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Front-End Challenges
17.4.2020
My favorite way to level up as a front-end developer is to do the work. Literally just build websites. If you can do it for money, great, you should. If the websites you make can help yourself or anyone else you care about, then that’s also great. In lieu of that, you can also make things...
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...
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...
An Annotated Docker Config for Front-End Web Development
2.4.2020
Andrew Welch sings the praises of using Docker containers for local dev environments:
Here are the advantages of Docker for me:
• Each application has exactly the environment it needs to run, including specific versions of any of the plumbing needed to get it to work (PHP, MySQL...
Considerations When Choosing Fonts for a Multilingual Website
10.3.2020
As a front-end developer working for clients all over the world, I've always struggled to deal with multilingual websites — especially cases where both right-to-left (RTL) and left-to-right (LTR) are used. That said, I’ve learned a few things along the...
Same HTML, Different CSS
19.2.2020
Ahmad Shadeed covers the idea of a card component that has a fixed set of semantic HTML with some BEMy classes on it. There is a title, author, image, and tags. Then he redesigns the card into five totally different designs without touching any of the HTML just the CSS.
If this is an ah-ha moment...
2020 Stack
13.2.2020
In an article with the most clickbaity article ever, Joe Honton does a nice job of talking about the evolving landscape of web development. "Full-stack" perhaps had its day as a useful term, but since front-end development touches so many parts of the stack now, it's not a particularly useful term....
Getting Acquainted With Svelte, the New Framework on the Block
6.2.2020
For the last six years, Vue, Angular, and React have run the world of front-end component frameworks. Google and Facebook have their own sponsored frameworks, but they might leave a bitter taste for anyone who advocates for an open and unbiased web. Vue is another popular framework that...
Freezing User-Agent Strings
3.2.2020
There's been news about Chrome freezing their User-Agent string (and all other major browsers are on board). That means they'll still have a User-Agent (UA) string (that comes across in headers and is available in JavaScript as navigator.userAgent. By freezing it, it will be less useful over time...
Apollo GraphQL without JavaScript
29.1.2020
It's cool to see progressive enhancement being done even while using the fanciest of the fancy front-end technologies.
This is a button in a JSX React component that has a click handler applied directly to it that fires a data mutation Ajax request through Apollo GraphQL. That is about the least...
Getting Started with Front End Testing
20.1.2020
Amy Kapernick covers four types of testing that front-end devs could and should be doing:
Linting (There's ESLint for JavaScript and Stylelint or Prettier for CSS.)
Accessibility Testing (Amy recommends pa11y, and we've covered Axe.)
Visual Regression Testing (Amy recommends Backstop, and we've...
Our Learning Partner: Frontend Masters
10.1.2020
I'd like to think there is a lot to learn on CSS-Tricks. But we don't really offer much by the way of courses. You're probably reading this because you just generally read this site, and you land on CSS-Tricks otherwise mostly because you are looking for an answer to some front-end...
Collective #578
6.1.2020
Front-End Performance Checklist 2020 * Kinesis * Excalidraw * Exifer * Sscaffold * Craft.js
Collective #578 was written by Pedro Botelho and published on Codrops
Validate CSP from Command Line
2.1.2020
The content security policy spec has been an amazing front-end security tool to help prevent XSS and other types of attacks. I’d go as far to say that every site should implement as specific CSP as possible. If you aren’t familiar with CSPs, here’s a quick example:...
A Recap of Frontend Development in 2019
1.1.2020
I noted Trey Huffine’s 2018 version of this article in The Great Divide.
To put a point on this divide a bit more, consider this article by Trey Huffine, "A Recap of Frontend Development in 2018." It's very well done! It points to big moments this year, shows interesting data, and makes...
A Recap of Frontend Development in 2019
1.1.2020
I noted Trey Huffine’s 2018 version of this article in The Great Divide.
To put a point on this divide a bit more, consider this article by Trey Huffine, "A Recap of Frontend Development in 2018." It's very well done! It points to big moments this year, shows interesting data, and makes...
What it means to be a front-end developer in 2020 (and beyond)
29.12.2019
I wrote a piece for Layout, the blog of my hosting sponsor Flywheel.
Stick around in this field for a while, and you'll see these libraries, languages, build processes, and heck, even entire philosophies on how best to build websites come and go like a slow tide.
You might witness some...
Domain-Driven Design With React
16.12.2019
There is very little guidance on how to organize front-end applications in the world of React. (Just move files around until it “feels right,” lol). The truth is that we can do better. Let’s take a look at one pattern you might consider using to architect your site.
At first, you might split...
Dip Your Toes Into Hardware With WebMIDI
12.12.2019
Did you know there is a well-supported browser API that allows you to interface with interesting and even custom-built hardware using a mature protocol that predates the web? Let me introduce you to MIDI and the WebMIDI API and show you how it presents a unique opportunity for front-end developers...
Save Big on An Event Apart for a Limited Time!
3.12.2019
(This is a sponsored post.)
If you could get one gift from your boss this holiday season, what would you want it to be? You know, other than the usual mouse pad, picture frame or, my favorite, the ol' coffee mug and Starbucks card combo.
What if you were to receive something, hmm, more substantial?...