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Using Markdown and Localization in the WordPress Block Editor
23.9.2020
If we need to show documentation to the user directly in the WordPress editor, what is the best way to do it?
Since the block editor is based on React, we may be tempted to use React components and HTML code for the documentation. That is the approach I followed in my previous article, which...
Pre-Caching Image with React Suspense
21.9.2020
Suspense is an exciting, upcoming feature of React that will enable developers to easily allow their components to delay rendering until they’re “ready,” leading to a much smoother user experience. “Ready,” in this context, can mean a number of things. For example, your data loading...
All the Ways to Make a Web Component
7.9.2020
This is a neat page that compares a ton of different libraries with web components. One of the things I learned after posting “A Bit on Web Components Libraries” is that the web platform APIs were designed for libraries to be built around them. Interesting, right?
This page makes...
How to Make a Media Query-less Card Component
1.9.2020
Fun fact: it’s possible to create responsive components without any media queries at all. Certainly, if we had container queries, those would be very useful for responsive design at the component level. But we don’t. Still, with or without container queries, we can do things to make our components...
radEventListener: a Tale of Client-side Framework Performance
18.8.2020
React is popular, popular enough that it receives its fair share of criticism. Yet, this criticism of React isn’t completely unwarranted: React and ReactDOM total about 120 KiB of minified JavaScript, which definitely contributes to slow startup time. When client-side rendering in React is relied...
Halfmoon: A Bootstrap Alternative with Dark Mode Built In
11.8.2020
I recently launched the first production version of Halfmoon, a front-end framework that I have been building for the last few months. This is a short introductory post about what the framework is, and why I decided to build it.
The elevator pitch
Halfmoon is a front-end framework with a...
The Making of: Netlify’s Million Devs SVG Animation Site
3.8.2020
The following article captures the process of building the Million Developers microsite for Netlify. This project was built by a few folks and we’ve captured some parts of the process of building it here- focusing mainly on the animation aspects, in case any are helpful to others building...
A Bit on Web Component Libraries
29.7.2020
A run of Web Components news crossed my desk recently so I thought I’d group it up here.
To my mind, one of the best use cases for Web Components is pattern libraries. Instead of doing, say, <ul class="nav nav-tabs"> like you would do in Bootstrap or <div class="tabs"> like...
Frontity is React for WordPress
9.7.2020
Some developers just prefer working in React. I don’t blame them really, because I like React too. Maybe that’s what they learned first. I’ve been using it long enough there is just some comfort to it. But mostly it is the strong component model that I like. There is just...
How to Make a List Component with Emotion
8.7.2020
I’ve been doing a bit of refactoring this week at Sentry and I noticed that we didn’t have a generic List component that we could use across projects and features. So, I started one, but here’s the rub: we style things at Sentry using Emotion, which I have only passing experience with and...
Global and Component Style Settings with CSS Variables
1.7.2020
The title of this Sara Soueidan article speaks to me. I’m a big fan of the idea that some CSS is best applied globally, and some CSS is best applied scoped to a component. I’m less interested in how that is done and more interested in just seeing that conceptual approach used in some...
Grid for layout, flexbox for components
26.6.2020
When should we reach for CSS grid and when should we use flexbox? Rachel Andrew wrote about this very conundrum way back in 2016:
Flexbox is essentially for laying out items in a single dimension – in a row OR a column. Grid is for layout of items in two dimensions – rows AND columns.
Ahmad...
The Best Design System Tool is Slack
4.6.2020
There’s a series questions I have struggled with for as long as I can remember. The questions have to do with how design systems work: Where should we document things? Do we make a separate app? Do we use a third-party tool to document our components? How should that tie into Figma or Sketch?...
React Single File Components Are Here
13.5.2020
Shawn Wang is talking about RedwoodJS here:
… it is the first time React components are being expressed in a single file format with explicit conventions.
Which is the RedwoodJS idea of Cells. To me, it feels like a slightly cleaner version of how Apollo wants you to do it with useQuery....
Dealing With Stale Props and States in React’s Functional Components
12.5.2020
There’s one aspect of JavaScript that always has me pulling my hair: closures. I work with React a lot, and the overlap there is that they can sometimes be the cause of stale props and state. We’ll get into exactly what that means, but the trouble is that the data we use to build our UI can...
10 Interesting JavaScript and CSS Libraries for May 2020
11.5.2020
A collection of our favorite web dev resources for the month of May, featuring useful JS tools, React components, and more!
Working With MDX Custom Elements and Shortcodes
7.5.2020
MDX is a killer feature for things like blogs, slide decks and component documentation. It allows you to write Markdown without worrying about HTML elements, their formatting and placement while sprinkling in the magic of custom React components when necessary.
Let’s harness that magic and look...
Playing With (Fake) Container Queries With watched-box & resizeasaurus
5.5.2020
Heydon’s <watched-box> is a damn fantastic tool. It’s a custom element that essentially does container queries by way of class names that get added to the box based on size breakpoints that are calculated with ResizeObserver. It’s like a cleaner version of what Philip...
How the Vue Composition API Replaces Vue Mixins
15.4.2020
Looking to share code between your Vue components? If you’re familiar with Vue 2, you’ve probably used a mixin for this purpose. But the new Composition API, which is available now as a plugin for Vue 2 and an upcoming feature of Vue 3, provides a much better solution.
In this article...
Max Stoiber’s Strong Opinion About Margins
31.3.2020
Going with that title instead of the classic developer clickbait version Max used. ;)
We should ban margin from our components.
Don’t use margin?! This thing I’ve been doing my entire career and don’t have any particular problems with?!
Well, that’s not exactly Max’s...