CategoryJavaScript

August 3, 2021 — Embracing the fragility of the web empowers us to build UIs capable of adapting to the functionality they can offer, whilst still providing value to users. The User Experience (UX) doesn’t need to be all or nothing — just what is usable. This premise, known as graceful degradation allows a system to continue working when parts of it are dysfunctional — much like an electric bike becomes a regular bike when its battery dies. This article explores how graceful degradation, defensive coding, observability, and a healthy attitude towards failures better equips us before, during, and after an error occurs. Read more…

July 28, 2021 — Dialogs are everywhere in modern interface design (for good or for bad), and yet many of them are not accessible to assistive technologies. In this post, Kitty Giraudel is going to write a small JavaScript library for authoring accessible dialogs from the very beginning. The goal is to understand what goes into it. She’s not going to deal with styling too much, just the JavaScript part. Read more…

July 27, 2021 — Next.js has strong opinions about how to organize JavaScript but not CSS. How can we develop patterns that encourage best CSS practices while also following the framework’s logic? The answer is surprisingly simple — to write well-structured CSS that balances global and local styling concerns. In this article, Alexander Dubovoy will build a website (a tea shop!) to demonstrate these patterns. Read more…

July 26, 2021 — Gatsby recently announced the launch of “functions”. In this article, Paul Scanlon explains how to get the current location of the International Space Station (ISS) as it orbits the Earth in real-time using Gatsby Functions and then display it on a 3D interactive globe using React Three Fibre. Read more…

July 16, 2021 — Web app accessibility appears difficult because it seems that there is little information on the subject available online. Let’s take a closer look at the accessible use of framework features, concrete Vue.js traits, as well as community initiatives and vetted patterns. Read more…

July 15, 2021 — Data grids need to be easy to understand, engaging, responsive, and accessible. They need to perform well and load data fast. However, building a data grid that meets these standards from scratch can take a long time and be a huge undertaking. In this article, you’ll get to see some pretty groundbreaking things you can achieve with modern JavaScript grids. You’ll learn how these data tables solve the problems described earlier. Additionally, you’ll discover new ways to augment a data grid to make it engaging, responsive, and accessible. All this will be illustrated using Kendo UI Data Grids and their features. Read more…

July 13, 2021 — Have you ever needed to build a UI where some component on the page needs to respond to elements as they’re scrolled to a certain threshold within the viewport — or perhaps in and out of the viewport itself? In JavaScript, attaching an event listener to constantly fire a callback on scroll can be performance-intensive, and if used unwisely, can make for a sluggish user experience. But there is a better way with Intersection Observer. Read more…

July 8, 2021 — Even though Vue.js claims to have an approachable minimalist framework that can be incrementally adaptable, it can be a little bit overwhelming when starting as a Vue.js newbie. In this tutorial, Uma Victor will take a look at some tips and tools to help you become a better Vue developer. You will start with some helpful insights on organizing your projects for scale and other great points to note and then round it up with Tools and extensions that make writing Vuejs so much easier. Read more…

July 1, 2021 — When writing front-end tests, you’ll find a lot of pitfalls along the way. In sum, they can lead to lousy maintainability, slow execution time, and — in the worst case — tests you cannot trust. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this article, I will talk about common mistakes developers make, at least in my experience, and, of course, how to avoid them. Testing doesn’t need to be painful, after all. Read more…

June 29, 2021 — Static Generation is great for performance — until the app gets too big and build-times go through the roof. Today, we’ll have a look at how Netlify’s fresh On-Demand Builders can fix that. Additionally, we pair it up with Next.js’ Incremental Static Regeneration for the best user and developer experience. And, of course, benchmark those results! Read more…