Chris Coyier - CSS-Tricks

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# September 21, 2017 Sponsored

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Deploying ES2015+ Code in Production Today

# September 19, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Philip Walton suggests making two copies of your production JavaScript. Easy enough to do with a Babel-based build process.

<!-- Browsers with ES module support load this file. -->
<script type="module" src="main.js"></script>

<!-- Older browsers load this file (and module-supporting -->
<!-- browsers know *not* to load this file). -->
<script nomodule src="main-legacy.js"></script>

He put together a demo project for it all and you're looking at 50% file size savings. I would think there would be other speed improvements as well, by using modern JavaScript methods directly.

Chrome to force .dev domains to HTTPS via preloaded HSTS

# September 19, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Mattias Geniar:

A lot of (web) developers use a local .dev TLD for their own development. ... In those cases, if you browse to http://site.dev, you'll be redirect[ed] to https://site.dev, the HTTPS variant.

That means your local development machine needs to;

Be able to serve HTTPs

Have self-signed certificates in place to handle that

Have that self-signed certificate added to your local trust store (you can't dismiss self-signed certificates with HSTS, they need to be 'trusted' by your computer)

This is probably generally A Good Thing™, but it is a little obnoxious to be forced into it on Chrome. They knew exactly what they were doing when they snatched up the .dev TLD. Isn't HSTS based on the entire domain though, not just the TLD?

React + Dataviz

# September 18, 2017 By Chris Coyier

There is a natural connection between Data Visualization (dataviz) and SVG. SVG is a graphics format based on geometry and geometry is exactly what is needed to visually display data in compelling and accurate ways.

SVG has got the "visualization" part, but SVG is more declarative than programmatic. To write code that digests data and turns it into SVG visualizations, that's well suited for JavaScript. Typically, that means D3.js ("Data-Driven Documents"), which is great at pairing data and SVG.

You know what else is good at dealing with data? React.

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A Rube Goldberg Machine

# September 18, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Ada Rose Edwards takes a look at some of the newer browser APIs and how they fit together:

These new APIs are powerful individually but also they complement each other beautifully, CSS custom properties being the common thread which goes through them all as it is a low level change to CSS.

The post itself is a showcase to them.

Speaking of new browser APIs, that was a whole subject on ShopTalk a few weeks back.

“The Notch” and CSS

# September 16, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Apple's iPhone X has a screen that covers the entire face of the phone, save for a "notch" to make space for a camera and other various components. The result is some awkward situations for screen design, like constraining websites to a "safe area" and having white bars on the edges. It's not much of a trick to remove it though, a background-color on the body will do. Or, expand the website the whole area (notch be damned), you can add viewport-fit=cover to your meta viewport tag.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, viewport-fit=cover"/>

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Design Tooling is Still Figuring Itself Out

# September 14, 2017 By Chris Coyier

It probably always will be, to be fair.

At the moment, there are all kinds of things that design software is struggling to address. The term "screen design" is common, referring to the fact that many of us are designing very specifically for screens, not print or any other application and screens have challenges unique to them. We have different workflows these days than in the past. We have different collaboration needs. We have different technological and economic needs.

Let's take a peak at all this weirdness.

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Is there any value in people who cannot write JavaScript?

# September 14, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Mandy Michael:

If all you do in your job is write JS, that is fantastic and you are awesome, just like all the people that write CSS or have a focus in a particular area like accessibility, SVG, animation etc.

What I am very concerned about is that many still don’t see value in being skilled in CSS & HTML. This attitude is something I just don’t understand. All of us working together provide value in our industry.

+1 on all Mandy's points.

I suspect HTML and CSS skill will swing back higher in desirability a bit as design trends swing toward more complicated looks. More interesting layouts being one of those things. I tend to find those developers who only dabble in HTML/CSS fall over quickly when it comes to from-scratch work that involves layout. There is a lot of gray area here too. For example, I write Ruby code, but I fall over quickly when it comes to even moderately complex things.

I also suspect this conversation is rooted in the fact that HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are so intertwined, it tickles some people the wrong way to see other people stop at the first two.

Design Resource Sites

# September 13, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Sometimes when you're designing something, you need little helping hands. Perhaps a nice stock photo. Perhaps a happy little color palette. Perhaps a bleep or bloop sound. Perhaps the perfect icon.

There are tons and tons of sites that do those things. There are fewer sites that curate these design resource sites into manageable, high-quality groups. So allow me to abstract that yet another step and provide a selected list of those types of sites.

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