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Today’s topic is Trig Functions. I feel like Trig Functions don’t get a lot of love because nobody seems to know what you would actually use them for. I don’t get to go over it in the talk very much. Let’s actually show a demo of where you might want to use something like this. Trig Functions The Trig functions that are now available are as follows: sin() cos() tan() asin() acos() atan() atan2()…
My junior developer just came to me asking for help because their linting setup was broken. I’m writing this very quickly because I want to get all the details down. Junior Dev: “My linting is broken, can you help?” Me: “Sure” get on a call with junior dev junior dev runs linting command which ends with lots of “command failed” errors as well as a line that says “17 warnings, 2 errors” Junior Dev:…
Editor’s Note: previous titles for this article have been added here for posterity. The future of web development is blockchain. Get on or get left behind. The future of web development is CSS-inJS. Get on or get left behind. The future of web development is Progressive Web Apps. Get on or get left behind. The future of web development is Silverlight. Get on or get left behind The future of web…
I’ve been mulling this topic for months now, and I’m pretty firmly of the opinion if you are attempting to do some layout in CSS, you should reach for display:grid first, followed by display:block , followed by display:flex . Grid allows the layout element to be in control of how things get placed, where as flex really relies on the children to define their widths, which most of the time is not…
I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling… inadequate. There is an anger that flairs up about it too. A lot of this stems from my ADHD and learning disabilities, and that growing up, I had many teachers give me the classic line: “You’re so smart, if you only applied yourself a bit more, you’d be a straight A student.” (Note: don’t ever say this to a kid with ADHD) Sometimes though, I really am giving…
At work we have a standard layout we are using where there is a nav bar on the left hand side of the screen and content on the right hand side of the screen (this gets flipped for RTL languages). The nav bar can be in an expanded or collapsed state. Rather than trying to have multiple media queries for the content area to the right based on whether the nav bar is expanded or collapsed, we’re…
I recently read the post We’ve Got Container Queries Now, But Are We Actually Using Them? over at Frontend Masters Boost, and I realized that it would probably be helpful for me to document real world uses for container queries. Today’s example: A Pagination Component. We recently rewrote pagination at work, and I decided this is an excellent use for container queries. The pagination component has…
This post is gonna be salty, but after years and years of teaching developers to add click handlers to divs, add inputs with no labels, and generally insisting that they know better than you, react has released their version 19 beta and it includes support for web components and form actions. React has had the ability to add support for custom elements for LITERALLY YEARS , as there has been a…
Inspiration came from Stu Robson The DevRel Went Down to Georgia (to the tune of The Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” ) The DevRel went down to Georgia, they had some code to shill They were in a bind, cause they were way behind, and the VP wasn’t thrilled When they came upon this young dev pushing to main and cursing a lot The DevRel sat right down and said, “Hey let me…
LLMs are a great tool if they are used responsibly. However when you blindly copy and paste the results, it will make your life hell. Don’t Trust The AI We’re currently having to rewrite large portions of our code at work because of a pattern introduced by an LLM that was 100% wrong. It’s not some small part of the codebase either. It’s the data layer. In no way is this code close to being good or…
A philosophy that you should always maintain when developing is to Write The Fricken Manual. Many times over the years, i’ve heard the advice to “RTFM”. But the documentation wasn’t great. And no one was writing it. This sounds ridiculous, but until recently, the React documentation was spread across blog posts and tweets, and a huge effort was put into making a new documentation site that was up…
I’m trying out some new art direction here at alex.party. let’s see if it works….
I’ve been nerd sniped . A few weeks ago, Raymond Camden posted about An Image Dialog Web Component and I read that article, added some discussion about how you’d style it, then promptly stopped thinking about it… consciously . I think it’s been floating around in the back of my brain because another colleague recently asked what lightbox scripts people were using with astro and other SSGs. My…
Right, here’s a weird one. I know what many of you are thinking: Alex, why the heck are you writing about React? The answer is, I just solved an issue for someone and they said to write a blog post. So fine, I’m writing a blog post. Shared React Context So my friend had a problem: I’ve not dealt with this before: I’m helping someone who has a React component that is reused across a codebase. It…
I have recently seen at least 2 people make a wrapper around useFetch in Nuxt 3 incorrectly by trying to call useFetch as though it were fetch . While the approach they take will usually work (in general), it will very quickly cause you to have multiple errors and weird side effects. Generally, the example i have seen is something like this: export const useDataThing = ( ) => { // grabing some…
Last week Chris and Dave mentioned that they don’t get why you have to call super when you’re in a class. Let’s learn you a thing So first let’s just cover what I’m gonna be talking about here. We’re talking about the super keyword that can be used in JS classes. This keyword is most commonly used in the constructor of a class, and Dave asks: “Why doesn’t class auto-imply super?” The answer is:…
