Photo gallery tutorial with tags using the File Properties API
Tutorial using the Azure Face Recognition API, the DBX File Properties API, and the DBX JavaScript SDK to build a photo gallery with tags.
Getting different sizes of thumbnails using the JavaScript Chooser
How uses Dropbox as a file backend for JavaScript apps
Some love for JavaScript applications
Quickly integrate file upload in your app using the Dropbox Chooser
The Dropbox Chooser is an easy-to-implement, pre-built component that allows users to access their Dropbox files from within your app.
Adventures in CSS Semi-Transparency Land
Recently, I was asked to make some tweaks to a landing page and, among the things I found in the code, there were two semitransparent overlays — both with the
Simplifying view updates in JavaScript with the Datastore API
Should I useState or useReducer?
Two built-in React hooks that handle state, which one should you use?
Setting Height And Width On Images Is Important Again — Smashing Magazine
Thanks to some recent changes in browsers, it’s now well worth setting `width` and `height` attributes on your images to prevent layout shifts and improve the experience of your site visitors. Barry Polland loves improvements that just work without any effort required of website owners. That is not to ignore the hard work required by the browser developers and standardization teams, of course, but
Writing a file with the Dropbox JavaScript SDK
Checking the datastore sync status in JavaScript
Currying in CSS
Funny timing on this I was just looking at the website for Utopia (which is a responsive type project which I hate to admit I don't fully understand) and I
Avoid Keyboard Event-Related Bugs In Browser-Based Transliteration — Smashing Magazine
Transliteration is a popular way to input non-English characters using an English keyboard. The typical method of implementing this is via keyboard event capturing but there’s no uniform support from mobile browsers. In this article, Sandamal Siripathi explains a new method to eliminate such browser-related problems when developing web apps that use transliteration.
Introducing Alpine.js: A Tiny JavaScript Framework — Smashing Magazine
Ever built a website and reached for jQuery, Bootstrap, Vue.js or React to acheive some basic user interaction? Alpine.js is a fraction of the size of these frameworks because it involves no build steps and provides all of the tools you need to build a basic user interface. Today, Phil Smith is going to take a closer look at Alpine.js and how it can replace JQuery or larger JavaScript libraries to
What React Does (and Doesn't Do)
With a name as big as React, it's bound to cause some Stream-Crossing Confusion, as I like to call it. How do you center a <div> in React? Dave Ceddia:
How We Created a Static Site That Generates Tartan Patterns in SVG
Tartan is a patterned cloth that’s typically associated with Scotland, particularly their fashionable kilts. On tartanify.com, we gathered over 5,000 tartan
Why Are We Talking About CSS4? — Smashing Magazine
Around the web and within the CSS Working Group, there has been some discussion about whether we should specify a version of CSS — perhaps naming it CSS4. In this article, Rachel Andrew rounds up some of the pros and cons of doing so, and asks for your feedback on the suggestion.
Making Things Better: Redefining the Technical Possibilities of CSS
Robin recently lamented the common complaint that CSS is frustrating. There are misconceptions about what it is and what it does. There are debates about what
4 Ways to Animate the Color of a Text Link on Hover
Let’s create a pure CSS effect that changes the color of a text link on hover… but slide that new color in instead of simply swapping colors.
Vue.js: The Documentary
Hey how cool! A documentary about Vue! Good timing as it looks like VueConf is happening right now. (Reminder we have a site for conferences to tell you stuff
Selectors Explained
Have you ever found yourself either writing a CSS selector that winds up looking confusing as heck, or seen one while reading through someone's code? That
The Perils of Hydration
A surprisingly-common misconception can lead to big rendering issues that are difficult to debug. This deep-dive tutorial examines how React and Gatsby can be used to pre-render content, and how we can work around the constraints to build dynamic, personalized web apps.
