Tags: wind

Get the screen width & height without JavaScript

Clever!

Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide? - Charlie’s Diary

Trust:

Recall undermines trust, and once an institution loses trust it’s really hard to regain it.

What is Utility-First CSS?: HeydonWorks

Heydon does a very good job of explaining why throwing away the power of selectors makes no sense.

Utility-first detractors complain a lot about how verbose this is and, consequently, how ugly. And it is indeed. But you’d forgive it that if it actually solved a problem, which it doesn’t. It is unequivocally an inferior way of making things which are alike look alike, as you should. It is and can only be useful for reproducing inconsistent design, wherein all those repeated values would instead differ.

He’s also right on the nose in explaining why something as awful at Tailwind could get so popular:

But CSS isn’t new, it’s only good. And in this backwards, bullshit-optimized economy of garbage and nonsense, good isn’t bad enough.

Classic rock, Mario Kart, and why we can’t agree on Tailwind - Josh Collinsworth blog

I suspect most people on opposing sides of the Tailwind debate actually complete agree on Tailwind itself. I don’t think we disagree on atomic CSS, or utility classes; I think our contention comes from the valuations we made long before we ever chose our tools. Where one of us sees a selling point, the other sees a flaw.

This is very much in line with what I’ve been talking about in my presentation on declarative design.

As Jeremy Keith put it so well: where it comes to styling, Builders want imperative programming; they want to specify what they want, where they want, how they want it. No surprises.

Crafters instead want declarative programming; they understand how to wield the power of creating rules of governance within a complex system, and wish to use that power, rather than micromanaging the browser.

Tailwind, and the death of web craftsmanship

CSS is better now. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than its ever been, and it’s better than tailwind. Give it another try. Don’t reach for big globs of libraries to paper over the issues you think it has.

This is why it’s so important to re-evaluate technology decisions.

I’ve seen people, lead and principal engineers, who refuse to learn modern JS, insisting that since it was bad in 2006 its bad today. Worse still is some of these people have used their leadership positions to prevent the use of modern JS.

While I’m talking about the SVGs on The Session, I thought I’d share something else related to the rendering of the sheet music.

Like I said, I use the brilliant abcjs JavaScript library. It converts ABC notation into sheet music on the fly, which still blows my mind.

If you view source on the rendered SVG, you’ll see that the path and rect elements have been hard-coded with a colour value of #000000. That makes sense. You’d want to display sheet music on a light background, probably white. So it seems like a safe assumption.

Ah, but when it comes to front-end development, assumptions are like little hidden bombs just waiting to go off!

I got an email the other day:

Hi Jeremy,

I have vision problems, so I need to use high-contrast mode (using Windows 11). In high-contrast mode, the sheet-music view is just black!

Doh! All my CSS adapts just fine to high-contrast mode, but those hardcoded hex values in the SVG aren’t going to be affected by high-contrtast mode.

Stepping back, the underlying problem was that I didn’t have a full separation of concerns. Most of my styling information was in my CSS, but not all. Those hex values in the SVG should really be encoded in my style sheet.

I couldn’t remove the hardcoded hex values—not without messing around with JavaScript beyond my comprehension—so I made the fix in CSS:

[fill="#000000"] {
  fill: currentColor;
}
[stroke="#000000"] {
  stroke: currentColor;
}

That seemed to do the trick. I wrote back to the person who had emailed me, and they were pleased as punch:

Well done, Thanks!  The staff, dots, etc. all appear as white on a black background.  When I click “Print”, it looks like it still comes out black on a white background, as expected.

I’m very grateful that they brought the issue to my attention. If they hadn’t, that assumption would still be lying in wait, preparing to ambush someone else.

CSS { In Real Life } | Disentangling Frameworks

I just quoted Chris saying:

I think some tools are a good idea. But as few as possible, and the easier they are to stop using, the better.

Now Michelle asks:

Suppose we want to stop using Tailwind one day?

Turns out it’s a bit of a roach motel, much like most JavaScript frameworks: you can get in but you can’t easily get out.

So whenever possible, the safest, and most future-proof bet is to use the native features of the web platform.

6, 97: Why scorpions?

A fascinating and inspiring meditation on aerodynamics.

No, Utility Classes Aren’t the Same As Inline Styles | frontstuff

This is supposed to be a defence of utility classes …but it’s actually a great explanation of why classes in general are a great mechanism for styling.

I don’t think anyone has ever seriously suggested using inline styles—the actual disagreement is about how ludicrously rigid and wasteful the class names dictated by something like Tailwind are. When people criticise those classes they aren’t advocating for inline styles—they’re advocating for better class names and making more use of the power of the class selector in CSS, not less.

