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Practice GraphQL Queries With the State of JavaScript API
29.1.2020
Learning how to build GraphQL APIs can be quite challenging. But you can learn how to use GraphQL APIs in 10 minutes! And it so happens I've got the perfect API for that: the brand new, fresh-of-the-VS-Code State of JavaScript GraphQL API.
The State of JavaScript survey is an annual survey of...
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...
Use and Reuse Everything in SVG… Even Animations!
28.1.2020
If you are familiar with SVG and CSS animations and started to work with them often, here are some ideas you might want to keep in mind before jumping into the job. This article will be about learning how to build and optimize your code with <use> element, CSS Variables and...
Set Type on a Circle… with offset-path
28.1.2020
Here's some legit CSS trickery from yuanchuan. There is this CSS property offset-path. Once upon a time, it was called motion-path and then it was renamed. I sort of rolled my eyes at the time, because the property is so obviously for animating things along a path. But you don't have to use it...
aviationstack
28.1.2020
(This is a sponsored post.)
I wonder how many startup ideas have something to do with air travel? 🤔
It's such a big industry with so many pain points its no wonder that it inspires ideas for building new products. Here's the thing about a lot of startup ideas: you need data. Chances...
What does “revert” do in CSS?
28.1.2020
Miriam Suzanne has a Mozilla Developer video on the subject. The revert value is fairly new, supported in Firefox and Safari, but not yet in Chrome-world. We've already got a couple of related keywords that work on any property which are meant to help control inheritance and reset values....
Woodworking SVG (and Other Real Life Encounters)
27.1.2020
Eric Meyer does his woodworking math in SVG.
I’ve been hand-coding SVG schematics to figure out how thing should go together, and as a by-product, guide me in both material buying and wood cutting.
This might sound hugely bespoke and artisanally overdone, but they’re not that complicated, and...
Going Beyond Automatic SVG Compression With the “use” Element
27.1.2020
If you draw your own SVG files or if you download them from the internet, tools like this SVG-Editor or SVGOMG are your friends. Compressing the files with those tools takes only few seconds and reduces your file size a lot. But if you need to use your SVG inline to animate or interact with...
Simple Image Placeholders with SVG
27.1.2020
A little open-source utility from Tyler Sticka that returns a data URL of an SVG to use as an image placeholder as needed.
I like the idea of self-running utilities like that, rather than depending on some third-party service, like placekitten or whatever. Not that I'd advocate for feature...
“Browser Functions”
26.1.2020
Serverless functions are fairly straightforward. Put a bit of back-end language code, like Node, in the cloud and communicate with it via URL. But what if that URL didn't run a back-end language, it ran an actual browser? Richard Young:
We can now do full stack development using just Web APIs....
Flexible Captioned Slanted Images
25.1.2020
The end result of Eric Meyer's tutorial on creating this row of slanted images is pretty classy. But it's more about the journey than the destination (there isn't even really an isolated demo for it). Eric does an amazing job at talking it through like a thought process.
We did that recently, only...
Playwright
24.1.2020
So Microsoft launches a Node-based browser automation project called Playwright. It allows you to spin up a headless version of a browser and control it. Go here! Click something! Take a screenshot! That kind of stuff. Particularly useful for testing.
It's just like Google's Puppeteer, only...
Bundling JavaScript for Performance: Best Practices
24.1.2020
Performance advice from David Calhoun on how many scripts to load on a page for best performance:
[...] some of your vendor dependencies probably change slower than others. react and react-dom probably change the slowest, and their versions are always paired together, so they...
What’s the Difference Between Width/Height in CSS and Width/Height HTML attributes?
24.1.2020
Some HTML elements accept width and height as attributes. Some do not. For example:
<!-- valid, works, is a good idea --<img width="500" height="400" src="..." alt="..."<iframe width="600" height="400" src="..."</iframe<svg width="20" height="20"</svg<!-- not valid...
Min and Max Width/Height in CSS
24.1.2020
Here's a nice deep dive into min-width / min-height / max-width / max-height from Ahmad Shadeed. I like how Ahmad applies the properties to real-world design situations in addition to explaining how it works. In the very first demo, for example, he shows a button where min-width is used as a method...
Building Multi-Directional Layouts
23.1.2020
There are some new features in CSS that can assist us with building layouts for different directions and languages with ease. This article is about CSS logical properties and values (e.g. margin-inline-start).  These are a W3C working draft that still going under heavy editing, but have...
Component-Level CMSs
23.1.2020
When a component lives in an environment where the data queries populating it live nearby, there is a pretty direct line between the visual component and the database where that exact content lives. That is opening up doors to site editing experiences that travel that line. We're starting to...
This Page is Designed to Last
23.1.2020
Jeff Huang, while going through his collection of bookmarks, sadly finds a lot of old pages gone from the internet. Bit rot. It's pretty bad. Most of what gets published on the web disappears. Thankfully, the Internet Archive gets a lot of it. Jeff has seven things that he thinks will help make...
Build a dynamic JAMstack app with GatsbyJS and FaunaDB
23.1.2020
In this article, we explain the difference between single-page apps (SPAs) and static sites, and how we can bring the advantages of both worlds together in a dynamic JAMstack app using GatsbyJS and FaunaDB. We will build an application that pulls in some data from FaunaDB during build time...
Amelia Wattenberger’s The CSS Cascade
23.1.2020
If you're on a small screen, remind yourself to check it out on a big screen when you have the chance.
Did you know that styles from an active transition beat !important rules, but styles from an active animation do not? I definitely did not.
Or that there are "origins" that are almost like...