Timeless Web Dev Articles
January 18th, 2020
Pavithra Kodmad asked people for recommendations on what they thought were some of the most timeless articles about web development that have changed their perspective in some way. Fun! I’m gonna scour the thread and link up my favorites (that are actually articles, although not all of them are super directly related to web dev)….
Debunking the Myth: Accessibility and React
January 15th, 2020
I find it notable when the blog of a major accessibility-focused company like Deque publishes an article called Debunking the Myth: Accessibility and React. Mark Steadman is essentially saying if a site has bad accessibility, it ain’t React… it’s you. The tools are there to achieve good accessibility. React didn’t use a <div> for a…
How to Animate on the Web With Greensock
January 13th, 2020
There are truly thousands of ways to animate on the web. We’ve covered a comparison of different animation technologies here before. Today, we’re going to dive into a step-by-step guide of one of my favorite ways to get it done: using GreenSock. (They don’t pay me or anything, I just really enjoy using them.)…
Understanding Async Await
January 9th, 2020
When writing code for the web, eventually you’ll need to do some process that might take a few moments to complete. JavaScript can’t really multitask, so we’ll need a way to handle those long-running processes. Async/Await is a way to handle this type of time-based sequencing. It’s especially great for when you need to make…
let vs. const
January 9th, 2020
There are multiple ways to declare variables in JavaScript. We had var, and while that still works like it always has, it is generally said that let and const are replacements to the point we rarely (if ever) need var anymore. This doodle explanation does a pretty good job, if you need a refresher. What…
PHP Templating in Just PHP
December 26th, 2019
With stuff like template literals in JavaScript and templating languages, like JSX, I’ve gotten used to wanting to write my HTML templates in one nice chunk and sprinkling in variables wherever I need them. I had a situation where I needed to do that in “raw” PHP the other day, so I’m just documenting it…
How to Modify Nodes in an Abstract Syntax Tree
December 26th, 2019
One of the more powerful concepts I’ve stumbled across recently is the idea of abstract syntax trees, or ASTs. If you’ve ever studied alchemy, you may recall that the whole motivation for alchemists was to discover some way to transform not-gold into gold through scientific or arcane methods. ASTs are kind of like that. Using…
Is Web Design Easier or Harder Than it was 10 Years Ago?
December 20th, 2019
Is it harder or easier to build a website now than 10 years ago? Has the bar gone up or down? I don’t have any data for you, but I can shell out some loosey-goosey opinions. HTML HTML5 was the only big HTML change in the last decade, and it wasn’t particularly dramatic. It’s cool…
Two Lessons I Learned From Making React Components
December 18th, 2019
Here’s a couple of lessons I’ve learned about how not to build React components. These are things I’ve come across over the past couple of months and thought they might be of interest to you if you’re working on a design system, especially one with a bunch of legacy technical decisions and a lot of…
Detecting Inactive Users
December 13th, 2019
Most of the time you don’t really care about whether a user is actively engaged or temporarily inactive on your application. Inactive, meaning, perhaps they got up to get a drink of water, or more likely, changed tabs to do something else for a bit. There are situations, though, when tracking the user activity and…