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Corvid by Wix: Accelerated Development of Web Applications
25.4.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
It's been interesting to watch Wix evolve from a website builder into a full-fledged platform for developing web applications. It's still just as easy for anyone to spin up a website with the visual builder that's always been there, but Wix Code was introduced a little...
Using Parcel as a Bundler for React Applications
25.4.2019
You may already be familiar with webpack for asset management on projects. However, there’s another cool tool out there called Parcel, which is comparable to webpack in that it helps with hassle-free asset bundling. Where Parcel really shines is that it requires zero configuration to get up...
Moving from Gulp to Parcel
25.4.2019
Ben Frain just made some notes about the switch from Gulp to Parcel, a relatively new "web application bundler" which, from a quick look at things, is similar to webpack but without all the hassle of setting things up. One of the things I’ve always disliked about webpack is that you kinda have...
That Time I Tried Browsing the Web Without CSS
24.4.2019
CSS is what gives every website its design. Websites sure aren’t very fun and friendly without it! I’ve read about somebody going a week without JavaScript and how the experience resulted in websites that were faster, though certain aspects of them would not function as expected.
But CSS. Turning...
Preload, prefetch and other link tags
24.4.2019
Ivan Akulov has collected a whole bunch of information and know-how on making things load a bit more quickly with preload and prefetch. That's great in and of itself, but he also points to something new to me – the as attribute:
<link rel="preload" href="/style.css" as="style"...
Who Are Design Systems For?
23.4.2019
Specific design systems, I mean. Design systems, as a concept, are something just about any site can benefit from.
A lot of hype goes into design systems these days. Just the other day, an organization's published their design system publicly and I got a slew of DMs, emails, and Slack messages...
The Circle of a React Lifecycle
23.4.2019
A React component goes through different phases as it lives in an application, though it might not be evident that anything is happening behind the scenes.
Those phases are:
mounting
updating
unmounting
error handling
There are methods in each of these phases that make it possible to perform...
Netlify Functions for Sending Emails
23.4.2019
Let's say you're rocking a JAMstack-style site (no server-side languages in use), but you want to do something rather dynamic like send an email. Not a problem! That's the whole point of JAMstack. It's not just static hosting. It's that plus doing anything else you wanna do through JavaScript...
Could Grouping HTML Classes Make Them More Readable?
22.4.2019
You can have multiple classes on an HTML element:
<div class="module p-2"></div>
Nothing incorrect or invalid there at all. It has two classes. In CSS, both of these will apply:
.module { }
.p-2 { }
const div...
So, You Wanna Submit a Proposal to Speak at an Event
22.4.2019
You’ve been scouring the web for upcoming events. You’ve subscribed to Developer Avocados and you’ve bookmarked conferences.css-tricks.com. And now you’ve found a call for proposals (CFP) that you can’t wait to enter. You quickly fill out the online form and your pinky races towards the Enter...
Inclusively Hidden
19.4.2019
Scott O'Hara recently published "Inclusively Hidden," a nice walkthrough of the different ways to hide things on the web. Nothing is ever cut and dry when it comes to the web! What complicates this is that hidden begs the question: hidden for whom? Different answers to that have different...
Tabs: It’s Complicated™
19.4.2019
I've said before one quick and powerful thing you can learn as a front-end developer just getting starting with JavaScript is changing classes.
const button = document.querySelector(".my-button");
const element = document.querySelector(".content");
button.addEventListener("click", function()...
How to Get a Progressive Web App into the Google Play Store
19.4.2019
PWA (Progressive Web Apps) have been with us for some time now. Yet, each time I try explaining it to clients, the same question pops up: "Will my users be able to install the app using app stores?" The answer has traditionally been no, but this changed with Chrome 72 which shipped a new feature...
Faking env() to Use it Now
18.4.2019
There is already an env() function in CSS, but it kinda came out of nowhere as an Apple thing for dealing with "The Notch" but it has made it's way to be a draft spec. The point will be for UAs or authors to declare variables that cannot be changed. Global const for CSS, sorta.
That spec doesn't...
Creating Reusable Base Classes in TypeScript with a Real-Life Example
18.4.2019
Hey CSS-Tricksters! Bryan Hughes was kind enough to take a concept from an existing post he published on converting to TypeScript and take it a few couple steps further in this post to elaborate on creating reusable base classes. While this post doesn’t require reading the other one, it’s certainly...
An Event Apart Boston is Coming. Save Now!
18.4.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
An Event Apart Boston is almost here! We're talking, like, less than a month away. If you've been holding off from registering, this might be your last chance because time and seating are both limited. Besides, we're talking about three days of pure knowledge-dropping...
Clever code
17.4.2019
This week, Chris Ferdinandi examined a clever JavaScript snippet, one that's written creatively with new syntax features, but is perhaps less readable and performant. It's a quick read, but his callout of our industry's fixation on cleverness is worth... calling out:
...we’ve become obsessed as...
The Power of Named Transitions in Vue
16.4.2019
Vue offers several ways to control how an element or component visually appears when inserted into the DOM. Examples can be fading in, sliding in, or other visual effects. Almost all of this functionality is based around a single component: the transition component.
A simple example of this is with...
A Website is a Car and Not a Book
15.4.2019
I’ve been wondering for a good long while why it feels like web design and development isn’t respected as much as native app development= and why the front-end role in many organizations is seen as a nice-to-have rather than a vital part of the business. Why is it so hard to see that this gig...
Simulating Mouse Movement
15.4.2019
If you've ever had to display an interactive animation during a live talk or a class, then you may know that it's not always easy to interact with your slides and while talking.
This happened to me when I needed to show this particles demo to my students. I didn't want to have to stay next to...