Project LightSpeed: Rewriting the Messenger codebase for a faster, smaller, and simpler messaging app
We are excited to begin rolling out the new version of Messenger on iOS. To make the Messenger iOS app faster, smaller, and simpler, we rebuilt the architecture and rewrote the entire codebase, which is an incredibly rare undertaking and involved engineers from across the company. Compared with the previous iOS version, this new Messenger […]
HTML: The Inaccessible Parts
<input type="number">, <input type="date">, <input type="search">, <select multiple>, <progress>, <meter>,
Why is CSS Frustrating?
Here’s a great thread by Kevin Powell that's making the rounds. He believes so many folks see CSS as a frustrating and annoying language:
When CSS Blocks
Tim Kadlec:
Creating Native Components That Accept React Native Subviews - Shopify
This guide will show you how to make a native component that provides bottom sheet functionality to React Native and renders React views inside.
Pages for Likes
I posted about parsing an RSS feed in JavaScript the other day. I also posted about my RSS setup talking about how Feedbin is at the heart of it.
Persisting React State in localStorage
A common thing in React development is that we want to store a bit of React state in localStorage, and re-initialize from that value on the next page-load. This quick tutorial shows you how we can build a custom hook that does exactly this!
Setting Up Tailwind CSS In A React Project — Smashing Magazine
In this article, Blessing Krofegha introduces Tailwind CSS, a CSS library that gives you all of the building blocks you need to build bespoke designs without opinionated styles. With Tailwind CSS, you get to create the components that suit what you want or what you are working on. These components can be created by harnessing the power of the utility-first prowess of Tailwind CSS. You’ll also lear
Animate SVG Path Changes in CSS
Every once in a while I'm motivated to attempt to draw some shapes with <path>, the all-powerful drawing syntax of SVG. I only understand a fragment of
How To Use The HTML Drag-And-Drop API In React — Smashing Magazine
In this tutorial, Chidi Orji will show you how to build a React drag-and-drop component for file and image uploads. In the process, we’ll learn about the HTML drag-and-drop API. We will also learn how to use the useReducer hook for managing state in a React functional component.
How to Build Vue Components in a WordPress Theme
The inline-template directive allows us to build rich Vue components as a progressive enhancement over existing WordPress markup.
How To Make Cross-Browser Testing More Efficient With LambdaTest — Smashing Magazine
Whether you’re building a new site or you’re managing a live one, you can’t afford to make any changes without a process for cross-browser testing and a tool to do the heavy lifting for you. LambdaTest’s wide array of tests are the answer. From fully automated cross-browser tests to semi-automated tasks, we’re going to explore a much more efficient way to review your websites and all their browser
HTML Data Attributes Guide
Everything you ever wanted to know about data attributes in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Moving from Vanilla JavaScript to a Reusable Vue Component
I recently wrote an article explaining how you can create a countdown timer using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Now, let’s look at how we
Links and Buttons Guide
Our complete guide to links, buttons, and button-like inputs in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Creating a Details Element That Opens But Never Closes
The <details> and <summary> elements in HTML are useful for making content toggles for bits of text. By default, you see the <summary>
While You Weren't Looking, CSS Gradients Got Better
One thing that caught my eye on the list of features for Lea Verou's conic-gradient() polyfill was the last item:
Why JavaScript is Eating HTML
Web development is always changing. One trend in particular has become very popular lately, and it fundamentally goes against the conventional wisdom about
Setting Up API Mocking With Mirage JS And Vue.js — Smashing Magazine
Almost all JavaScript projects that can be found out in the wild interact with a web service or API and either use it for authentications or getting user-related data. In this article, Kelvin Omereshone introduces Mirage JS, an API mocking library that lets you build, test and share a complete working JavaScript application without having to rely on any backend API or services. You’ll also learn h
Building an Images Gallery using PixiJS and WebGL
Sometimes, we have to go a little further than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the UI we need, and instead use other resources, like SVG, WebGL, canvas,
Understanding CSS Grid: Grid Template Areas — Smashing Magazine
In a new series, Rachel Andrew breaks down the CSS Grid Layout specification. This time, Rachel Andrew will learn how to use the grid-template-areas property to define placement on the grid and find out how the property really works. If you haven’t used this layout method before, give it a try. We find that it is a lovely way to experiment with layouts and often use it when prototyping a layout —
How to Fetch and Parse RSS Feeds in JavaScript
Say you have an RSS feed like this one. The goal is to request that RSS feed, parse it, and do something useful with the data in it. RSS is XML, and XML is
The Hooks of React Router
React Router 5 embraces the power of hooks and has introduced four different hooks to help with routing. You will find this article useful if you are looking
An Interview With Rémi Parmentier: A SmashingConf Austin Speaker — Smashing Magazine
SmashingConf is coming to Austin, and in this post, Rachel Andrew brings you an interview with one of our speakers, Rémi Parmentier, who will be presenting on HTML email and aiming to solve all of your email creation woes. You can find all of that content, including a full transcript of the webinar in the post “Become An HTML Email Geek With These Videos From Rémi Parmentier.
