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How to Tame Line Height in CSS
15.5.2020
In CSS, line-height is probably one of the most misunderstood, yet commonly-used attributes. As designers and developers, when we think about line-height, we might think about the concept of leading from print design — a term, interestingly enough, that comes from literally putting pieces of lead...
WTF is a Static API
15.5.2020
Just like there is a movement to make more websites (and more of websites) from pre-rendered static files (Jamstack), so to might we consider moving content-based APIs to be static. Sean C Davis:
A static API is simply a collection of flat JSON files that live on a content delivery...
Notion-Powered Websites
14.5.2020
I’m a big fan of Notion, as you likely know from previous coverage and recent video. It’s always interesting to see what other people do with Notion, and even how Notion uses Notion.
I’d say most usage of Notion is private and internal, but any page on Notion can be totally...
How to Make a Simple CMS With Cloudflare, GitHub Actions and Metalsmith
14.5.2020
Let’s build ourselves a CMS. But rather than build out a UI, we’re going to get that UI for free in the form of GitHub itself! We’ll be leveraging GitHub as the way to manage the content for our static site generator (it could be any static site generator). Here’s the gist of it: GitHub is going...
Online Together
14.5.2020
(This is a sponsored post.)
An Event Apart: Online Together is a single-day online conference with an intense focus on digital design, UX, content, code, and more, giving you deep insights into where we are now and where things are going next.
AEA! With a brand new online version of their...
Equal Width Columns in CSS Grid are Kinda Weird
14.5.2020
Everything is flexible these days. If you write grid-template-columns: 200px 200px 200px;, sure, you’d have equal-width columns, but that’s a rare day. What you usually mean is three columns of equal fluid width.
We’ve got fractional units for that, like grid-template-columns:...
Pseudo-elements in the Web Animations API
14.5.2020
To use the Web Animations API (e.g. el.animate()) you need a reference to a DOM element to target. So, how do you use it on pseudo-elements, which don’t really offer a direct reference? Dan Wilson covers a (newish?) part of the API itself:
const logo...
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....
Using CSS Masks to Create Jagged Edges
12.5.2020
I was working on a project that had this neat jagged edge along the bottom of a banner image.
Looking sharp… in more ways than one.
It’s something that made me think for a second and I learned something in the process! I thought I’d write up how I approached it so you can use it on your...
Recent Episodes of ShopTalk Show
12.5.2020
There is a super cool new Podcast block for WordPress Gutenberg you use Jetpack (released in 8.5). I wanted to try it out, so below you’ll see recent episodes from ShopTalk Show. I’d tell you all about the recent episodes, except then this blog post wouldn’t age very well, because...
Why does writing matter in remote work?
12.5.2020
Talk to anyone who has an active blog and I bet they’ll tell you it’s been valuable to them. Maybe it’s opened doors. Maybe it’s got them a job. Maybe it’s got them a conference invite. Maybe they just like the thrill of knowing people have read and responded to...
Accepting Payments (including Recurring Payments) on WordPress.com
12.5.2020
I’m a fan of building websites with the least amount of technical debt and things you have to be responsible for as possible for what you wanna do. Sometimes you take on this debt on purpose because you have to, but when you don’t, please don’t ;).
Let’s say you need...
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...
How I Put the Scroll Percentage in the Browser Title Bar
12.5.2020
Some nice trickery from Knut Melvær.
Ultimately the trick boils down to figuring out how far you’ve scrolled on the page and changing the title to show it, like:
document.title = `${percent}% ${post.title}`
Knut’s trick assumes React and installing an additional library. I’m sure...
CSS Animation Timelines: Building a Rube Goldberg Machine
12.5.2020
If you’re going to build a multi-step CSS animation or transition, you have a particular conundrum. The second step needs a delay that is equal to the duration of the first step. And the third step is equal to the duration of the first two steps, plus any delay in between. It gets more...
min(), max(), and clamp() are CSS magic!
12.5.2020
Nice video from Kevin Powell. Here are some notes, thoughts, and stuff I learned while watching it. Right when they came out, I was mostly obsessed with font-size usage, but they are just functions, so they can be used anywhere you’d use a number, like a length.
Sometimes pretty basic usage...
Turning a Fixed-Size Object into a Responsive Element
11.5.2020
I was in a situation recently where I wanted to show an iPhone on a website. I wanted users to be able to interact with an application demo on this “mock” phone, so it had to be rendered in CSS, not an image. I found a great library called marvelapp/devices.css. The library implemented the device...
Modern CSS Solutions for Old CSS Problems
11.5.2020
This is a hell of a series by Stephanie Eckles. It’s a real pleasure watching CSS evolve and solve problems in clear and elegant ways.
Just today I ran across this little jab at CSS in a StackOverflow answer from 2013.
This particular jab was about CSS lacking a way to pause between...
Chromium lands Flexbox gap
9.5.2020
I mentioned this the other day via Michelle Barker’s coverage, but here I’ll link to the official announcement. The main thing is that we’ll be getting gap with flexbox, which means:
.flex-parent {
display: flex;
gap: 1rem;
}
.flex-child {
flex: 1;
}
That’s excellent...
prerender.js
9.5.2020
This is another player in the game of rendering the page of the link that you’re about to click on before you click it. It’s like getting a decent performance boost for extremely little effort.
Instant.page is another one, and I’ve been sufficiently convinced by its methodology...