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Add real-time comments to a Gatsby blog
26.6.2018
(This is a sponsored post.)
This tutorial will show you how to add realtime comments to a Gatsby blog. You will use Node and Express to create a simple backend, allowing users to add and view comments instantly.
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Resilient, Declarative, Contextual
25.6.2018
Keith J. Grant:
I want to look at three key characteristics of CSS that set it apart from conventional programming languages: it’s resilient; it’s declarative; and it’s contextual. Understanding these aspects of the language, I think, is key to becoming proficient in CSS.
Like HTML, unknown...
Drawing Images with CSS Gradients
25.6.2018
What I mean by "CSS images" is images that are created using only HTML elements and CSS. They look as if they were SVGs drawn in Adobe Illustrator but they were made right in the browser. Some techniques I’ve seen used are tinkering with border radii, box shadows, and sometimes clip-path. You...
Users DO Change Font Size
24.6.2018
Evan Minto:
The question was “How many users browse the main Internet Archive site with a default font size other than the common value of 16 pixels?” By knowing this, we would determine how many users would be affected by sizing with relative units like rems/ems.
Using the methodology I describe...
Animate Calligraphy with SVG
22.6.2018
From time to time at Stackoverflow, the question pops up whether there is an equivalent to the stroke-dashoffset technique for animating the SVG stroke that works for the fill attribute. But upon closer inspection, what the questions are really trying to ask is something like this:
I have something...
Don’t Use The Placeholder Attribute
22.6.2018
Eric Bailey takes a hardline position on <input placeholder>.
You might be thinking, as I did: yeah, yeah I know the pitfalls. I'm capable of using placeholder responsibly. But when you look at all the negatives together:
Can’t be automatically translated;
Is oftentimes used in place of...
Balancing Time
22.6.2018
I first wrote this post four years ago. I put it on a blog that no longer exists. Funnily enough, I still refer to it myself, so I figured it might be best served in a place where other people can see it. I've made only a few minor tweaks to the original content. A lot about how I work has changed...
Advanced Document Conversions with Filestack
22.6.2018
You might know Filestack from being an incredible service to add file uploading, storage, and management to your own web apps.
There is another thing Filestack can do for you: convert documents into different formats.
For one thing, it can manipulate documents. Take images. Perhaps you would...
An Almost Ideal React Image Component
21.6.2018
Yes, this is a React component, but regardless if you care about that part or not, the "ideal image component" part could be of interest. There is a lot to consider with how we put images on web pages these days. This deals with:
Placeholder space (and then flexible responsive styles after...
Using Custom Fonts With SVG in an Image Tag
21.6.2018
When we produce a PNG image, we use an <img> tag or a CSS background, and that's about it. It is dead simple and guaranteed to work.
PNG is way simpler to use in HTML than SVG
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for SVG, despite its many advantages. Although you're spoiled for choices...
What is SVG good for?
21.6.2018
Y'all probably wouldn't be surprised if I told you it's pretty awesome for icons, and icon systems. SVG icon systems can, and perhaps should be quite easy. I'm a fan of just inlining those suckers, particularly when they are pretty simple.
But what else?
Logos is a classic example! A lot...
UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right?
20.6.2018
A good candidate for the Blog Post of the Year from Zach Holman. I think Eric Portis' "w descriptors and sizes: Under the hood" is up there too, but perhaps even nerdier. Ooooh, also Frank Chimero's "The Good Room" is up there. But I digress.
Zach's article is as educational as it is funny.
But...
Centering: The Newest Coolest Way vs. The Oldest Coolest Way
20.6.2018
This isn't a comprehensive guide to centering things. We have that!
This is just a little observation about old and new. One of the trickier things related to centering in CSS is when you need to center both vertically and horizontally and you don't know the width or height of what you...
Don’t just copy the @font-face out of Google Fonts URLs
19.6.2018
I don't think this is an epidemic or anything, but I've seen it done a few times and even advocated for. This is what I mean...
You go to Google Fonts and pick a font like Open Sans, and it gives you either a <link> or an @import with a URL there in which to ready this font for usage...
The Four Big Ways Jetpack Helps with Image Performance
19.6.2018
We've been working with Jetpack around here as a sponsor. It's a great match because as someone with a bunch of self-hosted WordPress sites, Jetpack is one of those no-brainer plugins for me. Jetpack can do a ton of good things for any site in a variety of very different ways. Here's one way...
Building a RSS Viewer With Vue: Part 2
19.6.2018
Welcome to Part 2 of this mini-series on building a RSS viewer with Vue. In the last post, I walked through how I built my demo using Vue.js and Vuetify on the front end and Webtask on the back end. When I built that initial version, I knew it was exactly thatmdash;an "initial" version. I took some...
Here’s the thing about “unused CSS” tools
18.6.2018
There are a lot of tools that aim to help you remove "unused CSS" from your project. Never a week goes by that I don't see a tool for this being shared or promoted. It must strike some kind of perfect chord for some developers. I care about performance, and I know that reducing file sizes is good...
Building a RSS Viewer With Vue: Part 1
18.6.2018
As I explore, learn, and most importantly, play with Vue.js, I've been building different types of apps as a way to get practice with and improve my use of it. A few weeks ago, I was reading about the shut down of Digg's RSS Reader and while great alternatives exist, I thought it would be fun...
Creating your own meme generator
15.6.2018
Almost every time a new meme pops up in my Twitter feed, I think of a witty version to create. I'm not alone in this. Memes are often a way to acknowledge a shared experience or idea. In a variation of the "Is this a pigeon" meme that has been making the rounds online, a designer Daryl Ginn joked...
More Unicode Patterns
14.6.2018
Creating is the most intense excitement one can come to know.
—Anni Albers, On Designing
I recently wrote a post — that was shared here on CSS-Tricks — where I looked at ways to use Unicode characters to create interesting (and random) patterns. Since then, I’ve continued to seek...