. If you are already on WordPress, this comprehensive plugin could...
Color contrast accessibility tools
29.5.2019
Accessibility is all the rage these days, specifically when it comes to color contrast. I’ve stumbled upon a couple of tools this week that I think are pretty nifty for helping make sure that all of the text on our websites is legible regardless of what background color they might have.
First...
Using the Grid Shepherd Technique to Order Data with CSS
28.5.2019
Shepherds are good at tending to their sheep, bringing order and structure to their herds. Even if there are hundreds of those wooly animals, a shepherd still herds them back to the farm at the end of the day.
When dealing with data, programmers often don't know if it is correctly filtered...
Prioritizing
27.5.2019
You're faced with a lot of decisions in everyday work. There are multiple tasks calling for your focus, and you can burn daylight or even burn out trying to decide what comes first. There's a phenomenon called decision fatigue. There have been many studies that you can make poor choices when you're...
Night Mode with Mix Blend Mode: Difference
27.5.2019
Dark mode designs are all the rage right now but here’s an interesting take: Wei Gao has built a night mode on her own site that uses mix-blend-mode: difference to create an effect that looks like this:
Wei explains how she implemented this technique and the edge cases she encountered along...
Code as Documentation: New Strategies with CSS Grid
24.5.2019
I work for Supercool, a fast-moving design agency that makes custom built sites for arts clients, powered by the off-the-shelf system, Craft CMS; it's high-spec graphic design with relatively demanding typography and art direction. Over the past few months we’ve been moving to CSS grid. We’re...
The Power of Serverless v2.0! (Now an Open-Source Gatsby Site Hosted on Netlify)
23.5.2019
I created a website called The Power of Serverless for Front-End Developers over at thepowerofserverless.info a little while back while I was learning about that whole idea. I know a little more now but still have an endless amount to learn. Still, I felt like it was time to revamp that site a bit....