Here's how most people use Google Analytics: you copy and paste the default tracking snippet into your templates. Look at the pageview data that comes in. That's all good, but that isn't the most useful analytics for many sites. Google Analytics can track just about anything. It's very flexible and very powerful. Philip Walton and I co-wrote this article to show you how to do some custom GA stuff to help you collect data you maybe didn't know you could collect and how you can look at that data in useful ways.
React is a great way to generate static HTML with a component-based UI. One of the biggest hurdles to working with React is the amount of boilerplate and build configuration it takes to get going. I wanted to make it dead-simple to start building static pages with React and without the need to install tons of npm modules and configure webpack.
There’s some great improvements in the latest release of Sketch which you might not have noticed: baseline fixes, better control over character spacing, masking improvements and more compact SVG exports are just some of the features here.
It’s nice to see that the team has a number of typography improvements planned for this year, too.
Steven Trwoga wrote to me with a perfectly reasonable question:
I have an idea for a website I would like to have built. I believe it would fall into the category of "large project".
I have spoken with, and been quoted by some web design agencies in the UK. However I am not convinced by what I am being told in terms of what can be built and cost.
I have no experience in web design, but I have spent a lot of time reading to help me grasp what can be done and to get a sense of the scale of the project.
I find it to be a minefield trying to find a web designer (or team) by just using search engines.
Before this new CSS I'm about to introduce existed, locking an element into the viewport on scroll required rigging up some JavaScript. As you may know, JavaScript has a well-earned reputation to be tricky when paired with scrolling behavior.
The new CSS Scroll Snap Points spec promises to help, allowing for this kind of behavior using very few lines of CSS.
As happens with very new web tech, this spec has changed over time. There is "old" and "new" properties and values. It's promising though, as supporthas shot up quickly. I'll teach you how to get the widest support in this in-between stage.
I met Libby years ago from running into her at conferences. She was with Typekit and would be at the conference bringing their their super cool “pop up library” full of typographic books. She’s still at Adobe now, but running the Adobe Creative Resident program.
The program is now entering it’s second year. What’s it all about? Let’s find out.
I learned a ton about how Google Analytics works during all this. In a sense, it's dumber than you think. You can track whatever you want, you just need to send the right data. In another sense, it's super smart. By giving it just a smidge more information, …
