A blog about web development, engineering leadership, digital strategy and the occasional off-topic rant.
Capability delivered through simplicity is one of my favorite features of tech. Digging into using durable redis to power a web-application, I found that it hits a perfect sweet spot of being easy to work with and capable of storing and relating diverse application data.
CSS is a flexible language that, in my opinion, requires opinions to be written well and consistently. Here are some of my opinions for writing good CSS.
A simple and effective way to apply a custom mask to the top and/or bottom of any container with CSS.
In 2010, my then girlfriend, now wife, reached out to stack-overflow for coding advice. This is that story.
A few musings and insights from a short bit of work conducted over the weekend.
As a person ingrained in technical details I've come to value the ability to communicate with others in an effective way.
An in-demand pattern distilled – a navbar that hides as you scroll down a page, but then instantly reappears and follows you when you scroll up.
The era of remote work requires change in the ways spatially established habits have been disrupted, including socializing and culture building.
My thoughts on the devaluing of front-end development, and how dealing with invisible contexts has become thankless work.
If you had to build a website right now, get started right away, what web technologies are you reaching for in 2024?
A short thought on AI and its progression and promises for the future.
vue/reactivity is a small, stand-alone reactivity system that any JavaScript framework can use. Here are three ways to create shared state stores with it.
No sponsors here, just an honest look back and review of a valuable and endlessly fun educational game for kids.
2023 marked the crescendo of the return of server-based web tech, and with it came a greater industrial appreciation of front-of-the-front-end skills.
Look out! There's a new persistent edge KV store in town! Let's take Deno KV and Deno Deploy for a spin by building a simple API.
A quick walk-through of an easy, artsy and impressive pure CSS visual effect.
Three years on since many companies went remote and some leaders still struggle with leading remotely. Here's what I think it takes.
Once thought to be an impossible ask, here's a simple workaround to allow customText hidden preheaders in Veeva and Salesforce emails.
Let's talk about why there aren't any.
The idea that the web is evolving quickly is obvious, but needs pointing out. Here I reflect on how that pace is starting to have an impact on teams that haven't kept up.
Only in the last few years have I realized that web dev as a profession and a hobby is like having a superpower, but it also makes me kind of weird.
Did you know there's an entire field of computer science barely yet explored? Join me at the entrance to a deep rabbit hole as we take a look at Robust-First Computation.
In development, we have "code smells." Extending the metaphor, here are some design smells that devs can pick up on as well.
A quick write up on how Astro made it very easy to track page reads in Cloudflare KV.
Let's look at how expectations can be used as an explicit device to improve work and working relationships.
Developer experience has ramped up in focus over the last few years as a way to increase platform adoption and developer productivity. Here are the features I think make for a good DX.
Processes and systems are often built with extreme flexibility in mind, but let's look at the case for at least considering not generalizing them for the sake of it.
After years of honing my leadership style, I've landed on a one-on-one format that I quite like. Here's a deep dive into it.
As someone who has been wanting to do a podcast but not having time for it. Blogcasting seems like a great middle-ground solution.
Astro 2.0 just landed, and with it some great new features including Content Collections. Let's have a look!
Are you a company looking to build a new website? As someone who built company websites for many years, I think you should consider not going with another WordPress site.
Applying context to websites often lives tied to content, or tied to the front end, or split into both. Here I propose building a new contextual layer separate from both.
What eats at our code? A quick explorative rambling of why we have to maintain and invest in all code and digital systems.
A lot of focus remains on success and failure as traits of progress, but I've learned that it's really momentum that you should keep your eye on.
Third-party frameworks and systems abstract away complexity, but often at the cost of flexibility. Escape hatches can be a great way to bring flexibility back without compromising features.
It feels really great to get over a hard hurdle. But don't stop there, do it again.
More than once I've written some snazzy JavaScript code that I want to quickly turn into a sharable library, but the process of how to easily do that has bogged me down enough to drop the idea entirely. Here's a look at using vite to quickly publish your code as a JavaScript Library.
Sometimes you need that little extra spark to go down a new pathway or face the unknown. When you're grasping for that push, do it for context.
Here's a practical look at using html2canvas to generate images for blog posts. You might be looking at said image right now!
Rather than having to completely rely on the client to render your content when you want to make it interactive or functional, progressively enhance it with petite-vue.
Reframing how you think about work toward a perspective of helping the folks around you can spread positive change at multiple levels.
Two things about web accessibility that we need to stop letting hold us back.
How do you sprinkle in interactive elements? For many of us it used to be jQuery, and now maybe it's vanilla JS or you've graduated up to a larger framework like React, Vue or Svelte. Here's my case for why you ought to take a look at petite-vue.
If you had to build a website right now, get started right away, what web technologies are you reaching for?
Divergent and convergent mindsets play a critical role in how I think of ideas and uncover solutions to problems. Here's a bit about why they're so useful to me.
Have you ever thought about the web having a fourth major, native language? Here are a few of my thoughts on it.
Ever hit the issue where you want numbered items to alphabetically order themselves numerically, so you lead them with zeros, which works until you have more digits than zeros. Leximited notation solves this issue, and then some!
A quick riff on an idea that has stuck with me for a bit and can really help if you lean into it.
Cloudflare Workers (Edge Functions) and their specialized KV product are the perfect tool to create a quick little API with persistent state.
Don't get stuck for too long thinking about, just go ahead and throw it.