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APIs and Authentication on the Jamstack
31.3.2020
The first “A” in the Jamstack stands for “APIs” and is a key contributor to what makes working with static sites so powerful. APIs give developers the freedom to offload complexity and provide avenues for including dynamic functionality to an otherwise static site. Often, accessing an API requires...
Wide Gamut Color in CSS with Display-P3
31.3.2020
Here’s something I’d never heard of before: Display-P3 support in CSS Color Module Level 4 spec. This is a new color profile supported by certain displays and it introduces a much wider range of colors that we can choose from.
Right now the syntax looks something like this in CSS:
header...
RSS Stuff
31.3.2020
Laura Kalbag wrote How to read RSS in 2020. This would be a nice place to send someone curious about RSS: what it is, what it’s for, and how you can start using it as a reader. I like this callout, too:
Sometimes the content is just an excerpt, encouraging you to read the rest of the content...
gqless
30.3.2020
This is so cool. I mean, GraphQL is already cool. It’s very satisfying to write an understandable-looking query for whatever you want and then use that data in templates.
But what if you didn’t have to write the query at all? What if you just wrote the templates pretending you already...
4 CSS Grid Properties (and One Value) for Most of Your Layout Needs
30.3.2020
CSS Grid provides us with a powerful layout system for websites. The CSS-Tricks guide gives you a comprehensive overview of Grid’s properties with layout examples. What we’re going to do here is a reverse approach to show you the smallest possible set of grid properties you need to know to meet...
How They Fit Together: Transform, Translate, Rotate, Scale, and Offset
30.3.2020
Firefox 72 was first out of the gate with "independent transforms." That is, instead of having to combine transforms together, like:
.el {
transform: rotate(10deg) scale(0.95) translate(10px, 10px);
}
...we can do:
.el {
rotate: 10deg;
scale: 0.95;
translate: 10px 10px;
}
That's extremely...
Creating a Pencil Effect in SVG
28.3.2020
Scott Turner, who has an entire blog "Exploring procedural generation and display of fantasy maps", gets into why vector graphics seems on these surface why it would be bad for the look of a pencil stroke:
Something like this pencil stroke would require many tens of thousands of different...
How to use CSS Scroll Snap
27.3.2020
Nada Rifki demonstrates the scroll-snap-type and scroll-snap-alignCSS properties. I like that the demo shows that the items in the scrolling container can be different sizes. It is the edges of those children that matter, not some fixed snapping distance.
I like Max Kohler's coverage...
Emergency Website Kit
27.3.2020
Here’s an outstanding idea from Max Böck. He’s created a boilerplate project for building websites that fit within a single HTTP request. This is extremely important for websites that contain critical information for public safety. As Max writes:
In cases of emergency, many organizations need...
Creating an Editable Site with Google Sheets and Eleventy
27.3.2020
Remember Tabletop.js? We just covered it a little bit ago in this same exact context: building editable websites. It’s a tool that turns a Google Sheet into an API, that you as a developer can hit for data when building a website. In that last article, we used that API on the client side, meaning...
Maintaining Performance
27.3.2020
Real talk from Dave:
I, Dave Rupert, a person who cares about web performance, a person who reads web performance blogs, a person who spends lots of hours trying to keep up on best practices, a person who co-hosts a weekly podcast about making websites and speak with web performance professionals…...
Consistent Backends and UX: How Do New Algorithms Help?
26.3.2020
Article Series
Why should you care?
What can go wrong?
What are the barriers to adoption?
How do new algorithms help?
In previous articles, we explained what consistency is, the difference between "strong" and "eventual" consistency, and why this distinction is more important than ever to modern...
Get Static
26.3.2020
In this piece, Eric Meyer argues that performance is more important than ever right now — especially for websites that contain critical information for the public:
If you are in charge of a web site that provides even slightly important information, or important services, it’s time to...
How to Repeat Text as a Background Image in CSS Using element()
26.3.2020
There’s a design trend I’ve seen popping up all over the place. Maybe you’ve seen it too. It’s this sort of thing where text is repeated over and over. A good example is the price comparison website, GoCompare, who used it in a major multi-channel advertising campaign.
Nike has used it as well...
Add Beautiful Images with the Unsplash API
26.3.2020
Perhaps you know Unsplash? I'd wager it's the most popular stock photography site out there for two big reasons:
Every photo on there is pretty darn nice
Every photo is entirely free even for commercial use. You don't have to ask permission or even credit it (although that's appreciated).
Here's...
Value Bubbles for Range Inputs
26.3.2020
HTML5 range inputs, in supported browsers and by design, don't show the user the actual value they are submitting. If you want to use the cool slider, but show the value, you'll have to do that yourself. Here we use the output element and jQuery to show the current value in a bubble that hovers...
How to Animate Text with SVG and CSS
26.3.2020
The other day I was helping my pal Jez work Dept. of Enthusiasm, the site for his newsletter, and I had a thought. What if we made the word “enthusiasm” in the title animate a little bit? Like, what if each of the letters in the word bopped up and down enthusiastically?
Like this:
CodePen Embed...
CSS Viewport Units
26.3.2020
Deep dive from Ahmad. I like the coverage of vmin and vmax, which I think I don't reach for as often as I should.
I'm thinking that if you are doing something highly directional (e.g. a full bleed trick), then directly using vw is necessary. On the other hand, if you're doing a calculation where...
An Introduction to MDXJS
25.3.2020
Markdown has traditionally been a favorite format for programmers to write documentation. It’s simple enough for almost everyone to learn and adapt to while making it easy to format and style content. It was so popular that commands from Markdown have been used in chat applications like Slack...
Auto-Growing Inputs & Textareas
25.3.2020
By default, <input> and <textarea> elements don't change size based on the content they contain. In fact, there isn't any simple HTML or CSS way to make them do that. Kinda funny, as that seems like a reasonable use-case. But of course, there are ways, my friend. There are always...