Binyamin Green is a UI Designer and Front-end Developer.
On Mastodon, Matthias Ott asked , What information do you include in the README of a web project? Any great examples you can think of? Do you use a template? Or do you write them from scratch every single time? I started drafting a reply, which broke Mastodon's character limit. So, now it's a blog post. Anyhow, the structure of a readme often depends on the project, but there are some common…
I found this quote back in September. CSS is a programming language. As unintuitive as it might feel to you at times, it's not just these random things that happen. It's built using very specific rules. The problem is that most people never learn those rules. We start learning CSS by learning the syntax, which is super simple. That tricks us into thinking that it's a simple language. Don't let the…
I've been paying more attention to my website recently. I've been asking why it exists, what I want it to look like, and other such questions. Anyhow, as I rewrite my CSS, I've begun to realize how poorly I use it as a language. My process for writing it consists mostly of trial-and-error, without any idea of what I'm doing. That makes it hard to rewrite the code, since there's no organization or…
People have come to expect a repository's source code to guide them through the contribution process. That job belongs to documentation and developer guides. Comments are for the people writing the code, not necessarily the peanut gallery. If a readme was meant as a sales pitch, it would be a website or a blog post.
Sadness. It surrounds our thoughts and emotions. We want to the believe this emotion doesn't exist, let alone affect us. But it's always there. It watches from the rafters, and it pulls us elsewhere – not exactly down, and not upwards either. Sadness is a cat, and we are mice. And happiness is the mousetrap. Happiness is the delusion of perfection. What we truly seek is balance. Balance keeps your…
I was looking at some posts from my RSS feed, and a piece by Ethan Marcotte caught my eye. It helps to know that people still value kindness. Is there a piece of professional or life advice you’ve gotten that has always stuck with you? What is it? My grandmother once told me, “You should offer praise in public, and offer gentle criticism in private.” She said a lot that shaped the way I approach…
I originally wrote this around March 12, 2020. I forgot about it until recently. Here, I subtly introduce you to the topic at hand, and grab your attention. I may use fantastic words and extravagant linguistics, or I can just be really boring and stuff. That's called an introduction . Use it. Now, I start to get into the nitty-gritty of the article. I may include some cool things like {%…
I saved 65 KB on this site. Basically, I removed two web-fonts and cut out some CSS. Overall, I went from 93.8 KB to 28.8 KB. I rewrote my styles using vanilla CSS. Originally, I was using a SCSS because of its nesting capability. Another benefit of SCSS is that you can split your styles among multiple files. By default, CSS doesn't perform well in that respect [1] . An advantage of using CSS, was…
I read a post by Kev Quirk championing full-post RSS feeds. I'm trying to think of ways to encourage people who use my RSS feed (if they exist 😉) to actually read the articles on my website. Why? I work hard on my website. I try to be accessible at all times I aim for the optimal reading experience I design for aesthetics as well as simplicity Mainly, though, my website represents me . It's the…
This post explores the efficiency of my goal. To see what I actually finished in 2020, go to the end of the article . Head to my reading list for titles I may read in 2021. At the beginning of 2020, after seeing a Goodreads challenge, I decided to read twelve books that year. And I did read some wonderful books and novels. In Norse Mythology , Neil Gaiman paints a pretty picture of the Norse…
URIs don't change: people change them. That's what Tim Berners-Lee says, either way. I was reading his article "Cool URIs don't change" , and I started thinking about my own website. I recently implemented a micro blog , and it's possible that I will want more kinds of posts in the future. That's the answer, I realized! They're all posts , each with a different category . I decided to construct…
“Silence is Golden”, they say. They're right, of course. Silence is the key to every problem, as well as to every proposed solution. Arguing won't solve problems; not directly, anyhow. So what will? Listen, you say. And you yell, a long, painful moan. I sit, and you scream. I listen while you lament. It's a powerful dynamic, this. I learn your hardships, and you- well, I don't know what you do,…
Blogs can quickly become disorganized. You might want to link to a page on your website which only lists posts about CSS. With a bit of javascript, you can use /blog?tag=css to filter your posts. For the following method to work, each post item should have a data attribute of data-tags="[tag1,tag2]"> . On a related note, the method assumes a basic knowledge of HTML. Feel free to glance at…
On the front page of a blog, we often list the title of every post on the site. Jekyll will automatically list all pages within the _post directory under one collection. Eleventy , however, creates collections based on the tags. In other words, the only way to tell Eleventy that your page is a blog post is by adding an extra tag. You may not want to add the same tag for every post, especially if…
Intricate worlds ensnare the mind. For this reason, I enjoy reading fantasy and science-fiction books. There are so many good novels, and endless amounts of excellent short-fiction. To create a list of my favorite stories is impossible — I have so many! What follows, then, is a rough list of a couple books which I adore. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix By J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter,…
Note: This article is a summary of https://peterthaleikis.com/business-idea-validation/ Eureka! You have a business idea. What should you do first? No, It's not the development phase. It isn't the design or the marketing stage. The process begins with validating your idea. People like to jump at whims, but starting with research is helpful for many reasons. Most likely, you have no money set aside…
I've always tried to avoid Webpack. I would tell myself it was either too complicated or unnecessary. After all, it's not the only tool of its kind on the market. Yet recently I've come to terms with Webpack. Once you know how to use it, it can be a very effective tool. Webpack's main usage is bundling JavaScript. In node.js, we generally use require or import to include an external resource in…
Okay, so it hasn't actually been a year. It's been slightly over eight months. But I digress. Since February of 2019, I have been a moderator on a discord community named DesignCourse (Coursetro) . Created by YouTuber Gary Simon, this place serves as a forum for questions and discussions regarding all sorts of design and development related topics. Recently, I realized that I have grown as a mod,…
Adobe XD is becoming the go-to tools for UI/UX Designers in 2019. It’s free, modern, and extensible. XD has many features, some of which you may not be aware of. Here are five useful tips for working within Adobe XD. Math Adobe XD, as well as other programs such as Blender, Gimp and Inkscape, allows math in the input fields. Let’s say that I had two circles with a width of 258px each , and I…