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A Grid of Logos in Squares
6.4.2020
Let’s build a literal grid of squares, and we’ll put the logos of some magazines centered inside each square. I imagine plenty of you have had to build a logo grid before. You can probably already picture it: an area of a site that lists the donors, sponsors, or that is showing off...
Continuous Deployments for WordPress Using GitHub Actions
6.4.2020
Continuous Integration (CI) workflows are considered a best practice these days. As in, you work with your version control system (Git), and as you do, CI is doing work for you like running tests, sending notifications, and deploying code. That last part is called Continuous Deployment (CD)....
Some Typography Links
3.4.2020
I just can’t stop bookmarking great links related to typography. I’m afraid I’m going to have to subject you, yet again, to a bunch of them all grouped up. So those of you that care about web type stuff, enjoy.
I know there are lots of good reasons to be excited about variable...
Getting JavaScript to Talk to CSS and Sass
3.4.2020
JavaScript and CSS have lived beside one another for upwards of 20 years. And yet it’s been remarkably tough to share data between them. There have been large attempts, sure. But, I have something simple and intuitive in mind — something not involving a structural change, but rather putting...
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...
Why Do Some HTML Elements Become Deprecated?
2.4.2020
The internet has been around for a long while, and over time we’ve changed the way we think about web design. Many old techniques and ways of doing things have gotten phased out as newer and better alternatives have been created, and we say that they have been deprecated.
Deprecated. It’s a word...
Rethinking Code Comments
2.4.2020
Justin Duke asks if treating code comments like footnotes could help us understand the code in a file better. In his mockup, all the comments are hidden by default and require a click to reveal:
What a neat idea! Justin’s design reminds me of the way that Instapaper treated inline...
Web Performance Checklist
2.4.2020
The other day, I realized that web performance is an enormous topic covering so very much — from minimizing assets to using certain file formats, it can be an awful lot to keep in mind while building a website. It’s certainly far too much for me to remember!
So I made a web performance checklist....
Cloudinary Studio
2.4.2020
I knew that Cloudinary worked with video as well as images but, the other day, I was curious if Cloudinary offered a video player embed just like other video hosts do (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, etc). Like an <iframe> that comes with a special player.
I was curious because, as much as...
Performant Expandable Animations: Building Keyframes on the Fly
1.4.2020
Animations have come a long way, continuously providing developers with better tools. CSS Animations, in particular, have defined the ground floor to solve the majority of uses cases. However, there are some animations that require a little bit more work.
You probably know that animations should...
How to build a bad design system
31.3.2020
I didn’t realize this until it was far too late, but one of the biggest mistakes that’s made on a design systems team is a common mismanagement issue: there are too many people in a meeting and they have too many dang opinions.
Is there a conversation about the color of your buttons that’s taking...
Max Stoiber’s Strong Opinion About Margins
31.3.2020
Going with that title instead of the classic developer clickbait version Max used. ;)
We should ban margin from our components.
Don’t use margin?! This thing I’ve been doing my entire career and don’t have any particular problems with?!
Well, that’s not exactly Max’s...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...