Notes from my week.
Continue reading Weeknotes 2020.09.26–2020.10.04
Tag: JavaScript
Weeknotes 2020.09.25
I was on vacation last week in Estes Park, Colorado, visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park. This was somehow my first trip into the mountains, even though I had visited Denver several times during college.
Weeknotes 2020.09.11
It’s been a cold, rainy week here in Manhattan, Kansas. I don’t really like cold weather at all, and I’m somewhat dreading this winter with everything indoors still being somewhat risky. I think this week was especially bad because the temperature dropped so drastically so quickly. Luckily it looks like we have more warm weather ahead.
Weeknotes 2020.08.31
Due to family events and spending all last week trying to finish a project on time, this is a shortened and delayed 2-week version of my weeknotes.
Continue reading Weeknotes 2020.08.31
Weeknotes 2020.08.07
My first weeknotes! I’m jumping on the bandwagon. There will probably be a few kinks I need to work out as I find a format that I like.
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An Event Apart: “Name That Script!”
Trent Walton speaking at An Event Apart Orlando 2018 on October 10, 2018
How many third-party scripts are loading on our web pages these days? How can we objectively measure the value of these (advertising, a/b testing, analytics, etc.) scripts—considering their impact on web performance, user experience, and business goals? We’ve learned to scrutinize content hierarchy, browser support, and page speed as part of the design and development process. Similarly, Trent will share recent experiences and explore ways to evaluate and discuss the inclusion of 3rd-party scripts.
An Event Apart: “The All-Powerful Front-End Developer”
Chris Coyier speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 3, 2018.
The internet is, without metaphor, just a bunch of servers tied together with wires. Without servers, we’d have no way to share our creations with the world. Yet in a bit of a paradox, servers are less essential to our work than they’ve ever been. We can now do things on the front end that used to require a back end. When we do need a back end, our front end skills can be put to work, giving us some surprisingly powerful new abilities. Join Chris on a whirlwind tour of the tools, tech, and code that puts more power than ever into our front-end hands.
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An Event Apart: “Performance as User Experience”
Aaron Gustafson speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 3, 2018.
Design is problem solving. Each and every day, we are tasked with finding ways to reduce the friction our users experience on the Web. That means streamlining flows, reducing cognitive load, and writing more appropriate copy, but user experience goes far beyond the interface. Our users’ experiences begin with their first request to our servers. In this intensely practical session, Aaron will explore the ins and outs of page load performance by showing how he made the web site of the 10K Apart meet its own contest rules, by having a site that was functional and attractive even without JavaScript, and was less than ten kilobytes at initial load. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of the page load process as well as numerous ways you can improve the projects you are working on right now.
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An Event Apart: “The Way Of The Web”
Jeremy Keith speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 3, 2018.
Do you ever get overwhelmed by the ever-changing nature of web design and development? Exhausting, isn’t it? How are you supposed to know which technologies and tools you should invest your time in? Will they stick around or will you just have to relearn everything in another few months? Join Jeremy as he takes a tour of the past, present, and future of working on the web. From the building blocks of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript through to frameworks and libraries right up to the latest and greatest Progressive Web Apps, this talk will examine our collective assumptions with a critical eye. By learning from the past, we can make sensible design decisions today to build the web of tomorrow.
Using JavaScript Modules
A few weeks ago I spent some time breaking apart Sass files into smaller segments for a project at work, trying to go for a more modular approach for the CSS. Doing this in Sass is pretty simple. Pull out a section of styles into a new “partials” file, named something like _module.scss. Then in the main Sass file, import the module with @import "module";.
For quite a while I’ve wanted to be able to take a similar approach with JavaScript, breaking the main file into modules and using Sass-like imports to pull them all together. I knew this was supposed to be possible with ES6 modules, but every time I started doing the research, I was overwhelmed by new JavaScript techniques and tools (Babel? Webpack? Browserify? Rollup? RequireJS?). After my most recent attempt to find and understand a solution, I finally came up with something that works and I’m fairly happy with.