Adam Kuhn makes some of my favorite CodePens, from the email form rollercoaster, to his gorgeous generative art, to his delightful Night at the Museum of Very Good Boys. My favorite of his recent work has to be his webcam filter in the style of the music video for Take Me On by a-ha.
It’s cool to see the tech around our job evolve to the point that we can reach our arms around the whole thing. It’s worthy of some concern when we feel like complication of web technology feels like it’s raising the barrier to entry. That happens sometimes and it’s not great. But it’s also worthy of cheer when web technology becomes simple enough that people can build things from start to finish all by themselves. That’s pretty cool.
CSS variables (or custom properties, depending on how you prefer to call them) are really cool, and chances are, you’re already using them in your projects already. In this article, I’ll talk about 3 things that I think a lot of people might now know about: what happens when a var() function uses an undefined variable, how fallback values work, and how browser DevTools can help you.
I’ve put together for you an entire visual cheatsheet of all of the concepts and skills you need to master React in 2020. But don’t let the label ‘cheatsheet’ fool you. This is more than a mere summary of React’s features. My aim here was to clearly and concisely put forth the knowledge and patterns I’ve gained through working with React as a professional developer. Each part is designed to be immensely helpful by showing you real-world, practical examples with meaningful comments to guide you along the way.
It’s true, web animation can be accessible! Sometimes it just takes a little extra effort to make sure that it is. There are strategic things we can do to make sure our animations have a positive impact on accessibility, like planning how they contribute to the overall UX and ease of use of our site. There are also more tactical considerations for making sure the animations on our site are accessible, and that’s where the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) comes in.
Mainstream technology today is designed to track and exploit us. As technologists who are also users, we both contribute to this exploitative system and are exploited by it. Is making our tech accessible enough, when the driving forces behind that tech are unethical? Can tech be inclusive if it causes disproportionate harm to people from marginalised groups? We can do better. My talk will look at some of the big problems we face in tech today, and how we can start building inclusive and ethical technology tomorrow.
Thanks to Cloud Four for sponsoring this week’s newsletter! If you’d like to help with the costs of running Friday Front-End, you can back our Patreon for as little as a dollar a month.
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