Next.js + Apollo + Server Side Rendering (SSR)

Interesting video from the CodePen podcast in which Shaw goes over this approach to SSR with Next and Apollo: A probably-better approach is to use the getDataFromTree method, which walks down the tree and executes the queries to fill up the ApolloClient cache. Create a shared ApolloClient instance Render the page using getDataFromTree() to fill …

Multiple Accounts and Git

If you have multiple accounts to use with Git — such as a personal and a work account — you can have your Git Config (typically ~/.gitconfig) conditionally include other configs depending on the folder you’re working in. In those extra configs you then can override some settings. Here’s an example ~/.gitconfig that has two …

Random Paint Effects with Houdini

Speaking of George Francis in the previous post: in the latest episode of HTTP 203 Jake talks Surma through recreating these Houdini-powered “Fleck Patterns” George created before. Generative Houdini Stuff! ✨Create always-unique, responsive, “fleck” patterns — all without leaving your CSS 🎨Pass in a seed value, up to 8 colors of your choice, and a …

Crafting Organic Patterns With Voronoi Tessellations

Great post by George Francis, in which he leverages the Voronoi tessellation to generate aesthetically pleasing random patterns. When composing generative patterns, placing objects on a canvas purely at random can feel chaotic, while aligning them to a traditional grid can feel rigid/predictable. While both chaos and exacting precision can both be beautiful qualities in …

Pick Colors from websites your entire screen with the JavaScript EyeDropper API

Mid-August the WICG published a (unofficial) specification for a Native Eye Dropper — a tool you can use to get the color from the pixel that’s underneath the cursor — on the web. Let’s take a look … Usage The proposal is pretty straightforward: This API enables authors to use a browser supplied eyedropper in …

Morse Code Translator (HTML & CSS)

I have no idea how this works, but it’s amazing: See the Pen Morse Code Translator (HTML & CSS) by Lillian Kodi (@lillian-kodi)on CodePen. By Lillian Kodi who created this amazing HTML+CSS Calculator before. As only Chromium supports animating custom properties (Houdini FTW!) it won’t work in Safari nor Firefox. For reference, you can see …

Vector? Raster? Why Not Both!

Starting off with a 10.06MB SVG, Zach Leatherman tried several routes to reduce the weight of the hero image on the right side of the home page on JamStackConf.com. Eventually he settled on an approach where he layered a transparent WebP image on top of an SVG. Both layers were optimized individually, leaving only 78KB …

Key data structures and their roles in RenderingNG

Digging deeper into Chromium’s RenderingNG architecture, this post explains its key data structures: Frame trees, The immutable fragment tree, Property trees, Display lists and paint chunks, and Compositor frames. Let’s dig into the key data structures that are inputs and outputs to the rendering pipeline. Would love to see this as a talk at a …

CSS Shape Path Editor extension for Chrome DevTools

The Firefox DevTools come with a built-in editor to manipulate CSS Shapes, as demonstrated by Miriam Suzanne in the video below. For the Chromium-based browsers (Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, …) the DevTools currently sport no such thing. Thankfully there’s an extension that can provide it for us. Once installed you’ll get an extra Shapes panel …