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A First Look at `aspect-ratio`
29.5.2020
Oh hey! A brand new property that affects how a box is sized! That’s a big deal. There are lots of ways already to make an aspect-ratio sized box (and I’d say this custom properties based solution is the best), but none of them are particularly intuitive and certainly not...
Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY
29.5.2020
Too funny:
After careful consideration, we settled on rearchitecting our platform to use $FLASHY_LANGUAGE and $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY. Not only is $FLASHY_LANGUAGE popular according to the Stack Overflow developer survey, it’s also cross platform; we’re using it to reimplement our mobile apps as well....
PureCSS Gaze
28.5.2020
Diana Smith with another mind-bending all HTML & CSS painting.
I love that these occupy a special place on the “Should I draw this in CSS?” curve. Things like simple shapes are definitely on the “yes” side of the curve. Then there’s a large valley where things...
Background Patterns, Simplified by Conic Gradients
28.5.2020
For those who have missed the big news, Firefox now supports conic gradients!
Starting with Firefox 75, released on the April 7, we can go to about:config, look for the layout.css.conic-gradient.enabled flag and set its value to true (it’s false by default and all it takes to switch...
The Expanding Gamut of Color on the Web
27.5.2020
CSS was introduced to the web all the way back in 1996. At the time, most computer monitors were pretty terrible. The colors of CSS — whether defined with the RGB, HSL, or hexadecimal format — catered to the monitors of the time, all within the sRGB colorspace.
Most newer devices have a wide-gamut...
The Many Bad (and Good!) Patterns for Close Buttons
27.5.2020
Manuel Matuzović details 10 bad HTML patterns for a close button. You know, stuff like this:
<a class="close" onclick="close()"×</a
Why is that bad? There is no href there, so it really isn’t a link (close buttons aren’t links). Not to mention the missing href makes this...
Get Programmatic Control of your Builds with Netlify Build Plugins
27.5.2020
Today at Jamstack_Conf, Netlify announced Build Plugins. What it does is allow you to have particular hooks for events within your build, like when the build starts or ends. What’s nice about them is that they’re just a plain ‘ol JavaScript object, so you can insert some logic...
Responsive web design turns ten.
27.5.2020
Ethan on the thinking and research that inspired the term:
Around that time, my partner Elizabeth visited the High Line in New York City shortly after it opened. When she got back, she told me about these wheeled lounge chairs she saw in one section, and how people would move them apart for a...
Responsive web design turns ten.
27.5.2020
Ethan on the thinking and research that inspired the term:
Around that time, my partner Elizabeth visited the High Line in New York City shortly after it opened. When she got back, she told me about these wheeled lounge chairs she saw in one section, and how people...
A Guide to the Responsive Images Syntax in HTML
27.5.2020
This guide is about the HTML syntax for responsive images (and a little bit of CSS for good measure). We'll go over srcset and , plus a whole bunch of things to consider to help you get the best performance and design control from your images.
The post A Guide to the Responsive Images Syntax...
CSS Tips for New Devs
27.5.2020
Amber Wilson has some CSS Tips for New Devs, like:
It’s not a good idea to fix shortcomings in your HTML with CSS. Fix your HTML first!
And…
You can change CSS right in your browser’s DevTools (to open them, right-click the browser window and choose “inspect”...
Using Structured Data to Enhance Search Engine Optimization
26.5.2020
SEO is often considered the snake oil of the web. How many times have you scrolled through attention-grabbing headlines on know how to improve your SEO? Everyone and their uncle seems to have some “magic” cure to land high in search results and turn impressions into conversions. Sifting through...
Framer Web
26.5.2020
The prototyping app Framer just launched the web version of their design tool and it looks pretty darn neat. I particularly love the design of the marketing site that explains how to use Framer and what sets it apart from other design tools. They have a ton of examples that you can pop open...
Block Links: The Search for a Perfect Solution
25.5.2020
I was reading this article by Chris where he talks about block links — you know, like wrapping an entire card element inside an anchor — being a bad idea. It’s bad accessibility because of how it affects screen readers. And it’s bad UX because it prevents simple user tasks, like selecting text.
But...
How to Convert a Date String into a Human-Readable Format
25.5.2020
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m writing this article, in part, because it’s something I look up often and want to be able to find it next time. Formatting a date string that you get from an API in JavaScript can take many shapes — anything from loading all of Moment.js to have...
“The Modern Web”
22.5.2020
A couple of interesting articles making the rounds:
Tom MacWrite: Second-guessing the modern web
Rich Harris: In defense of the modern web
I like Tom’s assertion that React (which he’s using as a stand-in for JavaScript frameworks in general) has an ideal usage:
There is a sweet spot...
Let’s Make One of Those Fancy Scrolling Animations Used on Apple Product Pages
22.5.2020
Apple is well-known for the sleek animations on their product pages. For example, as you scroll down the page products may slide into view, MacBooks fold open and iPhones spin, all while showing off the hardware, demonstrating the software and telling interactive stories of how the products...
The Fastest Google Fonts
22.5.2020
When you use font-display: swap;, which Google Fonts does when you use the default &display=swap part of the URL , you’re already saying, “I’m cool with FOUT,” which is another way of saying web text is displayed right away, and when the web font is ready...
A “new direction” in the struggle against rightward scrolling
21.5.2020
You know those times you get a horizontal scrollbar when accidentally placing an element off the right edge of the browser window? It might be a menu that slides in or the like. Sometimes we to overflow-x: hidden; on the body to fix that, but that can sometimes wreck stuff like position:...
Flexbox-like “just put elements in a row” with CSS grid
21.5.2020
It occurred to me while we were talking about flexbox and gap that one reason we sometimes reach for flexbox is to chuck some boxes in a row and space them out a little.
My brain still reaches for flexbox in that situation, and with gap, it probably will continue to do so. It’s worth noting...