A Roundup of Recent Frontend Work
With podcast appearances few and far between lately, the bulk of recent activity has been behind the scenes at CodePen, where the team is spending significant time on long-term exploration rather than shipping frequent public releases. That shift means fewer typical CodePen Radio episodes about new features, but it's opened up the show for conversations with community members like Cassie Evans, George Francis, Lynn Fisher, and Aaron Iker, with more guests planned.
The CodePen Challenges have also been running consistently, and November 2021 saw the highest participation month to date, a sign that the prompts are resonating with the community.
ShopTalk Approaches a Milestone
Over at ShopTalk, the show is nearing its 500th episode, expected early next year, having published new audio episodes every week this year without missing a beat. Recent highlights include conversations on modern image handling, CSS performance and learning new CSS in 2022, and how building websites today compares to 1996.
The bigger development is the launch of new video episodes, which have their own home on the site. Standouts cover a realistic front-end interview experience, why details elements could use a pizza arrow, and a look at building with various web component libraries. New episodes are also being posted to the CSS-Tricks YouTube channel.
Serverless Microsite Rebuilt with Astro
In a bit of housekeeping, the Power of Serverless for Front-End Developers microsite has been rewritten in Astro. Originally built with Gatsby, the content was ported as a way to test Astro and simplify the codebase, and the result is a site that's much easier to navigate and understand. The NetlifyCMS integration has been removed for now, not because of any dissatisfaction, but simply due to time constraints for reconfiguration. Contributions are welcome via the GitHub repo; since the entire site is built from Markdown files in folders, adding a new service to a category is as simple as submitting a Pull Request with a logo image.
It would be interesting to make the contribution process even smoother by allowing Pull Requests to be generated from a static form on the site itself.
Conference Calendar Sparse
The conferences microsite currently lists just three events, an indication that the in-person event circuit hasn't fully recovered. Updates are welcome either through Pull Requests or direct contact; on a personal note, there are no talks booked, though there's some nostalgia-driven work on a new deck in progress.
