[Sponsored] If you’re building an app that requires a lot of user-generated content and media that needs to be processed, tagged, filtered, or otherwise manipulated in real-time, you definitely want a solution that’s fast and seamless and doesn’t get in the way of your app’s primary functionality. Filestack is a service you’ll want to consider. Here’s what Filestack offers:
How to Disable JavaScript in Almost Any Browser
In 2022 I think it’s still important as a web developer to test your how your websites look and function when users disable JavaScript in their browser. Developing in this way used to be a cornerstone of Progressive Enhancement and can be handy on both desktop or mobile.
I still find myself wanting disabling JavaScript on pages I visit. Sometimes it’s to test a page I’m working on, but in other instances it’s simply to visit a web page that’s not functioning correctly and I want to see if JavaScript is the culprit.
A Review of ipwhois.io for Reliable Geolocation Data
[Sponsored] If you’re building an app that requires delivering a dynamic experience based on the user’s location or other location-related data, a fast and easy-to-use Geolocation API will certainly come in handy. One such option is ipwhois.io. The service, which is free for small non-commercial projects that need fewer than 10,000 requests per month, is easy to integrate with your tech stack.
As usual, it’s always best to look at a few examples so you can see it in action. Their documentation is short and easy to follow, so I’ll demonstrate using the following example request:
Detecting Specific Text Input with HTML and CSS
Recently I came across a CodePen demo by a developer/engineer named Jane that was Tweeted out by Šime Vidas. The demo has a neat collection of HTML and CSS tricks rolled into one that I thought was worth examining in detail.
The page displays a secret message based on specific text input. Ok, that’s no big deal, right? Well this is done using pure HTML and CSS – no JavaScript. I’ve seen stuff like this before, but I thought it would be cool to break down exactly how this works. There are a few notable things happening in the code so I’ll break down each of the parts.
Are These the Most Interesting Front-end Developer Tools for 2021?
When I come to the end of any given year, it’s always interesting to look back through the click-through stats for my weekly newsletter Web Tools Weekly to see which tools got the most attention.
This year wasn’t all that different from previous years. I’ve learned that clicks happen for basically one of two reasons:
Fading in a Page on Load with CSS & JavaScript
When I visit a page, I get annoyed when I try to interact with elements while the website is still loading. Often stuff is moving around, fonts aren’t quite loaded, and it feels broken.
I know nowadays we’re obsessed in this industry with gaining every millisecond in page performance. But in a couple of projects that I recently overhauled, I added a subtle and clean loading mechanism that I think makes the experience nicer, even if it does ultimately slightly delay the time that the user is able to start interacting with my page.
Solutions and Tools for Dealing with Broken Links in Web Pages
A couple of months ago a post by Leo Blanchette got to the front page of Hacker News and there was an interesting discussion on dealing with broken links and external content – the main problem being links that become out of date due to paywalls, altered content, or content getting taken down.
I’ve been running this blog since May 2008. If you’ve run a content-driven site for even a fraction of that, you know that link rot is a problem. In this post I’ll go over some of the suggestions in that thread along with some tools to use to check for broken links.
Accessible and Keyboard-Friendly Hamburger Menu + Slide Out Navigation
This week I did some research to try to build a hamburger menu that opens a slide-out navigation panel, a common design pattern nowadays. But I wanted to ensure the whole thing was keyboard-friendly and as accessible as possible.
I’m not 100% sure what I’ve come up with is the most accessible solution, but I did consult a number of decent sources on building accessible navigation menus like these. I also did some rudimentary testing using the free NVDA screen reader, to ensure there are no major problems.
Adding CSS to a Page via HTTP Headers
I’ve been coding websites for a long time but even I was a little puzzled when I came across a Hacker News comment where the commenter described their own makeshift CMS that involves using your own file system. The most interesting part to me was when the person said they add CSS to pages on their personal projects by means of HTTP headers.
I had heard of this technique before and the person does say in the comment that this doesn’t work in every browser. But I decided to do some research to figure out how one might do this and why this would be easier than just dropping in one or more <link> elements in the HTML.
Front-end RSS Feeds (2020 Edition)
Back in 2011, Paul Irish posted his personal list of frontend RSS feeds for front-end web developers. It was a great list, but after some time it needed some refreshing.
In 2014 I published my own list of categorized feeds for front-end developers. I cleaned up Paul’s feed list quite a bit and added some new feeds, while splitting the feed up into manageable categories.
