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Author Drew McLellan

72 articles

Drew is a Staff Engineer specialising in Frontend at Snyk, as well as being a co-founder of Notist and the small content management system Perch. Prior to this, he was a Senior Engineer at Netlify, and from 2006-08 was Group Lead for The Web Standards Project. Drew has had articles published by A List Apart, Adobe, and O’Reilly Media, and is the host of the biweekly Smashing Podcast.

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Drew McLellan wrote

Programmatically Discovering Sharing Code With oEmbed

oEmbed is a very elegant solution to a very specific problem. Many sites have hosted media and content that can be shared elsewhere by the use of some HTML embed code. What happens if you just have the URL of the item and need to find an embeddable version of the media without human intervention? That is where oEmbed comes in. In this article, Drew McLellan will tell you everything about it! Read more…

Drew McLellan wrote

Smashing Podcast Episode 1 With Andy Clarke: What Is Art Direction?

In this inaugural episode of the Smashing Podcast, Drew McLellan talks to Andy Clarke about Art Direction. What is it, and how can it be used in our web projects? Find out about the book Art Direction For The Web, and catch up on the latest from Smashing Magazine. In this inaugural episode, Drew McLellan talks to designer, author, and speaker Andy Clarke about Art Direction. What is it, and how can it be applied to our web design projects? We dig into the topic and see if we can get to the bottom of things. Read more…

Drew McLellan wrote

Optimizing Performance With Resource Hints

Many performance optimizations can be made when we can predict what users might do before they actually do it. Resource Hints are a simple but effective way that web developers can help the browser to stay one step ahead of the user and keep pages fast. Think of them as a way for the developer to tell the browser about what’s likely to happen in the future so that the browser can factor that into its choices for how it loads resources. In this article Drew McLellan will take a look at the main types of Resource Hints and when and where we can use them in our pages. Read more…

Drew McLellan wrote

Understanding Subresource Integrity

Exploiting a security flaw is often about getting multiple small pieces to line up. Every bit of JavaScript you add to a site is a potential way in for a hacker. This is doubly true if that JavaScript is hosted by someone else, such as on a public CDN. Subresource Integrity is a browser feature you can use to make sure that the code being used is exactly what you intended. In this article, Drew McLellan will take a look at what SRI is, how it can help protect you, and how you can start using it in your own projects, not just for files hosted on CDNs. Read more…

Drew McLellan wrote

HTML5 Input Types: Where Are They Now?

HTML5 introduced thirteen new types of form input, adding significantly to the number of different fields web designers and developers could add to our forms. These new types all require browsers to support them, and take-up has been slower than some of us would have liked. What is the state of those field types in 2019? Which can we use, and which should still be avoided? Read more…

Drew McLellan wrote

Measuring Performance With Server Timing

The Server Timing header provides a discrete and convenient way to communicate backend server performance timings to developer tools in the browser. Adding timing information to your application enables you to monitor back-end and front-end performance all in one place. Over the years developer tools have been improved to help us troubleshoot these sorts of performance issues in the front end of our applications. Browsers now even have performance audits built right in. This can help track down front end issues, but these audits can show up another source of slowness that we can’t fix in the browser. Read more…

Drew McLellan wrote

Logging Activity With The Web Beacon API

The Beacon API is a lightweight and efficient way to log information from a web page back to a server. It is used for sending small amounts of data to a server without waiting for a response. Think of it like a postcard sent home when on vacation. You put a small amount of data on it, put it in the mailbox, and you don’t expect a response. In this article, Drew McLellan will help you find out how that can be used and what makes it so different from traditional Ajax techniques. Read more…