Anyway, if you removed every instance of the word “utility” from this article, it would still work.

CSS Frameworks, hype and dogmatism - Post - Piccalilli

You catch more flies with honey than Tailwind.

WindowSwap

Look out someone else’s window somewhere in the world.

There’s something indescribably lovely about this. It’s like a kind of positive voyeurism.

I lost a lot of time to this.

98.css - A design system for building faithful recreations of old UIs

Well, this is a fun bit of CSS. Instantly transform a web page into a blast from the past (1998, to be precise).

Link Targets and 3.2.5 | Adrian Roselli

Here are the many, many reasons why you should not open links in a new window (or tab).

Regardless of what accessibility conformance level you target, do not arbitrarily open links in a new window or tab. If you are required to do so anyway, inform users in text.

PastWindow - outdoor installation on Behance

This is a pretty close approximation Bob Shaw’s slow glass.

The monitor shows what’s behind it, with 6 months delay.

PWA asset generator based on Puppeteer.

Automatically generates icons and splash screens based on Web App Manifest specs and Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Updates manifest.json and index.html files with the generated images.

A handy command line tool. Though be aware that it will generate the shit-ton of link elements for splash screens that Apple demands you provide for a multitude of different screen sizes.

How to Kill IE11 - What the Deaths of IE6 and IE8 Tell Us About Killing IE | Mike Sherov

An interesting look at the mortality causes for Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 8, and what they can tell us for the hoped-for death of Internet Explorer 11.

I disagree with the conclusion (that we should actively block IE11—barring any good security reasons, I don’t think that’s defensible), but I absolutely agree that we shouldn’t be shipping polyfills in production just for IE11. Give it your HTML. Give it your CSS. Withhold modern JavaScript. If you’re building with progressive enhancement (and you are, right?), then giving IE11 users a sub-par experience is absolutely fine …it’s certainly better than blocking them completely.

Modalz Modalz Modalz

We use too many damn modals.

Amen! This site offers some alternatives, or—if you really must use a modal dialogue—some dos and dont’s.

And remember to always ask, kids: “Why does this have to be a modal?”

Chris has written about switching code editors. I’m a real stick-in-the-mud when it comes to switching editors. Partly that’s because I’m generally pretty happy with whatever I’m using (right now it’s Atom) but it’s also because I just don’t get that excited about software like this. I probably should care more; I spend plenty of time inside a code editor. And I should really take the time to get to grips with features like keyboard shortcuts—I’m sure I’m working very inefficiently. But, like I said, I find it hard to care enough, and on the whole, I’m content.

I was struck by this observation from Chris:

When moving, I have to take time to make sure it works pretty much like the old one.

That reminded me of a recent switch I made, not with code editors, but with browsers.

I’ve been using Chrome for years. One day it started crashing a lot. So I decided to make the switch to Firefox. Looking back, I’m glad to have had this prompt—I think it’s good to shake things up every now and then, so I don’t get too complacent (says the hypocrite who can’t be bothered to try a new code editor).

Just as Chris noticed with code editors, it was really important that I could move bookmarks (and bookmarklets!) over to my new browser. On the whole, it went pretty smoothly. I had to seek out a few browser extensions but that was pretty much it. And because I use a password manager, logging into all my usual services wasn’t a hassle.

Of all the pieces of software on my computer, the web browser is the one where I definitely spend the most time: reading, linking, publishing. At this point, I’m very used to life with Firefox as my main browser. It’s speedy and stable, and the dev tools are very similar to Chrome’s.

Maybe I’ll switch to Safari at some point. Like I said, I think it’s good to shake things up and get out of my comfort zone.

Now, if I really wanted to get out of my comfort zone, I’d switch operating systems like Dave did with his move to Windows. And I should really try using a different phone OS. Again, this is something that Dave tried with his switch to Android (although that turned out to be unacceptably creepy), and Paul did it ages ago using a Windows phone for a week.

There’s probably a balance to be struck here. I think it’s good to change code editors, browsers, even operating systems and phones every now and then, but I don’t want to feel like I’m constantly in learning mode. There’s something to be said for using tools that are comfortable and familiar, even if they’re outdated.

Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 17623 for Skip Ahead - Windows Experience BlogWindows Experience Blog

Well, Microsoft really buried the lede in this announcement:

…we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge…

Yup, no matter which browser you’ve chosen to set as your default, hyperlinks will be hijacked to open with Edge. This is disgusting. It feels like a return to the shitty old days of Microsoft’s strong-arm tactics, just when Microsoft were gaining trust and respect.

CodePen - Instagram.exe

I’m not sure why but I genuinely love this Windows 95 style interface for Instagram coded up by Gabrielle Wee.