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How to Make localStorage Reactive in Vue
24.6.2020
Reactivity is one of Vue’s greatest features. It is also one of the most mysterious if you don’t know what it’s doing behind the scenes. Like, why does it work with objects and arrays and not with other things, like localStorage?
Let’s answer that that question, and while we’re at it, make...
WebP Image Support Coming to iOS 14
24.6.2020
Apple announced a ton of new updates at yesterday’s WWDC20 keynote address, from new hardware to updated applications. There’s lots to gawk at and enough device-envy to go around.
But there’s one little line in the Safari 14 Beta release notes that caught my eye:
Added WebP image...
Let’s Make a Multi-Thumb Slider That Calculates The Width Between Thumbs
23.6.2020
HTML has an <input type="range">, which is, you could argue, the simplest type of proportion slider. Wherever the thumb of that slider ends up could represent a proportion of whatever is before and whatever is after it (using the value and max attributes). Getting fancier, it’s possible...
An Overview of Scroll Technologies
22.6.2020
Scroll-related animations have been used on the web for years. In recent years, they’ve started to become more common, perhaps in part due to devices being higher-performing and thus able to handle more animation. 
There are a number of scroll related technologies out there, so this article’s...
Rough Notation
22.6.2020
This is a neat little library. It uses SVG to insert hand-drawn looking annotations to elements (probably text), like underlines and box highlights (there are 6 design options, all configurable). Super clever.
Here’s a little demo:
CodePen Embed Fallback
Aside from it just being cool,...
Using Custom Property “Stacks” to Tame the Cascade
22.6.2020
Since the inception of CSS in 1994, the cascade and inheritance have defined how we design on the web. Both are powerful features but, as authors, we’ve had very little control over how they interact. Selector specificity and source order provide some minimal “layering” control...
Patternico
20.6.2020
I remember searching for tutorials for making seamless patterns in Photoshop¹ all the time back in the day.
It’s fun to see this little website for building repeating patterns as its one job. It does everything you’d expect: pick a background, drag some decorations onto it and position...
Easing Animations in Canvas
19.6.2020
The <canvas> element in HTML and Canvas API in JavaScript combine to form one of the main raster graphics and animation possibilities on the web. A common canvas use-case is programmatically generating images for websites, particularly games. That’s exactly what I’ve done in a website...
Just another +1 for subgrid
19.6.2020
I’d say 85% of my grid usage is in one of these two categories…
I just need some pretty basic (probably equal width) columns that ends up being something like like grid-template-columns: repeat(3, minmax(0, 1fr)); to be safe.
Actually doing some real layout where five minutes in...
Stay DRY Using axios for API Requests
18.6.2020
HTTP requests are a crucial part of any web application that’s communicating with a back-end server. The front end needs some data, so it asks for it via a network HTTP request (or Ajax, as it tends to be called), and the server returns an answer. Almost every website these days does this in some...
Building a hexagonal grid using CSS grid
18.6.2020
I think of grids as arrangements of rectangles with vertical and horizontal lines running through. And they are, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still do clever things in how we place things on those grids and what we do with the elements afterwards.
In this demo by Jesse Breneman,...
Advice for Complex CSS Illustrations
17.6.2020
If you were to ask me what question I hear most about front-end development, I’d say it’s“How do I get better at CSS?” And that question usually comes up to some CSS illustration I made, which is something I love to do over on CodePen.
To many, CSS is this mythical beast that can’t...
LingoJam
17.6.2020
I’ll sometimes search the web for something like “Small Text Generator” knowing there will be some website that will turn some dumb thing I want to type like:
Uhm hi when is that meeting again?
into something fun like…
ᵁʰᵐ ʰᶦ ʷʰᵉⁿ ᶦˢ ᵗʰᵃᵗ ᵐᵉᵉᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᵃᵍᵃᶦⁿˀ
Important note about...
Web Engine Diversity and Ecosystem Health
16.6.2020
As front-end developers, our job is working with browsers. Knowing how many we have and the health of them is always of great interest. As far as numbers go, we have fewer recently than we have in the past. It’s only this month that Edge is starting to auto-update browsers to the Chromium...
Everything You Need to Know About FLIP Animations in React
16.6.2020
With a very recent Safari update, Web Animations API (WAAPI) is now supported without a flag in all modern browsers (except IE).  Here’s a handy Pen where you can check which features your browser supports. The WAAPI is a nice way to do animation (that needs to be done in JavaScript) because...
What is Developer Experience (DX)?
16.6.2020
Developer Experience¹ is a term² that has one somewhat obvious meaning — the experience of developers — but it eludes definition in the sense that people invoke it at different times for different reasons referring to different things. For instance, our own Sarah Drasner’s current job title...
My Flywheel Landing Page
15.6.2020
Flywheel is my WordPress hosting partner here. I use Local every day for my WordPress local development environment and use their hosting for all my WordPress sites as part of my whole flow, so I’m glad they aren’t just a sponsor but a product I use and like.
Last November some of their...
Adding a Custom Welcome Guide to the WordPress Block Editor
15.6.2020
I am creating a WordPress plugin and there is a slight learning curve when it comes to using it. I’d like to give users a primer on how to use the plugin, but I want to avoid diverting users to documentation on the plugin’s website since that takes them out of the experience.
What would...
Striking a Balance Between Native and Custom Select Elements
12.6.2020
Here’s the plan! We’re going to build a styled select element. Not just the outside, but the inside too. Total styling control. Plus we’re going to make it accessible. We’re not going to try to replicate everything that the browser does by default with a native <select> element. We’re going...
Learn Z-Index Using a Visualization Tool
12.6.2020
There are some neat interactive demos in here from Thiru Manikandan. There are a couple of very tricky things with z-index that never fail to confuse. In addition to things like requiring positioning and source order, the trickiest are the stacking contexts and parent/child relationships. z-index...