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 …

Better Error Handling in React 16 with Error Boundaries

The first beta React 16 has been released just yesterday. Next to it running on Fiber (speeeed!), and allowing one to return Arrays in the render() method (bye bye unnecessary wrapper divs!), it also introduces the concept of Error Boundaries: Error boundaries are React components that catch JavaScript errors anywhere in their child component tree, …

Dunkirk and the “Shepard Tone“

Nice piece by Vox – in a true Nerdwriter1 style by the way – on the sound design of Dunkirk – and by extension all of Christoper Nolan’s films – which makes the movie so intense. Just like with visual illusions, the brain can also be tricked with sound illusions. Sidenote: Ever since I saw …

gpu.js – GPU Accelerated JavaScript

Amazing: gpu.js is a JavaScript library for GPGPU (General purpose computing on GPUs) in the browser. gpu.js will automatically compile specially written JavaScript functions into shader language and run them on the GPU using the WebGL API. In case WebGL is not available, the functions will still run in regular JavaScript. Only a subset of …

What do Variable Fonts mean for Web Developers?

Variable Fonts are still in active development […] in this article I’ll focus on what they mean for web developers, and how you can try them out today ahead of time. Next to changes to font-weight (which will allow increments of 1), you also have fine control over a variable font its variations – see …

Behind the front-end experience of Stripe’s ”Connect”

Great writeup by Benjamin De Cock on the work he and his colleagues did to creating unique landing pages that tell a story for our major products For this release, we designed Connect’s landing page to reflect its intricate, cutting-edge capabilities while keeping things light and simple on the surface. In this blog post, we’ll …

Hive’s best practices for JavaScript projects

Hive, a UK based technology design studio, have shared their set of best practices for developing JavaScript-based projects. While developing a new project is like rolling on a green field for you, maintaining it is a potential dark twisted nightmare for someone else. Here’s a list of guidelines we’ve found, written and gathered that (we …