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How to Redirect a Search Form to a Site-Scoped Google Search
29.4.2020
This is just a tiny little trick that might be helpful on a site where you don’t have the time or desire to build out a really good on-site search solution. Google.com itself can perform searches scoped to one particular site. The trick is getting people there using that special syntax...
Using Formik to Handle Forms in React
28.4.2020
There is no doubt that web forms play an integral role in our web site or applications. By default, they provide a useful set of elements and features — from legends and fieldsets to native validation and states — but they only get us so far when we start to consider the peculiarities of using...
Static or Not?
27.4.2020
A quick opinion piece by Kev Quirk: Why I Don’t Use A Static Site Generator. Kev uses WordPress:
Want to blog on my iPad? I can. Want to do it on my phone? No problem. On a machine I don’t normally use? Not an issue, as long as it has a browser.
First, it’s worth understanding...
Advice for Writing a Technical Resume
27.4.2020
Marco Rogers asked a very good question on Twitter:
I talk to a lot of people new to tech from non-traditional backgrounds, e.g. bootcamps or self-taught. I'm looking for good information for those people on how to build out a strong resume when they don't have work experience yet. Advice...
The Cost of Javascript Frameworks
26.4.2020
I expect this post from Tim Kadlec to be quoted in every performance conference talk for the next few years. There is a lot of data here, so please check it out for yourself, but the short story is that JavaScript-framework-powered sites are definitely heavier and more resource-intensive than...
@property
25.4.2020
The @property is totally new to me, but I see it’s headed to Chrome, so I suppose it’s good to know about!
There is a draft spec and an “intent to ship” document. The code from that document shows:
@property --my-property {
syntax: "<color";
initial-value: green;
...
How to Make a CSS-Only Carousel
24.4.2020
We mentioned a way to make a CSS-only carousel in a recent issue of the newsletter and I thought that a more detailed write up would be interesting and capture some of my thoughts on making one.
So, here’s what we’re making today:
There’s no JavaScript here, whatsoever! No jQuery plugins....
“The title ‘Front-End Developer’ is obsolete.”
24.4.2020
That title is from the opening tweet of a thread from Benjamin De Cock. I wouldn’t go that far, myself. What I like about the term is that ‘Front-End’ literally means the browser, and while the job has been changing quite a lot — and is perhaps fracturing before our eyes — the fact that...
Chrome + System Fonts Snafu
24.4.2020
There was just a bug late last year where system fonts (at least on Mac, I don’t know what the story was on other platforms) in Chrome appeared too thin and tracked-in at small sizes and too thick and tracked-out at larger sizes. That one was fixed, thankfully. But while it was a problem,...
SVG, Favicons, and All the Fun Things We Can Do With Them
24.4.2020
Favicons are the little icons you see in your browser tab. They help you understand which site is which when you’re scanning through your browser’s bookmarks and open tabs. They’re a neat part of internet history that are capable of performing some cool tricks.
One very new trick is the ability...
Different Approaches to Responsive CSS Motion Path
24.4.2020
As a follow-up to Jhey’s recent post on responsive motion paths, Michelle Barker notes that another approach could be to just transform: scale() the whole dang element.
The trade-off there is that you’re scaling both the path and the element on the path at the same time; Jhey’s...
Dark mode and variable fonts
23.4.2020
Not so long ago, we wrote about dark mode in CSS and I’ve been thinking about how white text on a black background is pretty much always harder to read than black text on a white background. After thinking about this for a while, I realized that we can fix that problem by making the text thinner...
Accessible Font Sizing, Explained
23.4.2020
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), an organization that defines standards for web content accessibility, does not specify a minimum font size for the web.
But we know there’s such a thing as text that is too small to be legible, just as text that can be too large to consume. So,...
Innovating on Web Monetization: Coil and Firefox Reality
23.4.2020
I still think Coil is cool. I have it installed on CSS-Tricks as a publisher and money trickles in. I have a paid account and I trickle out money to other sites that use it. I wrote about all that last year.
This’ll explode to something huge if we actually get the Web Monetization API stuff....
Rethinking Twitter as a Serverless App
23.4.2020
In a previous article, we showed how to build a GraphQL API with FaunaDB. We’ve also written a series of articles [1, 2, 3, 4] explaining how traditional databases built for global scalability have to adopt eventual (vs. strong) consistency, and/or make compromises on relations and indexing...
Some Little Improvements to My VS Code Workflow (Workspaces, Icons, Tasks)
22.4.2020
I did a little thing the other day that I didn’t know was possible until then. I had a project folder open in VS Code like I always do, and I added another different root folder to the window. I always assumed when you had a project open, it was one top level root folder and that’s...
My Visual Studio Code Setup: Extensions and Themes
22.4.2020
Matthias Ott’s posted his VS Code setup. I find lists like this (I rounded up some recent updates of my own) irresistible, probably because, like y’all, I spend an awful lot of time in VS Code and wanna make sure I’m getting the most out of it.
Things from the list that stood...
How to Add Lunr Search to your Gatsby Website
22.4.2020
The Jamstack way of thinking and building websites is becoming more and more popular.
Have you already tried Gatsby, Nuxt, or Gridsome (to cite only a few)? Chances are that your first contact was a “Wow!” moment — so many things are automatically set up and ready to use. 
There are some...
Puzzles and Mysteries
22.4.2020
Bob Hoffman:
Puzzles, [Malcom Gladwell] wrote, are problems for which there is not enough information. An example of a puzzle: Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried? If we had more information, we would know the answer. If someone told us “Jimmy Hoffa is buried in New Jersey,” we’d know a little more than...
Fake Code
21.4.2020
Here’s a fun little idea from Knut Synstad. You give it the URL of a GitHub Gist and it converts the Gist into grayscale rounded blobs (SVG) that sorta look like code if you squint. Maybe fun for interesting dynamic backgrounds or for whatever you might use code-looking stock art for.
It...