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Simple & Boring
25.3.2019
Simplicity is a funny adjective in web design and development. I'm sure it's a quoted goal for just about every project ever done. Nobody walks into a kickoff meeting like, "Hey team, design something complicated for me. Oh, and make sure the implementation is convoluted as well. Over-engineer that...
Podcasts on The Great Divide
24.3.2019
Nick Nisi, Suz Hinton, and Kevin Ball talk about The Great Divide in JS Party #61, then I get to join Suz and Jerod again in episode #67 to talk about it again.
Dave and I also got into it a bit in ShopTalk #346.
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The post Podcasts...
All About mailto: Links
22.3.2019
You can make a garden variety anchor link (<a>) open up a new email. Let's take a little journey into this feature. It's pretty easy to use, but as with anything web, there are lots of things to consider.
The basic functionality
<a href="mailto:someone@yoursite.com">Email...
Advanced Tooling for Web Components
22.3.2019
Over the course of the last four articles in this five-part series, we’ve taken a broad look at the technologies that make up the Web Components standards. First, we looked at how to create HTML templates that could be consumed at a later time. Second, we dove into creating our own custom element....
Using <details> for Menus and Dialogs is an Interesting Idea
21.3.2019
One of the most empowering things you can learn as a new front-end developer who is starting to learn JavaScript is to change classes. If you can change classes, you can use your CSS skills to control a lot on a page. Toggle a class to one thing, style it this way, toggle to another class...
Technical Debt is Like Tetris
21.3.2019
Here’s a wonderful post by Eric Higgins all about refactoring and technical debt. He compares giant refactoring projects to being similar to Tetris:
Similar to running a business, Tetris gets harder the longer you play. Pieces move faster and it becomes harder to keep up.
Similar to running...
It’s pretty cool how Netlify CMS works with any flat file site generator
21.3.2019
Little confession here: when I first saw Netlify CMS at a glance, I thought: cool, maybe I'll try that someday when I'm exploring CMSs for a new project. Then as I looked at it with fresh eyes: I can already use this! It's a true CMS in that it adds a content management UI on top of any static site...
Encapsulating Style and Structure with Shadow DOM
21.3.2019
This is part four of a five-part series discussing the Web Components specifications. In part one, we took a 10,000-foot view of the specifications and what they do. In part two, we set out to build a custom modal dialog and created the HTML template for what would evolve into our very own custom...
Blurred Borders in CSS
20.3.2019
Say we want to target an element and just visually blur the border of it. There is no simple, single built-in web platform feature we can reach for. But we can get it done with a little CSS trickery.
Here's what we're after:
The desired result.
Let's see how we can code this effect, how we...
Some Notes About Accessibility
20.3.2019
Earlier this month Eric Bailey wrote about the current state of accessibility on the web and why it felt like fighting an uphill battle:
As someone with a good deal of interest in the digital accessibility space, I follow WebAIM’s work closely. Their survey results are priceless insights into...
Creating a Custom Element from Scratch
20.3.2019
In the last article, we got our hands dirty with Web Components by creating an HTML template that is in the document but not rendered until we need it.
Next up, we’re going to continue our quest to create a custom element version of the dialog component below which currently only uses...
Chrome Lite Pages
19.3.2019
The Chrome team announced a new feature called Lite Pages that can be activated by flipping on the Data Saver option on an Android device:
Chrome on Android’s Data Saver feature helps by automatically optimizing web pages to make them load faster. When users are facing network or data constraints...
Using Local with Flywheel
19.3.2019
Have you seen Local by Flywheel? It's a native app for helping set up local WordPress developer environments. I absolutely love it and use it to do all my local WordPress development work. It brings a lovingly designed GUI to highly technical tasks in a way that I think works very well. Plus...
Stacked “Borders”
19.3.2019
A little while back, I was in the process of adding focus styles to An Event Apart’s web site. Part of that was applying different focus effects in different areas of the design, like white rings in the header and footer and orange rings in the main text. But in one place, I wanted rings that were...
Crafting Reusable HTML Templates
19.3.2019
In our last article, we discussed the Web Components specifications (custom elements, shadow DOM, and HTML templates) at a high-level. In this article, and the three to follow, we will put these technologies to the test and examine them in greater detail and see how we can use them in production...
The Whole Spreadsheets as Databases Thing is Pretty Cool
18.3.2019
A spreadsheet has always been a strong (if fairly literal) analogy for a database. A database has tables, which is like a single spreadsheet. Imagine a spreadsheet for tracking RSVPs for a wedding. Across the top, column titles like First Name, Last Name, Address, and Attending?. Those titles...
An Introduction to Web Components
18.3.2019
Front-end development moves at a break-neck pace. This is made evident by the myriad articles, tutorials, and Twitter threads bemoaning the state of what once was a fairly simple tech stack. In this article, I’ll discuss why Web Components are a great tool to deliver high-quality user experiences...
People Digging into Grid Sizing and Layout Possibilities
15.3.2019
Jen Simmons has been coining the term intrinsic design, referring to a new era in web layout where the sizing of content has gone beyond fluid columns and media query breakpoints and into, I dunno, something a bit more exotic. For example, columns that are sized more by content and guidelines than...
Design Systems and Portfolios
15.3.2019
In my experience working with design systems, I’ve found that I have to sacrifice my portfolio to do it well. Unlike a lot of other design work where it’s relatively easy to present Dribbble-worthy interfaces and designs, I fear that systems are quite a bit trickier than that.
You could make things...
See No Evil: Hidden Content and Accessibility
15.3.2019
There is no one true way to hide something on the web. Nor should there be, because hiding is too vague. Are you hiding visually or temporarily (like a user menu), but the content should still be accessible? Are you hiding it from assistive tech on purpose? Are you showing it to assistive tech...