Expo – Easily build apps with React Native

From time to time I’ve seen good things about Expo fly by on the Twitters, which piqued my interest: Expo is a set of tools, libraries and services which let you build native iOS and Android apps by writing JavaScript. Expo apps are React Native apps which contain the Expo SDK. The SDK is a …

Using Intersection Observers

With the Intersection Observer coming to Firefox, a nice article covering it appeared on Mozilla Hacks. The IntersectionObserver interface of the Intersection Observer API provides a way to asynchronously observe changes in the intersection of a target element with an ancestor element or with a top-level document’s viewport. To use it, create a new instance …

GridBugs – A Curated List of CSS Grid Interop Issues

Like Flexbugs, but then for CSS Grid Layout: Inspired by Flexbugs this list aims to be a community curated list of CSS Grid Layout bugs, incomplete implementations and interop issues. Grid shipped into browsers in a highly interoperable state, however there are a few issues – let’s document any we find here. By Rachel Andrew …

Automatically rerun PHPUnit tests when source code changes with phpunit-watcher

Nice new package by Freek from Spatie.be. Think of it like Jest, but for PHP: Wouldn’t it be great if your PHPUnit tests would be automatically rerun whenever you change some code? This package can do exactly that. By default it will watch all files in the src, app and tests subdirectories in the directory …

Navigating on the next iPhone

Some folks have been poking around in the HomePod Firmware update. Doing so they’ve unearthed the existence of an upcoming face unlock feature using and infrared camera and face detection, the new iPhone’s bezel-less form factor, and its resolution of 1125 x 2436 (375 x 812 points rendered @3x). Me too. New bezel-less form factor …

React, Relay and GraphQL: Under the Hood of the Times Website Redesign

The folks over at The New York Times have made change to using React, Relay and GraphQL for the new version of their website (which they are rolling out over the coming months): We thought it would be nice if there was one place to add and retrieve data and one way to authenticate against …

Vertical margins/paddings and Flexbox, a quirky combination

In CSS, percentage-based paddings are – as per spec – calculated with respect to the width of an element. However, for flex items (e.g. items whose parent have display: flex; applied) that’s not always the case. Depending on which browser you are using the percentage-based padding of a flex item will be resolved against its …

Chromeless Playground: Chrome Automation Made Simple

With Chrome 59 came the ability to run a Headless Chrome. Controlling it via code isn’t that easy nor elegant. Enter Chromeless (not be confused with Mozilla’s Chromeless): With Chromeless you can control Chrome (open website, click elements, fill out forms…) using an elegant API. This is useful for integration tests or any other scenario …

Interacting with the iOS Simulator from the Command Line using simctl

Wasn’t aware of this, but turns out one can control (and interact with) the iOS Simulator straight from the command line. There’s no need to install anything new though. The tool we’re going to be using is already on our Mac, hiding inside the xcrun command, which gets installed with Xcode. It’s called simctl. Here’s …