Search
WordCamp US 2018
4.1.2019
I recently attended and had the chance to speak at WordCamp US 2018 in Nashville. I had a great time. I love conferences that bring people together around a tight theme because it's very likely you'll have something to talk about with every person there. Plus, I rather like WordPress and...
Quicklink
3.1.2019
We're in the future now so, of course, we're working on ways to speed up the web with fancy new tactics above and beyond the typical make-pages-slimmer-and-cached-like-crazy techniques.
One tactic, from years ago, was InstantClick:
Before visitors click on a link, they hover over that link. Between...
Storing and Using the Last Known Route in Vue
2.1.2019
There are situations where keeping a reference to the last route a user visited can come in handy. For example, let’s say we’re working with a multi-step form and the user proceeds from one step to the next. It would be ideal to have the route of that previous step in hand so we know where the user...
How to Change the WordPress Admin Login Logo
2.1.2019
There are numerous content management systems that thrive these days but none are as prolific as WordPress. Every client wants the ability to change their website at a moment’s notice and they want to do it themselves, and again, WordPress is the best fit for that. You fit the client with...
How to Change the WordPress Media Upload Directory
2.1.2019
One thing I’ve always missed about the “old” way of web development was the simplicity of FTP. No deploy scripts, no fuss: simple drag and drop of files and the files are there. I’ve used FTP for assets on this blog for over a decade but I’m finally ready to be lazy...
A Quick CSS Audit and General Notes About Design Systems
31.12.2018
I’ve been auditing a ton of CSS lately and thought it would be neat to jot down how I’m going about doing that. I’m sure there are a million different ways to do this depending on the size and scale of your app and how your CSS works under the hood, so please take all this with a grain of salt....
Gradient Borders in CSS
28.12.2018
Let's say you need a gradient border around an element. My mind goes like this:
There is no simple obvious CSS API for this.
I'll just make a wrapper element with a linear-gradient background, then an inner element will block out most of that background, except a thin line of padding around...
An Initial Implementation of clip-path: path();
24.12.2018
One thing that has long surprised (and saddened) me is that the clip-path property, as awesome as it is, only takes a few values. The circle() and ellipse() functions are nice, but hiding overflows and rounding with border-radius generally helps there already. Perhaps the most useful value...
People Talkin’ Shapes
22.12.2018
Codrops has a very nice article on CSS Shapes from Tania Rascia. You might know shape-outside is for redefining the area by which text is floated around that element, allowing for some interesting design opportunities. But there are a couple of genuine CSS tricks in here:
Float shape-outside...
Fighting FOIT and FOUT Together
19.12.2018
Lots from Divya with the setup:
There are 2 kinds of problems that can arise when using webfonts; Flash of invisible text (FOIT) and Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT) ... If we were to compare them, FOUT is of course the lesser of the two evils
If you wanna fight FOIT, the easiest tool is...
How to Worry About npm Package Weight
18.12.2018
It's all too easy to go crazy with the imports and end up with megabytes upon megabytes of JavaScript. It can be a problem as that weight burdens each and every visitor from our site, very possibly delaying or stopping them from doing what they came to do on the site. Bad for them, worse for you....
Nobody is quite wrong.
17.12.2018
There are two opposing views on using non-polyfillable new web features that I find are both equally common in our industry:
Websites don't need to look the same in every browser. The concept of progressive enhancement helps with that. There are tools, even native language features, that help with...
Making SVG icon libraries for React apps
14.12.2018
Nicolas Gallagher:
At Twitter I used the approach described here to publish the company’s SVG icon library in several different formats: optimized SVGs, plain JavaScript modules, React DOM components, and React Native components.
There is no One True Way© to make an SVG icon system. The only...
JavaScript to Native (and Back!)
14.12.2018
I admit I'm quite intrigued by frameworks that allow you write apps in web frameworks because they do magic to make them into native apps for you. There are loads of players here. You've got NativeScript, Cordova, PhoneGap, Tabris, React Native, and Flutter. For deskop apps, we've got Electron....
Keep Math in the CSS
12.12.2018
There is a sentiment that leaving math calculations in your CSS is a good idea that I agree with. This is for math that you could calculate at authoring time, but specifically chose not to. For instance, if you needed a 7-column float-based grid (don't ask), it's cleaner and more intuitive:
.col...
Prototypes and production
11.12.2018
There’s an interesting distinction that Jeremy Keith defines between prototype code and production code in this post and I’ve been thinking about it all week:
...every so often, we use the materials of front-end development—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—to produce something that isn’t intended...
JavaScript waitForever
10.12.2018
Writing mochitests for new features in DevTools can be difficult and time-consuming. There are so many elements interacting in an async manner that I oftentimes find myself using the debugger to debug the debugger! In the case where it’s unclear what interaction isn’t working...
An Introduction and Guide to the CSS Object Model (CSSOM)
10.12.2018
If you've been writing JavaScript for some time now, it's almost certain you've written some scripts dealing with the Document Object Model (DOM). DOM scripting takes advantage of the fact that a web page opens up a set of APIs (or interfaces) so you can manipulate and otherwise deal with elements...
Write React Faster w/ Simple React Snippets
10.12.2018
I'm a big fan of speeding up every part of your development. If you shave off seconds here and there multiple times a day, you'll save a ton of time over the course of a year.
This involves
Edge’s Announcements
6.12.2018
The public-consumption blog post:
Ultimately, we want to make the web experience better for many different audiences. People using Microsoft Edge (and potentially other browsers) will experience improved compatibility with all web sites, while getting the best-possible battery life and hardware...