Friday Frontend: Hopes for a Sweeter Year Edition

Hey there,

Tonight is the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the new year. One of the traditions I love about this holiday is that everyone eats sweet things like honey cake and apples dipped in honey in hopes of a “sweet new year”. Given the nightmare of our last 6 months, we could all use a sweeter year moving forward. Here’s hoping.

Best,

KBall from ZenDev

CSS & SCSS

Using the brightness() CSS Filter to generically highlight Content

Super useful technique now available with modern CSS. Lets you build reusable button patterns and similar without having to pre-define what the colors will be.

How to create text gradients using CSS easily.

Short and sweet, quick tutorial on how to create texts that use gradient colors. Beautiful.

How to use CSS masking

Goes through a series of patterns for image manipulation that used to require graphics software and now can be done simply and easily using CSS.

JavaScript

The Missing Introduction to React

Not much new here for those of you already writing React. But I know some of you may be coming from a different background, either a more traditional front-end web background or a backend background, and wondering “What’s the big deal about React? Why is everyone using it?”. This post aims to answer that question, with a thorough explanation of the key concepts and benefits.

Top 5 JavaScript secrets

I’m shocked - I’ve been writing Javascript for a decade now, but 2 out of the 5 of these were still new to me. This includes some pretty obscure language features, but if you’re trying to go super deep on JavaScript, may well be worth reading.

5 Key Concepts to Level Up Your JavaScript Skills

Much more practical than the article above it, this goes into some of the key fundamental concepts in modern JavaScript. Read this if you’re a beginner to intermediate level, or have been writing JS for forever but maybe haven’t kept up with the latest developments.

Other Awesomeness

Web Brutalism, Seamfulness, and Notion

Interesting look into the recent design “counter-trend” of web brutalism, comparing it to similar patterns in architecture and discussing what it means to be “true to the underlying materials” in a web context.

The tangled webs we weave

A reflection on some of the complexity of modern web development. We have more and more powerful tools that let you do more with less, but if they don’t work quite right you quickly end up debugging a tangled web of dependencies.

Essential Meaningful Productivity

Super valuable reflection on what it means to be productive on things that matter, and how to achieve it. Especially these days when so many of us are dragging due to the environment, it can be a useful reminder to focus in on what really matters to us.

Why I Don’t Have Time For Your Coding Challenge

A discussion of the pitfalls of “coding challenges” as an interview topic and a look at better alternatives.