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Using the Web Speech API for Multilingual Translations
12.4.2019
Since the early days of science fiction, we have fantasized about machines that talk to us. Today it is commonplace. Even so, the technology for making websites talk is still pretty new.
We can make our pages on the web talk using the SpeechSynthesis part of the Web Speech API. This is still...
Inline SVG… Cached
12.4.2019
I wrote that using inline <svg> icons makes for the best icon system. I still think that's true. It's the easiest possible way to drop an icon onto a page. No network request, perfectly styleable.
But inlining code has some drawbacks, one of which is that it doesn't take advantage...
Accessibility Events
11.4.2019
“There isn't some way to know when—…?”
There is always a pause here. The client knows what they're asking, and I know what they're asking, but putting it into words—saying it out loud—turns unexpectedly difficult.
In the moments before the asking, it was a purely technical question—no different...
Edge Goes Chromium: What Does it Mean for Front-End Developers?
11.4.2019
In December 2018, Microsoft announced that Edge would adopt Chromium, the open source project that powers Google Chrome. Many within the industry reacted with sadness at the loss of browser diversity. Personally, I was jubilant. An official release date has yet to be announced, but it will be...
Get a CSS Custom Property Value with JavaScript
11.4.2019
Here’s a neat trick from Andy Bell where he uses CSS Custom Properties to check if a particular CSS feature is supported by using JavaScript.
Basically, he's using the ability CSS has to check for browser support on a particular property, setting a custom property that returns a value of either...
While solving for collaboration, we built a product that our own teams love and use everyday!
11.4.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
Flock is a messaging and collaboration tool built for both designers and developers. With close-to-zero setup, it brings together all your team’s conversations, appointments, and files in one place, helping you spend more time on what you are best at — building...
Using “box shadows” and clip-path together
11.4.2019
Let's do a little step-by-step of a situation where you can't quite do what seems to make sense, but you can still get it done with CSS trickery. In this case, it'll be applying a shadow to a shape.
You make a box
.tag {
background: #FB8C00;
color: #222;
font: bold 32px system-ui;
padding:...
Under-Engineered Toggles
10.4.2019
Toggles. Switches. Whatever you want to call them, they've been with us for some time and have been a dominant a staple for many form interfaces. They're even baked right into many CSS frameworks, including Bootstrap and Foundation.
It's easy to think of them in binary terms: on and off. Off...
In Defense of the Ternary Statement
10.4.2019
Some months ago I was on Hacker News (as one does) and I ran across a (now deleted) article about not using if statements. If you’re new to this idea (like I was), you’re in a for a real treat. Just search for "if statements" on Hacker News. You'll get articles proposing that you might not need...
The Serif Tax
9.4.2019
Fonts are vector. Vector art with more points makes for larger files than vector art with fewer points. Custom fonts are downloaded. So, fonts with less points in their vector art are smaller. That's the theory anyway. Shall we see if there is any merit to it?
Open Sans (top) and Garamond...
Using a Mixin to Take the Math out of Responsive Font Sizes
9.4.2019
Responsive Font Size (RFS) is an engine that automatically calculates and updates the font-size property on elements based on the dimensions of the browser viewport.
If you’re thinking that sounds familiar, that’s because there is a slew of tools out there that offer various approaches for fluid...
Native Lazy Loading
9.4.2019
IntersectionObserver has made lazy loading a lot easier and more efficient than it used to be, but to do it really right you still gotta remove the src and such, which is cumbersome. It's definitely not as easy as:
<img src="celebration.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="..." />
Addy Osmani says...
Testing for Visual Regressions with Percy
8.4.2019
It’s a Herculean task to test
Undefined: The Third Boolean Value
5.4.2019
I wanted to implement a notification message in one of my projects, similar to what you’d see in Google Docs while a document is saving. In other words, a message shows up indicating that the document is saving every time a change is made. Then, once the changes are saved, the message becomes: “All...
Revisiting the Rendering Tier
5.4.2019
Have you ever created a well-intentioned, thoughtful design system only to watch it grow into an ever-increasing and scary codebase? I've been working in sort of the opposite direction, inheriting the scary codebase and trying to create a thoughtful system from it.
Here's Alex Sanders on the topic...
Decaying Sites
4.4.2019
Websites have a tendency to decay all by themselves. Link rot, they call it. Unpaid domain name registrations. Companies that have gone out of business. Site owners that have lost interest. What's sadder than a 404? Landing on a holding page of a URL that used to exist, but now has fallen into...
A Couple of New Wufoo Tips
4.4.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
High fives to Wufoo, our long-time sponsor here on CSS-Tricks. It's powered the vast majority of forms I've built over the past decade. If you've never used it or heard of it: it's a form builder. It makes the arduous task of implementing forms trivially easy. Building...
Fixed Headers, On-Page Links, and Overlapping Content, Oh My!
3.4.2019
Let's take a basic on-page link:
<a href="#section-two">Section Two</a>
When clicked, the browser will scroll itself to the element with that ID: <section id="section-two"></section>. A browser feature as old as browsers themselves, just about.
But as soon as...
Responsible JavaScript
3.4.2019
We just made a note about this article by Jeremy Wagner in our newsletter but it’s so good that I think it’s worth linking to again as Jeremy writes about how our obsession with JavaScript can lead to accessibility and performance issues:
What we tend to forget is that the environment websites...
What Are Design Tokens?
3.4.2019
I’ve been hearing a lot about design tokens lately, and although I’ve never had to work on a project that’s needed them, I think they’re super interesting and worth jotting down a few notes about. As I understand it, the general idea is this: design tokens are an agnostic way to store variables...