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Thinking in Behaviors, Not Screen Sizes
11.4.2020
Chase McCoy wrote a nifty post about the “gap problem” when making a grid of items. His argument might be summarized like this: how should we space elements with margins in CSS? He notes that the gap property isn’t quite ready for prime time when it comes to using it with flexbox, like this:
.grid...
Tips for Writing Animation Code Efficiently
10.4.2020
I’ve been coding web animations and helping others do the same for years now. However, I have yet to see a concise list of tips focused on how to efficiently build animations, so here you go!
I will be using the GreenSock Animation Platform (GSAP). It provides a simple, readable API and solves...
CSS Foldable Display Polyfill
9.4.2020
Foldable phones are starting to be a thing. Early days, for sure, but some are already shipping, and they definitely have web browsers on them. Stands to reason that, as web designers, we are going to want to know where that fold is so we can design screens that fit onto the top half and bottom...
Create Diagonal Layouts Like it’s 2020
9.4.2020
Nils Binder covers the ways:
1. Use an SVG in the form of a triangle. This technique is nicely described by Erik Kennedy on CSS-Tricks.
2. Hide part of your section using clip-path. Read Diagonal Containers in CSS by Sebastiano Guerriero or Sloped edges with consistent angle...
Creating Scheduled Push Notifications
8.4.2020
Scheduled is the key word there — that’s a fairly new thing! When a push notification is scheduled (i.e. “Take your pill” or “You’ve got a flight in 3 hours”) that means it can be shown to the user even if they’ve gone offline. That’s an improvement from the past where push notification...
The WebAIM Million—Updated
8.4.2020
This report made a big splash last year. It’s a large chunk of research that shows just how terribly the web does with accessibility. It’s been updated this year and (drumroll…) we got a little worse. I’ll use their blockquote:
The number of errors increased 2.1% between...
Learn Eleventy From Scratch
7.4.2020
The latest edition of Andy Bell’s Piccalilli landed in my inbox this morning with a sweet offer: preorder Andy’s course on learning Eleventy from scratch at a third of the price.
Why the plug? No, not sponsorships or anything like that. I just happen to hear a heckuva lot about Eleventy...
How to Re-Create a Nifty Netflix Animation in CSS
7.4.2020
The design for Netflix’s browse page has remained pretty similar for a few years now. One mainstay component is the preview slider that allows users to scroll through content and hover on items to see a preview.
One unique characteristic of the UI is its hover behavior. When a show preview...
CSS Findings From The New Facebook Design
7.4.2020
Ahmad Shadeed digs around the new Facebook’s front-end code.
One that stood out to me:
.element {
inset: 4px 0;
/* Which is equivalent to: top: 4px, bottom: 4px, left: 0, right: 0 */
}
Whaaat? This is the first I’ve heard of the inset property. Ahmad said he saw it working...
A Grid of Logos in Squares
6.4.2020
Let’s build a literal grid of squares, and we’ll put the logos of some magazines centered inside each square. I imagine plenty of you have had to build a logo grid before. You can probably already picture it: an area of a site that lists the donors, sponsors, or that is showing off...
Continuous Deployments for WordPress Using GitHub Actions
6.4.2020
Continuous Integration (CI) workflows are considered a best practice these days. As in, you work with your version control system (Git), and as you do, CI is doing work for you like running tests, sending notifications, and deploying code. That last part is called Continuous Deployment (CD)....
CSS-Only Marquee Effect
5.4.2020
You make sure the text is more than twice the width of the screen, then use negative translate animations to do the marquee movement.
You’ll probably want to aria-hidden all but one of them if you need to duplicate the text. Or, you could use a very clever CSS trick...
Some Typography Links
3.4.2020
I just can’t stop bookmarking great links related to typography. I’m afraid I’m going to have to subject you, yet again, to a bunch of them all grouped up. So those of you that care about web type stuff, enjoy.
I know there are lots of good reasons to be excited about variable...
Getting JavaScript to Talk to CSS and Sass
3.4.2020
JavaScript and CSS have lived beside one another for upwards of 20 years. And yet it’s been remarkably tough to share data between them. There have been large attempts, sure. But, I have something simple and intuitive in mind — something not involving a structural change, but rather putting...
Google’s Technical Writing Guide
3.4.2020
It’s good!
I’ve written up my advice (sprinkled with great advice from others), but this is way more straightforward nuts-and-bolts training on technical writing. It’s structured like an actual course, with exercises along the way.
I’m far from an expert here. But between...
Accessibility Links
2.4.2020
Austin Gil has kicked off the first in a five-part series about “HTML Forms Right” and to starts with semantics. It’s talking to the “we build our front-ends with JavaScript” crowd. The first block of code is an example of an Ajax form submission where the data...
typespecimens.io
2.4.2020
If you’re looking for a new typeface for that side project of yours then here’s a great website by John D. Jameson that collects a bunch of the latest type specimen websites. Everything is on display here, from the daring and bold, to those that are a bit more professional and reserved.
Not only...
Why Do Some HTML Elements Become Deprecated?
2.4.2020
The internet has been around for a long while, and over time we’ve changed the way we think about web design. Many old techniques and ways of doing things have gotten phased out as newer and better alternatives have been created, and we say that they have been deprecated.
Deprecated. It’s a word...
Rethinking Code Comments
2.4.2020
Justin Duke asks if treating code comments like footnotes could help us understand the code in a file better. In his mockup, all the comments are hidden by default and require a click to reveal:
What a neat idea! Justin’s design reminds me of the way that Instapaper treated inline...
Web Performance Checklist
2.4.2020
The other day, I realized that web performance is an enormous topic covering so very much — from minimizing assets to using certain file formats, it can be an awful lot to keep in mind while building a website. It’s certainly far too much for me to remember!
So I made a web performance checklist....