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Build a Slack App in 10 Minutes with MongoDB Stitch
30.4.2019
Slack is not only the fastest growing startup in history, but it's
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...
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...
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...
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...
Clever code
17.4.2019
This week, Chris Ferdinandi examined a clever JavaScript snippet, one that's written creatively with new syntax features, but is perhaps less readable and performant. It's a quick read, but his callout of our industry's fixation on cleverness is worth... calling out:
...we’ve become obsessed as...
A Website is a Car and Not a Book
15.4.2019
I’ve been wondering for a good long while why it feels like web design and development isn’t respected as much as native app development= and why the front-end role in many organizations is seen as a nice-to-have rather than a vital part of the business. Why is it so hard to see that this gig...
Simulating Mouse Movement
15.4.2019
If you've ever had to display an interactive animation during a live talk or a class, then you may know that it's not always easy to interact with your slides and while talking.
This happened to me when I needed to show this particles demo to my students. I didn't want to have to stay next to...
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...
Accessibility Events
11.4.2019
“There isn't some way to know when—…?”
There is always a pause here. The client knows what they're asking, and I know what they're asking, but putting it into words—saying it out loud—turns unexpectedly difficult.
In the moments before the asking, it was a purely technical question—no different...
Open FaceTime Call from Command Line
11.4.2019
Communication tools are always associated with UIs, and for good reason — if you want communication to be easy and intuitive, you need easy and intuitive interfaces. We need communication tools to provide the lowest barrier of entry, since not all users will be tech savvy. For tech experts...
In Defense of the Ternary Statement
10.4.2019
Some months ago I was on Hacker News (as one does) and I ran across a (now deleted) article about not using if statements. If you’re new to this idea (like I was), you’re in a for a real treat. Just search for "if statements" on Hacker News. You'll get articles proposing that you might not need...
Native Lazy Loading
9.4.2019
IntersectionObserver has made lazy loading a lot easier and more efficient than it used to be, but to do it really right you still gotta remove the src and such, which is cumbersome. It's definitely not as easy as:
<img src="celebration.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="..." />
Addy Osmani says...
Going Full-Time on Scotch.io After 5 Years!
8.4.2019
This post will be short and sweet. No, I'm not going full-time on drinking some alcohol (part-time on that definitely).
After 5 years of being a side project, Scotch.io will be
Make it hard to screw up driven development
2.4.2019
Development is complicated. Our job is an ongoing battle between getting the job done and doing that job in a safe, long-lasting way.
Developers say things like, "I'm just going to do this quick and dirty first," because it's taken as fact that if you code anything quickly, it not only will...
A Gutenburg-Powered Newsletter
28.3.2019
I like Gutenberg, the new WordPress editor. I'm not oblivious to all the conversation around accessibility, UX, and readiness, but I know how hard it is to ship software and I'm glad WordPress got it out the door. Now it can evolve for the better.
I see a lot of benefit to block-based editors. Some...
Understanding Event Emitters
26.3.2019
Consider, a DOM Event:
const button = document.querySelector("button");
button.addEventListener("click", (event) => /* do something with the event */)
We added a listener to a button click. We’ve subscribed to an event being emitted and we fire a callback when it does. Every time we click that...
Web Accessibility For Beginners
21.3.2019
Building accessible applications or websites is not the norm today. This is because the idea of accessibility is known to most developers, while in actual sense it is often neglected and not a comm
Creating a Custom Element from Scratch
20.3.2019
In the last article, we got our hands dirty with Web Components by creating an HTML template that is in the document but not rendered until we need it.
Next up, we’re going to continue our quest to create a custom element version of the dialog component below which currently only uses...