Search
Creating an Editable Site with Google Sheets and Eleventy
27.3.2020
Remember Tabletop.js? We just covered it a little bit ago in this same exact context: building editable websites. It’s a tool that turns a Google Sheet into an API, that you as a developer can hit for data when building a website. In that last article, we used that API on the client side, meaning...
Auto-Archival
20.3.2020
I'm sure most of us have used the ol' Wayback Machine to access some site that's gone offline. I don't actually know how it decides what sites to archive and when, but you can tell it to save pages. There is UI for it right on its homepage.
Also, there is a little trick...
Typing...
Pages for Likes
24.2.2020
I posted about parsing an RSS feed in JavaScript the other day. I also posted about my RSS setup talking about how Feedbin is at the heart of it.
Dave discovered that Feedbin can also produce an RSS feed for all your likes. Likes is a feature of Feedbin, and fortunately also NetNewsWire, which...
Simple Image Placeholders with SVG
27.1.2020
A little open-source utility from Tyler Sticka that returns a data URL of an SVG to use as an image placeholder as needed.
I like the idea of self-running utilities like that, rather than depending on some third-party service, like placekitten or whatever. Not that I'd advocate for feature...
“Browser Functions”
26.1.2020
Serverless functions are fairly straightforward. Put a bit of back-end language code, like Node, in the cloud and communicate with it via URL. But what if that URL didn't run a back-end language, it ran an actual browser? Richard Young:
We can now do full stack development using just Web APIs....
Microbrowsers are Everywhere
3.1.2020
The word "microbrowser" clearly got my attention. Never heard that before. Colin Bendell defines them as the little parts of other software that do HTTP requests to a URL to generate a preview. Like the little URL preview in iOS messages, WhatsApp, or Slack.
I'm a tiny bit skeptical of the name...
How to the Get Current Page URL in Gatsby
20.12.2019
This seemingly simple task had me scratching my head for a few hours while I was working on my website. As it turns out, getting the current page URL in Gatsby is not as straightforward as you may think, but also not so complicated to understand.
Let’s look at a few methods of making it happen....
css.gg
18.12.2019
I'm not sure what to call these icons from Astrit Malsija. The title is "500+ CSS Icons, Customizable, Retina Ready & API" and the URL is "css.gg" but they aren't really named anything.
Anyway, their shtick is:
The 🌎's first icon library designed by code.
The idea is that they don't...
Yap
13.12.2019
Interesting idea for a "chat room" from Postlight:
Create a Yap chat room.
Invite others to join and talk.
Share a URL of just about anything.
Everyone gathering can comment on what you’ve shared.
If you think your conversation deserves an audience, share the URL of your chat publicly.
Only...
The Amazingly Useful Tools from Yoksel
15.11.2019
I find myself web searching for some tool by Yoksel at least every month. I figured I'd list out some of my favorites here in case you aren't aware of them.
Need to duo-tone an image? SVG filters can do that. Lentie Ward wrote about it for us, and Yoksel has a tool to create the filters...
Simple Scraping API with zenscrape (Sponsored)
5.11.2019
So many developers believe that scraping a URL’s content is easy — just a simple curl and you’re done, right? Nope. CAPTCHAs, rate limitations, origin-specific limitations — they make getting content off the web a nightmare. Luckily we now have services like zenscrape which...
How to Create a QR Code
15.10.2019
QR codes aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but I quite like them. If I see something I want to remember or check out later, especially when on the road, it’s super easy to take a quick picture — it’s much easier than trying to remember a URL and much faster than typing...
Where should “Subscribe to Podcast” link to?
14.9.2019
For a while, iTunes was the big dog in podcasting, so if you linked "Subscribe to Podcast" to like:
https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id493890455
...that would make sense. It's a web URL anyway, so it will work for anyone and has information about the podcast, as well as a list of recent shows...
Creating a Maintainable Icon System with Sass
28.8.2019
One of my favorite ways of adding icons to a site is by including them as data URL background images to pseudo-elements (e.g. ::after) in my CSS. This technique offers several advantages:
They don't require any additional HTTP requests other than the CSS file.
Using the background-size property...
Front Conference in Zürich
15.8.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
I'm so excited to be heading to Zürich, Switzerland for Front Conference (Love that name and URL!). I've never been to Switzerland before, so I'm excited about that, but of course, the web nerd in me is excited to be at the conference with lots of fellow webfolk. Some...
Zoom, CORS, and the Web
23.7.2019
It's sorta sad by funny that that big Zoom vulnerability thing was ultimately related to web technology and not really the app itself.
There is this idea of custom protocols or "URL schemes." So, like gittower:// or dropbox:// or whatever. A native app can register them, then URLs that hit them...
Managing Multiple Backgrounds with Custom Properties
15.7.2019
One cool thing about CSS custom properties is that they can be a part of a value. Let's say you're using multiple backgrounds to pull off a a design. Each background will have its own color, image, repeat, position, etc. It can be verbose!
You have four images:
body {
background-position:
...
Weekly Platform News: HTML Inspection in Search Console, Global Scope of Scripts, Babel env Adds defaults Query
11.7.2019
In this week's look around the world of web platform news, Google Search Console makes it easier to view crawled markup, we learn that custom properties aren't computing hogs, variables defined at the top-level in JavaScript are global to other page scripts, and Babel env now supports the defaults...
Spam Detection APIs
25.6.2019
I was trying to research the landscape of these the other day — And by research, I mean light Googling and asking on Twitter. Weirdly, very little comes to mind when thinking about spam detection APIs. I mean some kind of URL endpoint, paid or not, where you can hit it with a block of text...
Spam Detection APIs
25.6.2019
I was trying to research the landscape of these the other day — And by research, I mean light Googling and asking on Twitter. Weirdly, very little comes to mind when thinking about spam detection APIs. I mean some kind of URL endpoint, paid or not, where you can hit it with a block of text...