Web Development + Follow

Erik D. Kennedy notes an interesting phenomenon of color gradients. If you have a gradient between two colors where the line between them in the color space goes through the zero-saturation middle, you get this “gray dead zone” in the middle.

Let’s look at how to get the user’s mouse position and map it into CSS custom properties: –positionX and –positionY. We could do this in JavaScript. If we did, we could do things like make make an element draggable or move a background. But actually, we can still do similar things, but not use any …

Every letter in this “font” by Davor Suljic is a single div and drawn only with border. That means employing some trickery like border-radius with exotic syntax like border-radius: 100% 100% 0 0 / 37.5% 37.5% 0 0; which rounds just the top of an element with a certain chillness that works here. Plus, using …

If you want to put Next.js on Netlify, here’s a 5 minute tutorial¹. One of the many strengths of Next.js is that it can do server-side rendering (SSR) with a Node server behind it. But Netlify does static hosting not Node hosting, right? Well Netlify has functions, and those functions can handle the SSR. But …

In this week’s roundup, we highlight a proposal for a new <popup> element, check the use of prefers-reduced-motion on award-winning sites, learn how to opt into cross-origin isolation, see how WhiteHouse.gov approaches accessibility, and warn the dangers of 100vh.

In every project where I use Tailwind CSS, I end up adding something to it. Some of these things I add in every single project. I’ll share these with you, but I’m also curious what y’all are adding to your tailwind.css files.

A wonderful post by Josh that both introduces CSS transitions and covers the nuances for using them effectively. I like the advice about transitioning the position of an element, leaving the original space it occupied alone so it doesn’t result in what he calls “doom flicker.” Six hundred and fifty years ago I created CSS …

Tobi Reif notes how the position of custom fonts set at very large font sizes can be super different, even in the same browser across operating systems. The solution? Well, you know how there are certain CSS properties that only work within @font-face blocks? They are called “descriptors” and font-display is a popular example. There …

I recently started working on a Progressive Web App (PWA) for a client with my team. We’re using React with client-side routing via React Router, and one of the first elements that we made was the main menu. Menus are a key component of any site or app. That’s really how folks get around, so …

Sendbird is a service for helping you add social features to your app. Wanna add in-app chat? Sendbird does that. Wanna add in-app voice or video calls? Sendbird does that. Here’s how I always think about stuff like this. Whatever the thing you are building is, you should specialize in the core of it, and …

It feels like a trend (and a smart one) for tech platforms to invest in really high-quality learning material for their platform. Let’s have a gander.

The other day, Florens Verschelde asked about defining dark mode styles for both a class and a media query, without repeat CSS custom properties declarations. I had run into this issue in the past but hadn’t come up with a proper solution. What we want is to avoid redefining—and thus repeating—custom properties when switching between …

A wonderful collection of little layout-related CSS snippets from Stephanie Eckles that serves both as a quick reference and a reminder of how straightforward and powerful CSS has become. Random things to note!

We’ve covered the idea of hiding things in CSS many times here, the most recent post being Marko Ilic’s “Comparing Various Ways to Hide Things in CSS” which did a nice job of comparing different techniques which you’d use in different situations. Hugo “Kitty” Giraudel has done something similar in “Hiding Content Responsibly” which looks at …

React component tests should be interesting, straightforward, and easy for a human to build and maintain. Yet, the current state of the testing library ecosystem is not sufficient to motivate developers to write consistent JavaScript tests for React components. Testing React components—and the DOM in general—often require some kind of higher-level wrapper around popular testing …

Of all the reasons we love and use Jetpack for CSS-Tricks—a poster child WordPress site—is that we can sleep easy at night knowing we have real-time backups running with Jetpack Backup. That way, no matter what, everything that makes this site tick, from all the template files to every single word we’ve ever typed, is …

Let’s talk shadows in web design. Shadows add texture, perspective, and emphasize the dimensions of objects. In web design, using light and shadow can add physical realism and can be used to make rich, tactile interfaces.

One of the things I do when teaching beginning front-end development is ask students to describe what it’s like to read HTML. I give them pretty basic markup for a long-form article, and ask them to read it twice: first in the code, then on the front end. The #1 common response I hear? It’s …

On a default left-to-right web page, “hanging” an element off the right side of the page (e.g. position: absolute; right: -100px;) triggers a horizontal scrollbar that scrolls as far as needed to make that whole element visible. But if you hang an element of the left side of the page, it’s just hidden (no scrollbar …

Blobs are the smooth, random, jelly-like shapes that have a whimsical quality and are just plain fun. They can be used as illustration elements and background effects on the web. So, how are they made? Just crack open an illustration app and go for it, right? Sure, that’s cool. But we’re in a post here …

Turns out you can use several different libraries to pass color information around components. Or, you could use custom properties, built right into CSS, have no decline in your own developer experience, and deliver a faster experience to your users. Kent proves it here, with demos. For the record, you could go a step further …

I’ve been a manager for many years at companies of different scale. Through these experiences, I’ve done my share of learning, and made some mistakes along that way that were important lessons for me. I want to share those with you. But before diving in, I want to mention a strong caveat that my advice …

Simeon Griggs with some nice UX ideas for a recipe website: No math. Swap between units and adjust servings on-the-fly. Offer alternative ingredients. Re-list the ingredient amounts when they’re referenced in the instructions. I totally agree, especially on that last one: Of all our improvements I think this is my favourite. A typical recipe layout …

HTML has a built-in native audio player interface that we get simply using the <audio> element. Point it to a sound file and that’s all there is to it. We even get to specify multiple files for better browser support, as well as a little CSS flexibility to style things up, like giving the audio …

Zach takes a look at some fundamental HTML+CSS usage for fluid, responsive images. Most of it, I’d say, is what you’d expect, but things get weird when srcset gets involved. I poked my way through, and in addition to the weird thing Zach noted, wanted to add one more thing. Let’s start like this:

I’ve been enjoying these little “You want…” style posts. Post titles like that are a little more… forceful for my normal taste, but I like the spirit of sharing a best practice that perhaps isn’t well-known-enough. Killian started it with “You want overflow: auto, not overflow: scroll.” I followed up with “You want minmax(10px, 1fr) …

Some nice coverage from Andy about CSS things that are truly new. If you haven’t looked at new things in CSS in, say, a year, I’d bet pretty much all of this will be new to you. A lot of it is cutting-edge enough that you might not be able to get it into projects …

CSS is yet to have a switch rule or conditional if, aside from the specific nature of @media queries and some deep trickery with CSS custom properties. Let’s have a look at why it would be useful if we did, and look at a trick that is usable today for pulling it off.

I like Andy’s idea here: Normally I’d just set a max-width there, but as Andy says: This becomes a slight issue in mid-sized viewports, such as tablets in portrait mode, in long-form content, such as this article because contextually, the line-lengths feel very long. So, on super large screens, you’ll get capped at 70rem (or whatever …

People really latched onto Brad’s framing. And for good reason. Front-end development has gotten so wide scoping that there are specialists inside of it. Two years ago, I cut it down the middle and now Brad is putting a point on that here, saying he has actual clients who have shifted their hiring strategy away …