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An Introduction To Storybook: Organize How You Build JS Components
24.4.2019
What is Storybook?
Storybook is an open source tool for developing UI components in isolation and it integrates pretty well with most front end fram
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...
How to Reverse a Video
9.4.2019
One of my favorite media utilities is ffmpeg. This command line utility allows us to do some pretty amazing stuff like; Slice videos Convert video formats Modify video speed Combine audio and video Every once in a while I see a meme or funny video that reverses a video for effect. Since ffmpeg does...
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...
Better Than Native
27.3.2019
Andy Bell wrote up his thoughts about the whole web versus native app debate which I think is super interesting. It was hard to make it through the post because I was nodding so aggressively as I read:
The whole idea of competing with native apps seems pretty daft to me, too. The web gives us...
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...
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...
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...
Recreating the Facebook Messenger Gradient Effect with CSS
1.3.2019
One Sunday morning, I woke up a little earlier than I would’ve liked to, thanks to the persistent buzzing of my phone. I reached out, tapped into Facebook Messenger, and joined the conversation. Pretty soon my attention went from the actual conversations to the funky gradient effect of the message...
Control Icons with Font Size
27.2.2019
Here’s a nifty trick from Andy Bell that now seems a little obvious in hindsight: if you set an SVG to have a width and height of 1em then you can change the size of it with the font-size property.
Try and change the font-size on the body element below to see the icon scale with the text:
...
iconsvg.xyz
25.2.2019
There is a lot to like about Gaddafi Rusli's ICONSVG.
It provides inline <svg>, which is the most generically useful way to deliver them, and probably how they should be used anyway. Each icon is a tiny amount of SVG and I'd bet they were all hand-golfed.
They are all stroke-based, so they...
Serverless CloudFlare Workers Are Pretty Awesome
21.2.2019
Serverless is the new black. I mean everybody I know is moving to the serverless platforms or launching one. OK, maybe not everyone but CloudFlare is definitely moving in this direction with an aud
instant.page
18.2.2019
instant.page is a pretty cool project from Alexandre Dieulot. Alexandre has been at this idea for half a decade now, as InstantClick is his and is essentially the same exact idea.
The idea is that there is a significant delay between hovering over a link and clicking that link. Say it takes...
Getting to Grips with the Airtable API
14.2.2019
The Airtable web app is pretty neat. You can use it like a spreadsheet but it’s useful for all sorts of other things too. The neatest thing about it for me is that it has an API so that you can treat it like a database.
I’ve been thinking about making weekly notes for the different teams I work...
The ineffectiveness of lonely icons
11.2.2019
Icons are great and all, but as we've been shown time and time again, they often don't do the job all by themselves. Even if you do a good job with the accessibility part and make sure there is accompanying text there for assistive technology, in an ironic twist, you might be confusing people...
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...
Why we need CSS subgrid
11.1.2019
I’m a huge fan of CSS Grid and I use it on pretty much every project these days. However, there’s one part of it that makes things much more complicated than they really ought to be: the lack of subgrids. And in this post on the matter, Ken Bellows explains why they’d be so gosh darn useful:
But...
A CSS Venn Diagram
17.12.2018
This is pretty wild: Adrian Roselli has made a series of rather complex Venn diagrams using nothing but CSS. With a combination of the Firefox dev inspector, plus a mixture of CSS Grid and the shape-outside property, it’s possible to do this and without a ton of hacks, too.
I also think it’s super...
Solved with CSS! Logical Styling Based on the Number of Given Elements
26.7.2018
This post is the third in a series about the power of CSS.
Article Series:
Colorizing SVG Backgrounds
Dropdown Menus
Logical Styling Based On the Number of Given Elements (this post)
Did you know that CSS is Turing complete? Did you know that you can use it to do some pretty serious logical...