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React 16.6.0 Goodies
23.1.2019
React 16.6.0 was released October 2018 and with it came goodies that spice up the way we can develop with React. We’re going to cover what I consider the best of those new goodies with examples of how we can put them to use in our work.
React.memo() avoids unnecessary re-rendering
There...
Would You Watch a Documentary Walking Through Codebases?
22.1.2019
This resonated pretty strongly with people:
I’d watch a documentary series of developers giving a tour of their codebases.
— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) January 6, 2019
I think I was watching some random Netflix documentary and daydreaming that the subject was actually something I was super...
Netlify Makes Deployments a Cinch
22.1.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
Let's say you were going to design the easiest way to deploy a static site you can possibly imagine. If I was tasked with that, I'd say, well, it would deploy whenever I push to my master branch, and I'd tell it what command to run to build my site. Or maybe it has...
The Secret Weapon to Learning CSS
22.1.2019
For some reason, I’ve lately been thinking a lot about what it takes to break into the web design industry and learn CSS. I reckon it has something to do with Keith Grant’s post earlier this month on a CSS mental model where he talks about a “common core for CSS”:
We need common core tricks like...
Who is @horse_js?
22.1.2019
Many of us follow @horse_js on Twitter. Twenty-one thousand of us, to be exact. That horse loves stirring up mischief by taking people's statements out of context. It happened to me a few times and almost got me in trouble.
I wonder how many people hate CSS because their experience with...
The Great Divide
21.1.2019
Let’s say there is a divide happening in front-end development. I feel it, but it's not just in my bones. Based on an awful lot of written developer sentiment, interviews Dave Rupert and I have done on ShopTalk, and in-person discussion, it’s, as they say... a thing.
The divide is between people...
New CodePen Feature: Prefill Embeds
21.1.2019
I've very excited to have this feature released for CodePen. It's very progressive enhancement friendly in the sense that you can take any <pre> block of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (or any combination of them) and enhance it into an embed, meaning you can see the rendered output. It also...
Firefox DevTools WebConsole 2018 retrospective
21.1.2019
Here’s a wonderful post by Nicolas Chevobbe on what the Firefox DevTools team was up to last year. What strikes me is how many improvements they shipped — from big visual design improvements to tiny usability fixes that help us make sure our code works as we expect it to in the console....
STAR Apps: A New Generation of Front-End Tooling for Development Workflows
18.1.2019
Product teams from AirBnb and New York Times to Shopify and Artsy (among many others) are converging on a new set of best practices and technologies for building the web apps that their businesses depend on. This trend reflects core principles and solve underlying problems that we may share, so...
Intro to React Hooks
18.1.2019
Hooks make it possible to organize logic in components, making them tiny and reusable without writing a class. In a sense, they’re React’s way of leaning into functions because, before them, we’d have to write them in a component and, while components have proven to be powerful and functional...
Does it mutate?
18.1.2019
This little site by Remy Sharp's makes it clear whether or not a JavaScript method changes the original array (aka mutates) or not.
I was actually bitten by this the other day. I needed the last element from an array, so I remembered .pop() and used it.
const arr = ["doe", "ray", "mee"];
const...
Angular, Autoprefixer, IE11, and CSS Grid Walk into a Bar…
18.1.2019
I am attracted to the idea that you shouldn't care how the code you author ends up in the browser. It's already minified. It's already gzipped. It's already transmogrified (real word!) by things that polyfill it, things that convert it into code that older browsers understand, things that make...
2019 CSS Wishlist
17.1.2019
What do you wish CSS could do natively that it can't do now? First, let's review the last time we did this in 2013.
❌ "I'd like to be able to select an element based on if it contains another particular selector"
❌ "I'd like to be able to select an element based on the content...
Create Smart WordPress Forms in Less Than 5 Minutes with WPForms
17.1.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
Most online form solutions are either too complex or too expensive.
We believe you shouldn't have to spend hours creating online forms for your business. That's why we built WPForms, a drag and drop WordPress form builder that's both EASY and POWERFUL.
WPForms allows...
How I Built a GPS-Powered Weather Clock With My Old iPhone 4
17.1.2019
My first smartphone was an iPhone 4s. I remember the excitement of exploring its capabilities at a time when it was the coolest thing around. Eventually, of course, I replaced it with a newer model and the old iPhone, still in mint condition, gathered dust for two years. What a waste!
But was...
How I’ve Been Using Notion Personally and Professionally
16.1.2019
I use Notion quite a bit, both personally and professionally.
In a sense, it's just an app for keeping documents in one place: little notes, to-do lists, basic spreadsheets, etc. I like the native macOS Notes app just fine. It's quick and easy, it's desktop and mobile, it syncs... but there...
Making Movies With amCharts
16.1.2019
In this article, I want to show off the flexibility and real power of amCharts 4. We’re going to learn how to combine multiple charts that run together with animations that form a movie experience. Even if you’re only interested in creating a different kind of animation that has nothing to do with...
How Well Do You Know CSS Layout?
15.1.2019
The difference between a CSS good experience and a long frustrating one is oftentimes a matter of a few small details. CSS is indeed nuanced. One of the most common areas where I see struggles is layout. Personally, I like to study patterns. I notice that I tend to use a small group of patterns...
CSS doesn’t suck
15.1.2019
I'm not so protective of CSS that I'm above hearing it criticized, but I'm certainly in agreement here. CSS does not suck. I love how the post is framed to hype up current CSS features the way features of other languages and tools are hyped:
Imagine if a tech dude walked on stage at a conference...
In Defense of Utility-First CSS
15.1.2019
A rather full-throated argument (or rather, response to arguments against) utility (atomic) CSS from Sarah Dayan. I wondered recently if redesigns were potentially a weakness of these types of systems (an awful lot of tearing down classes) which Sarah acknowledges and recommends more abstraction...