Chris Coyier

Simplicity is a funny adjective in web design and development. I'm sure it's a quoted goal for just about every project ever done. Nobody walks into a kickoff meeting like, "Hey team, design something complicated for me. Oh, and make sure the implementation is convoluted as well. Over-engineer that sucker, would ya?"

Of course they want simple. Everybody wants simple. We want simple designs because simple means our customers will understand it and like it. We want simplicity in development. … Read article

You can make a garden variety anchor link (<a></a>) open up a new email. Let's take a little journey into this feature. It's pretty easy to use, but as with anything web, there are lots of things to consider.… Read article

One of the most empowering things you can learn as a new front-end developer who is starting to learn JavaScript is to change classes. If you can change classes, you can use your CSS skills to control a lot on a page. Toggle a class to one thing, style it this way, toggle to another class (or remove it) and style it another way.

But there is an HTML element that also does toggles! <details></details>! For example, it's … Read article

Little confession here: when I first saw Netlify CMS at a glance, I thought: cool, maybe I'll try that someday when I'm exploring CMSs for a new project. Then as I looked at it with fresh eyes: I can already use this! It's a true CMS in that it adds a content management UI on top of any static site generator that works from flat files! Think of how you might build a site from markdown files with Gatsby, Jekyll, … Read article

Have you seen Local by Flywheel? It's a native app for helping set up local WordPress developer environments. I absolutely love it and use it to do all my local WordPress development work. It brings a lovingly designed GUI to highly technical tasks in a way that I think works very well. Plus it just works, which wins all the awards with me. Need to spin up a new site locally? Click a few buttons. Working on … Read article

A spreadsheet has always been a strong (if fairly literal) analogy for a database. A database has tables, which is like a single spreadsheet. Imagine a spreadsheet for tracking RSVPs for a wedding. Across the top, column titles like First Name, Last Name, Address, and Attending?. Those titles are also columns in a database table. Then each person in that spreadsheet is literally a row, and that's also a row in a database table (or an entry, item, or … Read article

Jen Simmons has been coining the term intrinsic design, referring to a new era in web layout where the sizing of content has gone beyond fluid columns and media query breakpoints and into, I dunno, something a bit more exotic. For example, columns that are sized more by content and guidelines than percentages. And not always columns, but more like appropriate placement, however that needs to be done.… Read article