Links
New! Web Performance Guide
The Web Performance Guide is – as its name suggests – a collection of articles we've been writing over the years to answer the most common questions we field about performance topics like site speed, why it matters, how it's measured, website monitoring tools, metrics, analytics, and optimization techniques.
What if you used Container Units for… everything?
I thought the answer might be well, everything will probably scale really nicely then. Turns out, surprise surprise, that it’s not that easy. There are plenty of things that container queries are awkward at or just not the right unit for.
Letter Spacing Is Broken And There's Nothing We Can Do About It... Maybe
There are two real options for how
letter-spacing
can be fixed: reworking how the space is distributed around the character or allowing developers an option to choose where we want the ending space.
Make Your Components Easier to Think About
Optimize for the dumbest, most frustrated, most tired version of yourself. This can be achieved through a combination of good naming and organization, as well as clear and concise documentation and examples. Also, using consistent patterns and conventions can help to reduce cognitive load and make it easier to continue working on a project after a break or interruption.
SVG triangle of compromise (resolved)
Displaying an external SVG with the
<use>
tag can be styled with CSS, including setting the icon's color to the color of the surrounding text withfill:currentColor
; it could be used elsewhere on the page but will be downloaded only once; and it scales proportionally with the surrounding text size with height:1em. It even supports the:hover
state!
Videos
Don't Use JS for That: Moving Features to CSS and HTML
Turns out, spec writers and browser makers both are working hard to find common JS patterns and implementing them in CSS and HTML. Things like accordions, auto-suggest, smooth scrolling, dialogs are all available without JS. Looking a little ahead, things like parallax scrolling, styleable selects and component-dependent styling are expected to make their CSS-debut as well.
In this talk I go through common patterns, explain how they can be implemented in CSS and HTML, how that's better and what accessibility implications they have, both for features available today and feature available soon™️.
Sponsor
Sponsored by Cloud Four
Thanks to Cloud Four for sponsoring this week’s newsletter! They solve complex responsive web design and development challenges for ecommerce, healthcare, fashion, B2B, SaaS, and nonprofit organizations.
If you’d like to help with the costs of running Friday Front-End, you can back our Patreon for as little as a dollar a month.