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The Many Ways of Getting Data Into Charts
1.5.2019
Data is available everywhere nowadays, whether it’s in a plain text file, a REST API, an online Google sheet… you name it! It’s that variety of context that makes building graphs more than simply having a database in your local project — where there is data, there is a way.
That’s pretty much what...
Earth day, API’s and sunshine.
1.5.2019
Cassie Evans showcases some really nifty web design ideas and explores using the API provided by the company her team over at Clearleft recently hired to cover their building's roof with solar panels. Cassie outlines her journey designing a webpage that uses the API to populate some light data...
The Simplest Ways to Handle HTML Includes
30.4.2019
It's extremely surprising to me that HTML has never had any way to include other HTML files within it. Nor does there seem to be anything on the horizon that addresses it. I'm talking about straight up includes, like taking a chunk of HTML and plopping it right into another. For example the...
Revisiting prefers-reduced-motion, the reduced motion media query
30.4.2019
Two years ago, I wrote about prefers-reduced-motion, a media query introduced into Safari 10.1 to help people with vestibular and seizure disorders use the web. The article provided some background about the media query, why it was needed, and how to work with it to avoid creating...
Perceived Velocity through Version Numbers
30.4.2019
HTML5 and CSS3 were big. So big that they were buzzwords that actually meant something and were a massive success story in pushing web technology forward. JavaScript names their big releases now too: ES6, ES7, ES8... and it seems like it will keep going that way.
But HTML and CSS are done with that...
Oh, the Many Ways to Make Triangular Breadcrumb Ribbons!
29.4.2019
Oh, the Many Ways to Make Triangular Breadcrumb Ribbons
Let’s have a look at how we can create a row of links that sorta run into each other with a chevron-like shape and notch on each block like you might see in a hierarchical breadcrumb navigation.
You’ve probably seen this pattern a lot....
Interviewing for a Technical Position Doesn’t Have to Be Scary
26.4.2019
Jacob Schatz (@jakecodes) is a staff engineer over at GitLab and was kind enough to share how he conducts job interviews for technical positions and his thinking process for them. Technical interviews are talked about often and can be a touchy subject for some, so it’s worth noting that this...
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...