Articles

Responsive images

Screens come in different shapes and sizes, but they also come in different pixel densities. When serving images, we need to ensure that we deliver the optimal image for each screen. 9 March 2021

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Progressive enhancement and development

Progressive enhancement is often viewed as a desirable user-facing feature. But, could it also be seen as a developer-facing methodology for building sites? It's almost synonymous with Agile! 8 January 2021

Javascript From Source to Browser

Many frontend starter kits include Webpack or Rollup configurations to make it easy to deploy code to the browser. But, have you ever wondered what happens under the hood? 30 October 2020

The Art of CSS (Web Directions 2020)

CSS syntax, like the box-model, flex, and grid is relatively easy to learn, or at least lookup. But CSS semantics, like when to apply the cascade, inheritance, or custom properties is an art form. And to master this art form, we first need to understand them. 18 September 2020

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The Game-Master Pattern for UIs

Most web applications are built by mixing behaviour into the view layer. This increases complexity in the view, and makes it hard to debug and test. In this article, I attempt to move all behaviour out of the view. 16 August 2020

Frontend trees with React

Tutorials on React often focus on, well, React. Let's invert this, to consider the kinds of operations we might want to perform on the frontend (think trees), and how React's capabilities can fulfill that need. 29 June 2020

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Storing State in React Applications

React is not prescriptive of where and how to store state. To some, this is welcomed flexibility, to others this is painful confusion. Let's clear the air. 26 March 2020

Emulating Pact With Jest Snapshots

Jest Snapshots are typically used for UI testing, but it can be much more. How about emulating the Pact workflow? 27 February 2020

The Art of CSS

CSS syntax, like the box-model, flex, and grid is relatively easy to learn, or at least lookup. But CSS semantics, like when to apply the cascade, inheritance, or custom properties is an art form. And to master this art form, we first need to understand them. 24 February 2020

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Query Languages For The Web

Querying data over the web is a common problem with many often adhoc solutions. In this article, I survey some common solution patterns in use. 31 January 2020