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Navbar Nudging on @keyframers
22.8.2019
I got to be the featured guest over on The Keyframers the other day. We looked at a Dribbble shot by Björgvin Pétur Sigurjónsson and then slowly built it, taking some purposeful detours along the way to discuss various tech.
We start by considering doing it entirely in CSS, then go for some light...
Using requestAnimationFrame with React Hooks
21.8.2019
Animating with requestAnimationFrame should be easy, but if you haven’t read React’s documentation thoroughly then you will probably run into a few things that might cause you a headache. Here are three gotcha moments I learned the hard way.
TLDR: Pass an empty array as a second parameter...
Other Ways to SPAs
21.8.2019
That rhymed lolz.
I mentioned on a podcast the other day that I sorta think WordPress should ship with Turbolinks. It's a rather simple premise:
Build a server-rendered site.
Turbolinks intercepts clicks on same-origin links.
It uses AJAX for the HTML of the new page and replaces the current page...
Getting Netlify Large Media Going
20.8.2019
I just did this the other day so I figured I'd blog it up. There is a thing called Git Large File Storage (Git LFS). Here's the entire point of it: it keeps large files out of your repo directly. Say you have 500MB of images on your site and they kinda need to be in the repo so you can work with...
Let’s Build a JAMstack E-Commerce Store with Netlify Functions
20.8.2019
A lot of people are confused about what JAMstack is. The acronym stands for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup, but truly, JAMstack doesn’t have to include all three. What defines JAMstack is that it’s served without web servers. If you consider the history of computing, this type of abstraction isn’t...
Lazy load embedded YouTube videos
20.8.2019
This is a very clever idea via Arthur Corenzan. Rather than use the default YouTube embed, which adds a crapload of resources to a page whether the user plays the video or not, use the little tiny placeholder webpage that is just an image you can click that is linked to the YouTube embed.
It still...
Using rel=”preconnect” to establish network connections early and increase performance
20.8.2019
Milica Mihajlija:
Adding rel=preconnect to a <link> informs the browser that your page intends to establish a connection to another domain, and that you'd like the process to start as soon as possible. Resources will load more quickly because the setup process has already been completed...
Bounce Element Around Viewport in CSS
19.8.2019
Let's say you were gonna bounce an element all around a screen, sorta like an old school screensaver or Pong or something.
You'd probably be tracking the X location of the element, increasing or decreasing it in a time loop and — when the element reached the maximum or minimum value —...
Can you view print stylesheets applied directly in the browser?
19.8.2019
Yep.
Let's take a look at how to do it in different browsers. Although note the date of this blog post. This stuff tends to change over time, so if anything here is wrong, let us know and we can update it.
In Firefox...
It's a little button in DevTools. So easy!
Open DevTools...
Draggin’ and Droppin’ in React
16.8.2019
The React ecosystem offers us a lot of libraries that all are focused on the interaction of drag and drop. We have react-dnd, react-beautiful-dnd, react-drag-n-drop and many more, but some of them require quite a lot of work to build even a simple drag and drop demo, and some do not provide...
Accessibility and web performance are not features, they’re the baseline
16.8.2019
This week I’ve been brooding about web performance and accessibility. It all began when Ethan Marcotte made a lot of great notes about the accessibility issues that are common with AMP:
In the recordings above, I’m trying to navigate through the AMP Story. And as I do, VoiceOver describes a page...
Weekly Platform News: HTML Loading Attribute, the Main ARIA Specifications, and Moving from iFrame to Shadow DOM
15.8.2019
In this week's roundup of platform news, Chrome introduces a new attribute for loading, accessibility specifications for web developers, and the BBC moves visualizations to the Shadow DOM.
Chrome ships the loading attribute
The HTML loading attribute for lazy-loading images and iframes is...
The Making of an Animated Favicon
15.8.2019
It’s the first thing your eyes look for when you’re switching tabs.
That’s one way of explaining what a favicon is. The tab area is a much more precious screen real-estate than what most assume. If done right, besides being a label with icon, it can be the perfect billboard to represent what’s...
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...
Staggered CSS Transitions
14.8.2019
Let's say you wanted to move an element on :hover for a fun visual effect.
@media (hover: hover) {
.list--item {
transition: 0.1s;
transform: translateY(10px);
}
.list--item:hover,
.list--item:focus {
transform: translateY(0);
}
}
Cool cool. But what if you had several list...
Contextual Utility Classes for Color with Custom Properties
14.8.2019
In CSS, we have the ability to access currentColor which is tremendously useful. Sadly, we do not have access to anything like currentBackgroundColor, and the color-mod() function is still a ways away.
With that said, I am sure I am not alone when I say I'd like to style some links based on...
The Differing Perspectives on CSS-in-JS
14.8.2019
Some people outright hate the idea of CSS-in-JS. Just that name is offensive. Hard no. Styling doesn't belong in CSS, it belongs in CSS, a thing that already exists and that browsers are optimized to use. Separation of concerns. Anything else is a laughable misstep, a sign of not learning from...
All the New ES2019 Tips and Tricks
13.8.2019
The ECMAScript standard has been updated yet again with the addition of new features in ES2019. Now officially available in node, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari you can also use Babel to compile these features to a different version of JavaScript if you need to support an older browser.
Let’s look...
Site Monetization with Coil (and Removing Ads for Supporters)
13.8.2019
I've tried a handful of websites based on "tip with micropayments" in the past. They come and go. That's fine. From a publisher perspective, it's low-commitment. I've never earned a ton, but it was typically enough to be worth it.
Now Bruce has me trying Coil. It's compelling to me for a couple...
In Search of a Stack That Monitors the Quality and Complexity of CSS
12.8.2019
Many developers write about how to maintain a CSS codebase, yet not a lot of them write about how they measure the quality of that codebase. Sure, we have excellent linters like StyleLint and CSSLint, but they only help at preventing mistakes at a micro level. Using a wrong color notation, adding...