Fair warning, this post doesn’t really conform to my usual content model of frontend/CSS writing. But, as the song goes, “It’s my party, and I’ll write if I want to”. 😁
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The Greensock animation library’s ScrollTrigger and Draggable plugins can help us create some very cool effects that respond to user interaction. In this article for Codrops we’ll look at how to use them together, to create an interactive timeline that’s both scrollable and draggable. We’ll be building a timeline showing the albums of the rock band Radiohead — but you can choose any subject matter you like!
Read it on Codrops
Another year gone by, and it’s time to reflect on the highlights and look ahead to some goals for next year. Like Hidde, I prefer not to dwell too much on the negatives for these end-of-year posts. Suffice to say, in another pandemic year, there have been plenty of lows as well as highs.
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Just a few days ago Safari gave us all an early Christmas present: the latest Safari Technology Preview release includes support for the :has() pseudo-class! Otherwise known as the “parent selector”, (but officially termed in the the spec ‘The Relational Pseudo-class’) it allows us to style an element based on its descendants. We can do things like (off the top of my head) style any sections that contain img elements:
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As web developers we don’t tend to talk a great deal about the environmental impact of the products we build. But the uncomfortable truth is that the web is responsible for a growing proportion of carbon emissions. Rising temperatures, increasingly extreme weather events, and the failure of this year’s COP26 conference to deliver strong leadership have all highlighted the urgency of reducing our emissions if we’re to avoid disastrous climate change. The commitments of world leaders may have fallen short, but we all have a role to play, and we can’t escape our responsibility.
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In this article for CSS Tricks’ end-of-year series I wrote about how we in the web development industry should examine the environmental impact of the products we’re building, and some resources to help us do so.
Read it on CSS Tricks
An interesting notification from @cyishere popped up in my Twitter feed the other day:
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There’s more to color on the web than meets the eye, and it’s about to get a lot more interesting! In this article, we’ll take a look at the best ways to use colors in a design system, and what we can expect from our colors in the not-too-distant future.
Read it on Smashing Magazine
I recently had the priviledge of chatting to Phil Burgess on the IT Career Energizer Podcast about my journey into web development, and advice to new developers starting out on that path. You can listen to the episode here — it’s also available on all your favourite podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more)!
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I’m not one for taking loads of courses. It’s hard to find the time, and when it comes to learning I always feel that, for me, doing beats reading any day. That said, I’ve dipped into a few great courses recently that I’ve learned loads from, so I thought I’d share them with you fine folks here.
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I recently received some great advice from Scott O’Hara on improving the accessibility of a demo featuring a reduced-motion toggle (for this article). The demo sets the play-state of the animation depending on the user’s motion preferences (using the prefers-reduced-motion media query). Users could also click the button to toggle motion on and off, which also changes the text of the button to “Turn on motion” or “Turn off motion”. Here’s the original version:
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The prefers-reduced-motion media query has excellent support in all modern browsers going back a couple of years. In this article, we’ll look at how to use it today to make your sites more accessible.
Read it on Smashing Magazine