November 4, 2019 — A significant part of the Internet-using population is aged 50 or older — including the people who invented it. Even though we’re as tech-savvy as anyone else, older users have some specific needs that web designers and programmers should consider. None of them are particularly difficult to accommodate, but they can be critical for our use and enjoyment of the Internet. In this article, Barry Rueger will show you why designers need to understand what older users need and why it’s not enough to just say, “I can read it, so what’s the problem?” Read more…

November 1, 2019 — In a lot of cases we can do these things with CSS —just not on the web. For example, CSS is also used for print formatting via user agents designed for outputting to PDF.  In this article, Rachel Andrew looks at some common layout patterns that we can’t yet do on the web and the CSS Specifications that might let us achieve them in the future. While most of her articles are about things we can do, this one is about things we can’t but that perhaps we might be able to do in the future. Take a look. Read more…

October 31, 2019 — What is it that makes a haunted house feel so disturbing? Is it the fact that it’s been long abandoned? That it’s riddled with dark and twisty hallways? That it simulates danger? Or maybe it’s the low-quality construction that makes people nervous? In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to take these frightening characteristics and spin them around for the web. After all, what is a website, but a digital house? (Let’s just make sure yours doesn’t feel haunted!) Read more…

October 31, 2019 — In many parts of the world, November is a rather gray month, so what better way could there be to start it off as with some colorful inspiration? Read more…

October 30, 2019 — This third part of the series will focus on adding a text-based client for the game engine that was created in part 2. Today, Fernando Doglio will explain basic architecture design, tool selection and code highlights by showing you how to create a text-based UI with the help of Node.js. Read more…

October 29, 2019 — Images are a big part of the web and, yet, they can cause a lot of challenges for the user experience if not properly optimized or delivered. It’s been almost a decade since Google introduced the world to WebP as a solution to this problem. As more of our browsers, devices and software support it, it’s time that web designers started adopting it as their default image format. In this article, Suzanne Scacca is going to show you What WebP is. Read more…

October 28, 2019 — The term COPE (“Create Once, Publish Everywhere”) is a methodology for publishing our content to different outputs (website, AMP site, email, apps, and so on) by having a single source of truth for all of them. Concerning WordPress, even though it has always shined as a Content Management System, implementing the COPE strategy has historically proved to be a challenge. In this article, Leonardo Losoviz will explore how to implement COPE using WordPress. Read more…

October 25, 2019 — As the language evolved, new artifacts appeared in the scene to allow asynchronous execution; developers tried different approaches while solving more complicated algorithms and data flows. In this article, Jeremias Menichelli is going to explore the evolution of JavaScript around asynchronous execution in the past era and how it changed the way we write and read code. He will start with the beginnings of web development, and go all the way to modern asynchronous pattern examples. Read more…

October 24, 2019 — At the heart of the JAMstack are static site generators that store your data as flat files. Sometimes, managing data this way can be overly complicated. Sometimes, we still need a database. With that in mind, Netlify — a serverless cloud database — collaborated to make combining both systems easier.  In this article, Bryan Robinson will create a personal bookmarking site using FaunaDB, Netlify Functions and 11ty data files. Read more…

October 23, 2019 — Welcome to the second part of this series. The the first part, we covered the architecture of a Node.js-based platform and client application that will enable people to define and play their own text adventures as a group. This time around, Fernando Doglio will be covering the creation of one of the modules Fernando defined last time (the game engine) and will also be focusing on the design process in order to shed some light into what needs to happen before you start coding your own hobby projects. Read more…