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Goals for 2019
31.12.2018
Every turn of the year is a new opportunity to start over, set goals, and renew optimism that time can heal wounds and drive us to change and achieve. I did really well with my 2018 goals: I started a fun podcast with TrackJS’ Todd Gardener I found my passion again by joining Mozilla’s...
Nested Destructuring
25.12.2018
Destructuring in JavaScript can initially feel confusing but the truth is that destructuring can make your code a bit more logical and straight forward. Destructuring does look a bit more complex when you’re looking for a property several objects deep, so let’s have a look at how to...
Force Download with JavaScript
24.12.2018
Force download scripts have been an important part of internet usability for a long time.  I can attest to that by the number of times I’ve implemented this feature on the server side and the popularity of my PHP Force Download post, even to this day.  With the web world having...
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...
Animating Between Views in React
21.12.2018
You know how some sites and web apps have that neat native feel when transitioning between two pages or views? Sarah Drasner has shown some good examples and even a Vue library to boot.
These animations are the type of features that can turn a good user experience into a great one. But to achieve...
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...
5 Ways To Improve Development With Visual Studio Code
18.12.2018
Visual Studio Code is extremely flexible and powerful. By learning the ins and outs, you can greatly improve your speed, efficiency, and process as a developer. In this article, we'll look at the t
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....
Reversing an Easing Curve
17.12.2018
Let’s take a look at a carousel I worked on where items slide in and out of view with CSS animations. To get each item to slide in and out of view nicely I used a cubic-bezier for the animation-timing-function property, instead of using a standard easing keyword.
See the Pen Carousel with reversed...
Two Ways to Build a Site That Seem Super Different But Weirdly Aren’t That Different
14.12.2018
Here are two ways to build a site (abstractly) that feel diametrically opposed to me:
Build a site as an SPA (Single Page App). The page loads a skeleton HTML page that executes JavaScript as quickly as it can. The JavaScript calls an API to get data, and then the page renders content. Navigation...
Rendering Lists Using React Virtualized
13.12.2018
Working with data in React is relatively easy because React is designed to handle data as state. The hassle begins when the amount of data you need to consume becomes massive. For example, say you have to handle a dataset which is between 500-1,000 records. This can result in massive loads and lead...
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...
Why isn’t it <style src=””>?
10.12.2018
The way JavaScript works is we can do scripts as an inline block:
<script>
  let foo = "bar";
</script>
Or, if the script should be fetched from the network...
<script src="/js/global.js"></script>
With CSS, we can do an inline block of styles:
<style>
  .foo...
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...
Compound Components in React Using the Context API
7.12.2018
Compound components in React allow you to create components with some form of connected state that’s managed amongst themselves. A good example is the Form component in Semantic UI React.
To see how we can implement compound components in a real-life React application, we’ll build a compound...
Browser Diversity Commentary, Regarding the Edge News
6.12.2018
Still no word from the horse's mouth about the reported EdgeHTML demise, but I hear that's coming later today. The blog posts are starting to roll in about the possible impact of this though.
Andre Garzia: While we Blink, we loose the Web:
Even though Opera, Beaker and Brave are all doing very good...
DRY State Switching With CSS Variables: Fallbacks and Invalid Values
6.12.2018
This is the second post in a two-part series that looks into the way CSS variables can be used to make the code for complex layouts and interactions less difficult to write and a lot easier to maintain. The first installment walks through various use cases where this technique applies. This post...
CSS Selectors are Conditional Statements
6.12.2018
foo {
}
Programmatically, is:
if (element has a class name of "foo") {
}
Descendent selectors are && logic and commas are ||. It just gets more complicated from there, with things like combinators and pseudo selectors. Just look at all the ways styles can cascade.
Jeremy Keith:
If...
DRY Switching with CSS Variables: The Difference of One Declaration
5.12.2018
This is the first post of a two-part series that looks into the way CSS variables can be used to make the code for complex layouts and interactions less difficult to write and a lot easier to maintain. This first installment walks through various use cases where this technique applies. The second...