Alright, I’ll admit I am the least qualified person to talk about this. But as a mediocre white guy in tech on the internet, I’m going to share my experience. A bit of backstory I don’t work out. I should. All of my doctors agree on that point. In fact, all of those doctors would be pleased if I just started walking a little each day. But my brain is bad, and it thinks that taking a walk is the…
I’ll admit I went on a bit of a rant the other day on this topic because I find the way people are taught about Currying functions is typically with the least useful examples ever. This is in part because of the push for the functional programming paradigm in JavaScript (which until we have Records and Tuples will continue to be laughable, in my opinion) but also because a Currying Function is a…
I have recently had the opportunity to muse about process and how we maintain a system. One of the things in particular that I have been thinking about the most is onboarding new people into your project. In my ideal situation, a developer being able to have a local copy of code up and running should only be limited by the speed of their internet connection. The best way to ensure this is the case…
Dave Rupert saw me on stream talk about JSON:API and suggested I write a blog about it. So here we are with a clickbait title, and lots of opinions. What is JSON:API? Let’s start with this. JSON:API is a specification for how to format the data for your REST API. It has a standard interface, a standard way of handling filtering, sorting, paging, and relationships. It is a fantastic tool when a…
I’m setting up some automations, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to let folks know more effectively what it is that I’m writing about and doing lately. I’m doing this automation using IFTTT and hopefully (if this goes right) it’ll post to twitter, mastodon, and linkedin. Sorry linked in folks if y’all came here and were blinded by the sudden flash of colors and Comic Neue. I promise, I do write…
Todd Libby recently posted about the need for conference organizers to support those of us who don’t want to drink. As someone who has been sober for 13+ years now, I agree whole heartedly with this sentiment. Sometimes it is difficult for people who don’t regularly think about this to know how to have actionable ways of changing things though. So, I’m going to give you some tips. You’re welcome.…
Jen Simmons recently posted an interesting question about website thinking for 2023, and I waded into the conversation and realized I have strong opinions as a mediocre white guy in tech. So I’m gonna go into my headspace about these topics. Websites, Applications, and Web Apps Are Both All the Same and Separate When we talk about these 3 concepts, you can have a multitude of combinations of how…
I don’t really like to make resolutions for the new year because I am terrible at following through on them. I do think that this year, I need to focus on me a bit more. Work on exercising, work on finding a hobby or two, and not make everything about content creation. Tired I’m so tired. My yearly seasonal depression has severely impacted my ability to function, and I’m planning on reworking my…
Hey Y’all, So I spent this past thursday feverishly working on moving my blog from Gridsome and Netlify CMS over to Astro and StaticCMS and let me tell you what: It has been extremely rewarding. Gridsome and Netlify-CMS are Dead, Long Live Astro and StaticCMS I am not one to try and constantly change out how things work. I try to find a system I like and stick with it (mostly out of laziness). At…
Well, I am testing out this new astro setup, and using the Static JS CMS to edit my posts. Let’s see how this goes. Currently I’m going to test the draft flag? I may need to edit some code to see if that works correctly. LETS FIND OUT! Update : the draft feature now works…. I might also do something fun with this.
Chris Coyier had an interesting post on integration vs end to end testing. I made a reply that I want to kinda dig into a little bit. The Testing Pyramid is Weird I have always found the Unit, Integration, and End to End testing pyramid to be a bit… clunky? The names describe how much you are testing, which is great, but it doesn’t give much perspective as to what you are actually trying to test.…
S o Cassie Evans tweeted this the other day: Frameworks obfuscate away & front-end dev spans so many specialities. When there's a 'discussion' on here it's common to see folks say 'learn the web platform'. Got me thinking. What's the most useful thing you've learnt about the web platform for YOUR area of expertise? — CSS Evils 😈 !important (@cassiecodes) October 26, 2022 This got me thinking…
I think I now have a few people reading this, so I should update it more regularly, so let’s get some life updates in here. Upcoming Speaking Engagements THAT Conference at the end of July. MagnoliaJS in September. Plus some other ones might be around the corner too. Stay tuned. Recent Projects/Pens This Site is Empty Theme System for page wide themes defineCustomElement accordion General Updates…
So a couple of months ago I purchased 2 of “The Key v2” as an impulse purchase. I got a link to it a couple of minutes before the link went out to everyone, and so I pulled a Phillip J. Fry. They arrived yesterday, and so i plugged one in. The joke about these keyboards is that they have 3 buttons: Control, C, and V. Everything a good programmer needs to copy and paste from stack overflow.…
Yesterday we went to Hot Betty’s Breakfast Bar for lunch and I figured I’d write down some thoughts. Food The food was alright. I got the Chicken and Waffles and wasn’t blown away, but also it wasn’t terrible. The chicken was well cooked and had a good crispy fried outside, and a tender juicy inside. However, it was… lacking in flavor? Pizzazz? Kick? I also had coffee which was from The Corner Cup…
I don’t have any brilliant insights to share today, or anything like that, I’m mostly just wanting to kinda put out some information because I feel like I should write more regular updates. I’ve recently started using centered.app to help me focus, and BOY HOWDY has it helped (please ignore that I am writing this while not using it.) It helped so much so, that I took some time to make some…
