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Web Standards Meet User-Land: Using CSS-in-JS to Style Custom Elements
15.3.2019
The popularity of CSS-in-JS has mostly come from the React community, and indeed many CSS-in-JS libraries are React-specific. However, Emotion, the most popular library in terms of npm downloads, is framework agnostic.
Using the shadow DOM is common when creating custom elements, but there’s...
Little Things That Tickled My Brain from An Event Apart Seattle
14.3.2019
I had so much fun at An Event Apart Seattle! There is something nice about sitting back and basking in the messages from a variety of such super smart people.
I didn't take comprehensive notes of each talk, but I did jot down little moments that flickered my brain. I'll post them here! Blogging...
7 things you should know when getting started with Serverless APIs
14.3.2019
I want you to take a second and think about Twitter, and think about it in terms of scale. Twitter has 326 million users. Collectively, we create ~6,000 tweets every second. Every minute, that’s 360,000 tweets created. That sums up to nearly 200 billion tweets a year. Now, what if the creators...
Perfect Image Optimization for Mobile with Optimole
14.3.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
In 2015 there were 24,000 different Android devices, and each of them was capable of downloading images. And this was just the beginning. The mobile era is starting to gather pace with mobile visitors starting to eclipse desktop. One thing is certain, building...
The Benefits of Structuring CSS Around Appearance and Layout
13.3.2019
I like this point that Jonathan Snook made on Twitter and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop because it describes something that’s really hard about writing CSS:
I feel like that tweet sounds either very shallow or very deep depending on how you look at it but in reality, I don't think...
The Process of Implementing A UI Design From Scratch
13.3.2019
This is a fantastic post by Ahmad Shadeed. It digs into the practical construction of a header on a website — the kind of work that many of us regularly do. It looks like it's going to be fairly easy to create the header at first, but it starts to get complicated as considerations for screen...
Planning for Responsive Images
13.3.2019
The first time I made an image responsive, it was as simple as coding these four lines:
img {
max-width: 100%;
height auto; /* default */
}
Though that worked for me as a developer, it wasn’t the best for the audience. What happens if the the image in the src attribute is heavy? On high-end...
Designing An Aspect Ratio Unit For CSS
13.3.2019
Rachel Andrew says that the CSS Working Group designed an aspect ration unit at a recent meeting. The idea is to find an elegant solution to those times when we want the height of an element to be calculated in response to the width of the element, or vice versa.
Say, for example, we have a grid...
Smooth Scrolling for Screencasts
13.3.2019
Let's say you wanted to scroll a web page from top to bottom programmatically. For example, you're recording a screencast and want a nice full-page scroll. You probably can't scroll it yourself because it'll be all uneven and jerky. Native JavaScript can do smooth scrolling. Here's a tiny snippet...
Application Holotypes
13.3.2019
It's entirely too common to make broad-sweeping statements about all websites. Jason Miller:
We often make generalizations about applications we see in the wild, both anecdotal and statistical: "Single-Page Applications are slower than multipage" or "apps with low TTI loaded fast". However,...
Getting into GraphQL with AWS AppSync
12.3.2019
GraphQL is becoming increasingly popular. The problem is that if you are a front-end developer, you are only half of the way there. GraphQL is not just a client technology. The server also has to be implemented according to the specification. This means that in order to implement GraphQL into your...
Stackbit
12.3.2019
This is not a sponsored post. I requested a beta access for this site called Stackbit a while back, got my invite the other day, and thought it was a darn fine idea that's relevant to us web nerds — particularly those of us who spin up a lot of JAMstack sites.
I'm a big fan of the whole idea...
Downsides of Smooth Scrolling
11.3.2019
Smooth scrolling has gotten a lot easier. If you want it all the time on your page, and you are happy letting the browser deal with the duration for you, it's a single line of CSS:
html {
scroll-behavior: smooth;
}
I tried this on version 17 of this site, and it was the second most-hated thing...
Accessibility is not a “React Problem”
11.3.2019
Leslie Cohn-Wein's main point:
While [lots of divs, inline styles, focus management problems] are valid concerns, it should be noted that nothing in React prevents us from building accessible web apps.
True. I'm quite capable (and sadly, guilty) of building inaccessible interfaces with React...
Extending Google Analytics on CSS-Tricks with Custom Dimensions
11.3.2019
The idea for this article sparked when Chris wrote this in Thank You (2018 Edition):
I almost wish our URLs had years in them because I still don't have a way to scope analytic data to only show me data from content published this year. I can see the most popular stuff from the year, but that's...
Get Started with Node: An Introduction to APIs, HTTP and ES6+ JavaScript
11.3.2019
Jamie Corkhill has written this wonderful post about Node and I think it’s perhaps one of the best technical articles I’ve ever read. Not only is it jam-packed with information for folks like me who aren't writing JavaScript everyday, it is also incredibly deliberate as Jamie slowly walks through...
The Dark Side of the Grid
10.3.2019
Manuel Matuzovic makes the point that in order to use CSS grid in some fairly simple markup scenarios, we might be tempted to flatten our HTML to make sure all the elements we need to can participate on the grid. What we need is subgrid and non-buggy display: contents;, so I'd like to think in...
HMTL, CSS and JS in an ADD, OCD, Bi-Polar, Dyslexic and Autistic World
8.3.2019
Hey CSS-Tricksters! A lot of folks tweeted, emailed, commented and even courier pigeoned (OK, maybe not that) stories about their personal journeys learning web development after we published "The Great Divide" essay. One of those stories was from Tim Smith and, it was so interesting, that...
Styling Based on Scroll Position
7.3.2019
Rik Schennink documents a system for being able to write CSS selectors that style a page when it has scrolled to a certain point. If you're like me, you're already on the lookout for document.addEventListener('scroll' ... and being terrified about performance. Rik gets to that right away by both...
8 Little Videos About the Firefox Shape Path Editor
7.3.2019
It sometimes takes a quick 35 seconds for a concept to really sink in. Mikael Ainalem delivers that here, in the case that you haven't quite grokked the concepts behind path-based CSS properties like clip-path and shape-outside.
Here are two of my favorites. The first demonstrates animating text...