We’re running a couple links short this week because hey, it’s the holidays, and I’m plum out of time. Hope you’re having a wonderful time connecting with friends and family this holiday season, or just taking some time to yourself to relax.

Happy Friday!
KBall from ZenDev

P.S. I’ll still be publishing over the next couple weeks, but we may run a few fewer links each week while life is crazy with holidays, and I may be a bit slower to respond to any questions. Enjoy the season, and we’ll be back to 100% in the new year!

CSS & SCSS

Calc() function with Use Cases

Calc is one of the most useful general purpose tools in modern CSS toolkits - this article breaks down some of the many ways you can use it.


CSS Glitch Effect

Recreate a vintage glitch effect using CSS only via CSS animations and the clip-path property.


OOCSS and Grid

A nice little investigation into the ways that CSS Grid influence our choices in CSS naming conventions. While more advanced approaches are powerful, a little OOCSS goes a long way, particularly for smaller projects.


A Sliding Nightmare: Understanding the Range Input

Wow. This one is cool, not just because it breaks down a difficult to style native element (the range input), but because it shows how to dig into what browsers are doing under the hood and figure out how to style it, skills which should also apply to other complex elements.


JavaScript

Classes vs Interfaces in TypeScript

TypeScript is getting more and more popular in the web & JavaScript worlds, so if you’ve been holding out maybe 2018 will be the year to start learning about it. This article breaks down the distinction between a class and an interface, and when you might want to use each.


Why 43% of Front-End Developers want to learn Vue.js

I think the name is a bit misleading - this article is more an introductory walkthrough of the basics of Vue than an inventory of why folks like it. That said, it is a pretty good introductory walkthrough, so if you’re looking for one check it out!


JavaScript — Best of 2017

‘Tis the time of year for retrospectives, so here’s one from Codeburst - the best/most popular JavaScript articles on Codeburst over the course of the year.


The Hidden Treasures of Object Composition

I love reading Eric Elliott’s writings on JavaScript - I always feel like I learn something, and this is no exception. A deep dive into a key fundamental design pattern, as applied to JavaScript.


An Intro to Javascript Proxy Objects

Proxies are one of the super-cool features introduced in ES6, and are starting to see increasing use with the slow death of Internet Explorer as a target platform. Rumor has it the next major version of Vue.js will build its reactivity system on top of them.


Other Awesomeness

2017 Staff Favorites from CSS Tricks

A smorgasbord of articles and talks favorited by the team over at CSS Tricks. Plenty of CSS and JavaScript, with a couple nice design links thrown in as well.


Googlebot can read JavaScript – how should SEOs react?

A perennial question, ever since we first heard about Google successfully parsing JavaScript heavy sites with its scraper. This article consults a number of experts.


Introduction to WebAssembly: why should we care?

I like this article because it not only explains what WebAssembly is, but does one of the best jobs I’ve seen in written form of explaining why we should care and what it’s going to mean for us as developers.


Refactoring Your Way to a Design System

As developers, we all love to dream about the “big rewrite” that lets us build a perfect system from scratch, but the reality is that we almost never get to do this - and in fact, it’s probably not such a good idea anyway. Far more practical is to learn how to introduce systems incrementally to an existing codebase, and this is a phenomenal first-hand story of how Mina Markham handled introducing a design system incrementally into the Hillary for America tech platform right in the middle of the campaign.