This week I had the opportunity to make a Gutenberg block and there are a few things I learned in The process. @wordpress/scripts is your friend I was impressed by the energy and effort put into the build process for blocks. The automatic webpack 5 config, along with all the tooling also provided was very refreshing and gave a really great developer experience. Also, it was refreshing to see a…
I found out that the JavaScript in operator is more versatile than I thought while on stream a couple of weeks ago, so let’s write a post about it so I can explain it to myself later. for Loops Let’s start with the place you might have seen the in operator before. There are 3 ways of doing for loops in JavaScript. Classic for Loop See the Pen <a href="https://codepen.io/fimion/pen/VwMXvEd"> for…
Look, let’s be honest. You aren’t really here for some earth shattering information. You saw a very clickbaity title that I made to troll Cassidy Williams and quite honestly, I don’t think she was ACTUALLY expecting this. As long as you are here though, I should write up some interesting links that I’ve found over the past few days that caught my attention. Building The SSG I’ve Always Wanted: An…
At the behest of Dave Rupert in the Shop Talk Show D-D-D-Discord , I’m going to talk about my adventures in making an efficient and poorly designed typo-squatting knock-off of CSS-Tricks.com called CSS-Trickz.com , which turned into an experiment in how to make a cached and auto building site on Netlify, using their new On-Demand Builders . Note: I want to make it clear here, Chris Coyier knows I…
Vue 3 has been out for almost 8 months now. Adoption is slow. This is feeling a little like another major version bump I’ve lived through. Is Vue the new Python? When I started developing this go around, I was getting into Python and I was confused about Python 2 vs Python 3 and what I should be using. This was back in 2015, and the support for Python 3 was very low. Similarly, Vue 3 has been…
Every once in a while, you find a feature of JavaScript you never knew about that has always been there. Labels are one of those odd vestigial bits of the language that make you go “But why?” I have previously read about and experimented with labels on for loops in JavaScript and after seeing Brendan Eich tweet about it , I decided to experiment on if statements as well. I threw together a little…
I upgraded an app to Vue 3 and I learned some things about it. I’ve just finished upgrading vue-solitaire to use Vue 3. There are 3 main things I learned in this process that I wanted to let you (dear reader) know about. First, the way you add global components has changed a little. Next, the way apps mount has both syntactically changed, as well as how it ends up in the DOM has changed. Finally,…
I’m diving into react, coming from vue, and I have some thoughts. I started Kent C. Dodd’s Epic React course, and first off, i’ve barely scratched the surface. This course is excellent, and will likely be my go to recommendation if someone wants to learn react. While the course is fantastic, I find React… awkward. Some of this is that JSX looks like a syntax error for me. But I’m working on…
I have now added comments to my site. I am trying out using utteranc.es as my commenting system. This integrates with the github issues for my blog’s repo and so we will see how well this works. I fully expect no one to comment. But if you do: Hey, you’re awesome.
ES6 classes have been around for a little while now, so let’s talk about a key difference between using them and using a more traditional object prototype extending method of creating JavaScript classes. At work the other day I ran into a bit of code I was trying to test that relied on @google/markerclustererplus and google maps. Google has released @googlemaps/jest-mocks which helps some with the…
I had the pleasure of giving my talk “Dependency Injection in Vue.js” at Connect.Tech 2019. Here’s where you can see more about it. Video: ConnectTech2019 - Dependency Injection in Vue - Alex Riviere Slides: https://slides.com/fimion/connect-tech-2019#/ Codepen Examples: https://codepen.io/collection/AaLZBm
I recently have updated the styling of my site to have a bit more… character? The other day someone linked me to dory-funk.com and I was immediately mesmerized by the background. It reminded me of my early days of the internet and messing around with HTML at that time. I opened up the background in a separate tab and watched it. After a bit, I thought to myself, “Couldn’t you achieve this with…
My first pass at a talk that is an intro to Vue.js and how you can use it without a build step. Watch Highlight: Why Vue.js? - A First Pass from Fimion on www.twitch.tv
Huzzah for feed readers! I’ve added an rss feed to the blog, so in theory, you can now subscribe in your favorite feed reader. At the moment, it only has the excerpt, and not the content. If there is interest in the content being in there, I will look into that. You should leave a comment… ohhhh… hmmm… Next on my to-do list will be adding a comment system!
Thoughts on moving to a new system. I am currently moving alex.party over to the netlify name servers. Soon this will be the new home of my blog! Maybe I can also get some of my other old domains pointing here too. Anyway, I wanted to make a system that was more maintainable than the old system. The old system was an early attempt at making a blog in vue and I will likely salvage what I can from…
Hello world! I’m rebooting my blog as a gridsome site. because it’s like gatsby but for vue… or at least that is my understanding. Let’s see how this goes…
(This post was originally published on CodePen, but I’m putting it here. Enjoy!) This is a follow up post to my previous post about Vuejs and Dependency Injection In my previous post, I described a couple of ways to use provide and inject in Vue components. In this post I’m going to cover how to use provide / inject reactively. This method is not recommended, and we will go over some pros and cons…
(This post was originally published on CodePen, but I’m putting it here. Enjoy!) I was reading the recently updated Vue docs and saw a bit about Dependency Injection , provide , and inject . I hadn’t ever noticed these features before. The docs give an example of utilizing this for google maps, but don’t really give examples of it otherwise. I felt I should experiment with it some. First off, what…