~frontendfocus | Bookmarks (283)

Help Invent CSS Grid Level 3, Aka “Masonry” Layout — Masonry style layouts (above) see content laid out like a brick/stone wall. It’s a popular pattern, but one that rapidly becomes difficult to get just right. Real-world feedback is now being sought from devs and designers on how CSS should handle such layouts. This article runs through the current proposal, the debate at the heart of things,...

Detect JavaScript Support in CSS — A way to provide alternative CSS rules depending on whether or not JavaScript is available in the user’s browser. It can also help reduce flashes of unstyled content or undesirable layout shifts. There are a few gotchas to be aware of though.

HTML Attributes vs. DOM Properties — They’re completely different, but often coupled. Jake outlines the the difference, and why it matters.

Don’t Use the maxlength Attribute to Stop Users From Exceeding the Limit — “the maxlength attribute doesn’t improve UX, it degrades it”.

The F-Shape Pattern and How Users Read — When users consume your content they will be scrolling, scanning, and skipping around your page. Here’s what you need to know about typical reading behavior and design strategies you can consider to prevent potentially unwanted scanning patterns.

The Ultimate CSS Shapes Collection — Single-element implementation. Lots to choose from, including some rather novel options. One click to copy the code!

CSS in React Server Components — An exploration of compatibility issues between React Server Components and CSS-in-JS libraries like styled-components, including what some of your options are and what’s coming in future.

Gap is the New Margin — Chris highlights how the use of the margin property is now on the decline, slowly.

What if You Had Real Control Over Light Mode / Dark Mode on a Per-Site Basis? — Bramus thinks that a dark mode toggle should be a browser-level feature, and notes that thanks to the Web Preferences API, that might become a reality someday.

Displaying HTML Web Components — A brief look at using display: contents to work around the issues with support for the is attribute in HTML.

Things That Can Break aspect-ratio in CSS — Three things that may break, or cause unexpected results, when using the aspect-ratio property.

CSS Text Fragment Selector (Please) — What could syntax for a CSS selector to jump to and highlight a block (or more) of text look like?

Anchor Position Tool — CSS anchor positioning is on the way, and one rather neat layout mechanism that’s part of the spec is inset-area. This (Chrome Canary only) demo from Una demonstrates how it works. It’s super early days for this (you can see the draft spec here) but it should prove rather powerful once widely available.

My Favorite Animation Trick: Exponential Smoothing — Something as small as tweaking the acceleration curve of a UI element’s animations or scrolling can have a striking end result.

Classnames: Find Inspiration for Naming HTML Classes, CSS Properties, or JS Functions — This little resource is ostensibly to help with the common ‘naming things is hard’ problem in programming, offering thematically grouped lists of words with direct links to their meanings.

SVG Encoder: A Simple Tool to Convert SVG Into Different Formats, Ready for Use in CSS and HTML — The formats are things like URL encoded, Base64 encoded, optimized as a one-liner, no transforms, and other variations of those.

CSS Gradients: A Gallery of 275 'Click-to-Copy' CSS Gradients — Includes quite a few unique examples (i.e. not just two-color gradients) that you might find useful or simply for inspiration.

Layer Cake: A Graphics Framework for Svelte — This library gives you a baseline for creating responsive web graphics via common elements (e.g. a coordinate system and scales). See numerous example components here.

Some DevTools Tips and Tricks — Most devs barely scratch the surface of what DevTools can accomplish, says the author, who shares ten tips here.

iOS404 — An overview of all of the missing web features in iOS. There’s over 60, and some of the missing features may surprise you (many are over a decade old).

Modern CSS Patterns in Campfire — Advancements in CSS, such as :has(), oklch(), and others allow developers to replace client- and server-side code with CSS properties, enabling behavior that was previously difficult to impossible, all without a framework.

Optimizing WebKit & Safari for Speedometer 3.0 — Speedometer 3.0 was introduced back in March, and now this post looks at what positive results the optimizations have bought about for Safari.

▶  New in Chrome 124: setHTMLUnsafe, Streams in WebSockets, & More — Plus here's a run down of what's new in DevTools for Chrome 124 too.

🗓️ Building Interactive Docs with the WebContainer API and StackBlitz SDK — Join StackBlitz's live stream later today on building interactive developer documentation.