Search
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…...
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...
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...
CSS :nth-of-class selector
23.3.2020
That's not a thing.
But it kinda is!
Bram covers how frustrating .bar:nth-child(2) is. It's not "select the second element of class .bar." It's "select the second element if it also has the class .bar." The good news? There is a real selector that does the former:
:nth-child(2 of .bar) { }
Safari...
CSS Can Influence Screenreaders
23.3.2020
Ben Myers covers some clear examples of where CSS totally changes what some screen readers announce. For example, some screenreader will see text-transform: uppercase; on a button label that says "Add" and read it like an abbreviation, "A.D.D."
These cases of CSS messing with our screenreader...
Flexible Repeating SVG Masks
22.3.2020
Tyler Gaw reminds us that mask-image can repeat, resize, and move just like background-image does, which is fun to combine and play with. I could see it being a fun option for an <hr, like Sara is doing.
CodePen Embed Fallback
Direct Link to Article — Permalink… Read article...
Client-Side Image Editing on Mobile
20.3.2020
Michael Scharnagl:
Ever wanted to easily convert an image to a grayscale image on your phone? I do sometimes, and that's why I build a demo using the Web Share Target API to achieve exactly that.
For this I used the Service Worker way to handle the data. Once the data is received on the client,...
CSS2JS
20.3.2020
To add inline styles on an element in JSX, you have to do it in this object syntax, like:
<div style={{
fontSize: 16,
marginBottom: "1rem"
}}Content
</div
That might look a little weird to us folks who are so used to the CSS syntax, where it is font-size (not fontSize), margin-bottom...
Flexbox and absolute positioning
18.3.2020
Chen Hui Jing notes that when you absolutely position a flex item, it's no longer part of the flex layout. Except... it kinda is a little bit. If you make the child position: absolute; but don't apply any top/right/bottom/left properties, then flexbox alignment will still apply to it.
It's odd...
Ideas for Distorted Link Effects on Menus
18.3.2020
Some examples of how to use decorative distortion effects on big typography menu links.
Ideas for Distorted Link Effects on Menus was written by Mary Lou and published on Codrops
15 Things to Improve Your Website Accessibility
17.3.2020
This is a really great list from Bruce. There is a lot of directly actionable stuff here. Send it around to your team and make it something that you all go through together.
Here's a little one that prodded me to finally fix...
Most screen readers allow the user to quickly see a list of links...
CSS X
17.3.2020
My name appears in an article from Bert Bos (co-author of the original CSS spec), so I'll consider that a life accomplishment. Berts makes the point that CSS has evolved and the working group versions things, but the working group hasn't been and doesn't really plan to be involved in these...
Stop Using “Dropdown”
16.3.2020
Adrian Roselli notes that it might actually mean:
A <select> menu
An ARIA Listbox, Combobox, Menu, or Disclosure Widget
An input with a <datalist>
An input with autocomplete
A <details><summary> block
An accordion
Flyout navigation
In my own usage, I tend to mean...
Using the HTML title attribute
15.3.2020
Steve Faulkner:
User groups not well served by use of the title attribute
• Mobile phone users.• Keyboard only users.• Screen magnifier users.• Screen reader users.• Users with fine motor skill impairments.• Users with cognitive impairments.
Sounds like in 2020, the only useful thing the title...
The CSS Podcast
15.3.2020
From Adam and Una at Google, a podcast just about CSS. I believe I'm contractually obliged to link to that! Just one episode out so far, a shorty about the box model.
Last time I wrote up podcasts I like was 8 years ago most of them are dead now, except the biggies like This American Life and...
“weeds of specificity”
13.3.2020
Lara Schenck:
[...] with WordPress child themes, you are all but guaranteed to get into the weeds of specificity, hunting around theme stylesheets that you didn’t author, trying to figure out what existing declaration is preventing you from applying a new style, and then figuring out the least...
A Guide to Handling Browser Events
13.3.2020
In this post, Sarah Chima walks us through how we can work with browser events, such as clicking, using JavaScript. There’s a ton of great info in here! If JavaScript isn’t your strong suit, I think this is the best explanation of event handling that I’ve read in quite some time.
When an event...
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
12.3.2020
Brent Jackson says CSS utility libraries failed somewhat:
Eventually, you'll need to add one-off styles that just aren't covered by the library you're using, and there isn't always a clear way to extend what you're working with. Without a clear way to handle things like this, developers tend...
Careful with Nested `display: grid; height: 100%;`
11.3.2020
It's not every day you can feel CSS be slow at something. Reddit user jgbbrd discovered nesting grid containers that all have 100% height can cause many-seconds of rendering delay. Probably not something you'll ever have to worry about, but still, interesting. From the comments:
What a funny...
Sass !default and themeable design systems
11.3.2020
This is a great blog post from Brad Frost where he walks us through an interesting example. Let’s say we’re making a theme and we have some Sass like this:
.c-text-input {
background-color: $form-background-color;
padding: 10px
}
If the $form-background-color variable isn’t defined then...