ZenDev - Friday Frontend: Last of 2020 Edition

Hey there,

Hope you are staying as safe and healthy as possible during this time of spiking pandemic. This week’s newsletter is short, and it will be the last one of the year as I take much of the next two weeks off to try to recover from the crazy terribleness that has been 2020. Here’s hoping that next year will be a better one.

Best,

KBall from ZenDev

CSS & SCSS

What Can You Put in a CSS Variable?

A useful compendium of all of the different types of things you can put into a CSS Variable. Everything from unit values to unitless values to lists to bare strings, with much more in between.

It’s all relative.

An interesting reflection, both on life, and on how to think about CSS. I love the standing question that weaves through this… whenever you start thinking about something in absolutes, ask yourself “relative to what?”.

CSS paint API: Being predictably random

Interesting walk through of how to create a (pseudo) random background image using the CSS paint API.

JavaScript

State Management in Vue 3

One of the things that I think is most exciting about Vue 3 is the way they have “unbundled” the composition and reactivity APIs, which allows for much more innovation in things like state management libraries. This article goes through a few of the options that have developed.

Scrollytelling with React

Simple and fun tutorial using React and IntersectionObserver to create a simple implementation of the “Scrollytelling” effect changing imagery as a user scrolls through content.

Other Awesomeness

2020 was not a good year for learning

This captures so well the emotional rollercoaster many of us had this year. I love how the author both gives space for the terrible year that it was, and tries to help without the self-righteous “you should be using this time all effectively”. Especially in a field that is *so* focused on learning and being on the cutting edge, acknowledging our humanity and that the conditions for learning this year were terrible is so, SO important.

Old is Solid; New Gets Talked About

On a related note, I think this article is super important as well. As much as we all love to chase and talk about new and shiny technologies, far more work still gets done in old, solid technologies.

How to build trust during onboarding

I don’t love the traditional gender roles in their story (in my household, my wife is *way* better at configuring gadgets than I am), but I do like how the story explores some of the key underlying concepts that lead to building trust in an onboarding flow.