An event bus is a design pattern (and while we’ll be talking about JavaScript here, it’s a design pattern in any language) that can be used to simplify communications between different components. It can also be thought of as publish/subscribe or pubsub. The idea is that components can listen to the event bus to know when to do the things they do. For example, a “tab panel” component might listen for events telling it to change the active tab. … Read article “Let’s Create a Lightwei
Connectivity has evolved beyond recognition since the beginning of the internet. We are lightyears past dial up, these days, and can watch a video in high resolution on our smartphone while being connected to a mobile network. But not all mobile connections are created equal – older generation networks (3G, 2G, etc.) are still quite dominant, accounting for almost half of all connections worldwide in 2020. Unfortunately, the phasing out process is very slow, and many people around the glob
I remember sitting in the back seat of our family’s Subaru station wagon. I was six and this was long before child carseats were a thing. My dad was at the wheel and my mom played 20 Questions with me while we drove to some vacation spot I can’t even remember. It was my mom’s turn as she and I played 20 Questions. She had an object in mind and I was asking the questions. “Is it big?” I asked.… Read article “It’s all relative.”
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This year, I learned that there is a wide world of free stock imagery available beyond Unsplash and Pexels. You see, I’ve been working on designing WordPress themes this year, and all images need to be compatible with the GPL. Unsplash and Pexels both have free and open licenses, but unfortunately, aren’t compatible. Many other free stock photos sites don’t have the highest quality photos, so I’ve had to get creative about where I get the imagery I use in … Read article “Unconventio
Black isn’t always slimming. When recently testing a dark mode option for one of my sites, I experienced first-hand the issue that Robin Rendle addresses in this article. All of my page text — headings and body copy — appeared to bulk up when I switched to dark mode. And it didn’t matter what fonts I used or which browsers I tried. The same thing happened with all of them. For example, here’s what happens with Adobe’s Source Sans … Read article “Using CSS Custom Properties to Adjust
There, I said it. What did I learn about building websites in 2020? A lot. But what I learned is not nearly as important as how I learned it. So instead, I want to share a couple of strategies I used to unblock learning in less-than-ideal times. I spent almost a decade teaching design and, let me tell you, the conditions for curiosity were all wrong this year. You are not alone if you’ve found yourself battling brain fog, deep … Read article “2020 was not a good year for learning
In 2020, I rediscovered the enjoyment of building a website with plain ol’ HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — no transpilin’, no compilin’, no build tools other than my hands on the keyboard. Seeing as my personal brand could be summed up “so late to the game that the stadium has been demolished,” I decided to start a podcast in 2020. It’s the podcast of my agency, Clearleft, and it has been given the soaringly imaginative title of The Clearleft Podcast… Read article “npm ruin dev”
I found this Free Favicon Maker the other day. It’s a nice tool to make a favicon (true to its name), but unlike other favicon generators, this one lets you create one from scratch starting with a character or an emoji. Naturally, I was curious to look at the code to see how it works and, while I did, it got me thinking in different directions. I was reminded of something I read that says it is possible to dynamically… Read article “How to Create a Favicon That Changes Automatically
I’ve always enjoyed the CSS art people create, but I’ve never ventured into it much myself. I’m familiar with many of the tricks involved, but still find it surprising every time: the way people are able to make such fluid and beautiful images out of little boxes. I always end up digging around in dev tools to see how things are done, but I had never seen the process unfold. Any time CSS art starts getting attention, there is always … Read article “Very Extremely Practic
In our wide world of building for the web, we have every opportunity to talk about tools. We lunge to fill every gap we find in our projects with a definitive technological approach. Some of us are given “a seat at the table” feasting on even the most minuscule of technological debates. This marketplace of opinion is founded upon a desire to arrive, at least for the moment, at an optimum. We postulate about tooling so that we might achieve … Read article “TypeScript & Relevance̶