Custom Styling Form Inputs With Modern CSS Features
It’s entirely possible to build custom checkboxes, radio buttons, and toggle switches these days, while staying semantic and accessible. We don’t even need a
How To Create Maps With React And Leaflet — Smashing Magazine
Leaflet is a very powerful tool, and we can create a lot of different kinds of maps. This tutorial will help you understand how to create an advanced map along with the help of React and Vanilla JS. In this article, Shajia Abidi is going to represent the locations of the non-medical fire incidents to which the SF Fire Department responded on a map.
Getting Acquainted With Svelte, the New Framework on the Block
For the last six years, Vue, Angular, and React have run the world of front-end component frameworks. Google and Facebook have their own sponsored frameworks,
Browser Version Release Spectrum
Whenever a browser upgrades versions, it's a little marketing event, and rightly so. Looks like for Firefox it's about once a month, Chrome is ~6 weeks, and
A Day in the Life of a Frontend Product Engineer at Slack
6:45am The sound of coffee grinding wakes me up 15 minutes before my alarm. I’m not a morning person, but I always stumble bleary-eyed into the kitchen for some toast and coffee with my partner, which is my favorite daily ritual. I sit down, listen to my morning news podcasts — The Daily and AM…
Magic Flip Cards: Solving A Common Sizing Problem — Smashing Magazine
In this article, Dan Halliday reviews the standard approach to creating animated flip cards, and introduces an improved method which solves its sizing problem. You’re going to build a flip card grid with some CSS basics — transforms, flex, and grid. Dan will cover: how flip cards are usually implemented using absolute positioning, the sizing problem that absolute positioning introduces, and a gene
CSS4
What is CSS4? Is it a real thing? I hate to break it to you, but not really. But maybe we could make it a thing? CSS3 was successful, so why not keep that train rolling like they do in JavaScript?
How to Create an Animated Countdown Timer With HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Have you ever needed a countdown timer on a project? For something like that, it might be natural to reach for a plugin, but it’s actually a lot more
Get Moving (or not) with CSS Motion Path
We just linked up the idea that offset-path can be cleverly used to set type on a path. Don't miss Michelle Barker's experimentation either, with drawing
Smaller HTML Payloads with Service Workers
Short story: Philip Walton has a clever idea for using service workers to cache the top and bottom of HTML files, reducing a lot of network weight.
How To Create A Card Matching Game Using Angular And RxJS — Smashing Magazine
Today, Anna Prenzel would like to focus on data streams resulting from click events on the user interface. The processing of such clickstreams is particularly useful for applications with an intensive user interaction where many events have to be processed. This article is dedicated to Angular developers who want to harness the concept of reactive programming. This is a programming style that — si
JAMstack at the Edge: How we built Built with Workers… on Workers
We're showcasing developers building incredible projects with tools like Workers KV or our streaming HTML rewriter.
Apollo GraphQL without JavaScript
It's cool to see progressive enhancement being done even while using the fanciest of the fancy front-end technologies.
Practice GraphQL Queries With the State of JavaScript API
Learning how to build GraphQL APIs can be quite challenging. But you can learn how to use GraphQL APIs in 10 minutes! And it so happens I've got the perfect
