Monthly Web Development Update ⁷⁄₂₀₁₉: Modern Techniques And Good Trouble

• 6 min read
• Tools, Coding, Web Development Reading List
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About The Author

Anselm is a freelance front-end developer who cares about sustainable front-end experiences and ethical choices in life. He writes the WDRL, and is co-founder … More about Anselm ↬

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What can we do to cause “good trouble”? First of all, I think it needs to be friendly, helpful and meaningful actions that don’t impact other peoples’ lives. Secondly, it’s something we strongly believe in — it might be using simpler JavaScript methods, reducing the application size, a better toggle UI, publishing a book or building a business without selling user data to others. Whatever it is, it’s good to have a standpoint of view and talk about it.

It’s good to advocate others about accessibility problems, about how to listen better to others in a conversation, how to manage projects, products or even a company better. The most important thing on all these actions is to remember that they are helping other people and not impacting them as well as animals or our environment in general.

Doing something useful — as small as it might seem — is always a good thing. And don’t forget to honor your action just by smiling and being thankful for what you did!

News

• Chrome 76 removes a couple of things like feature policy: lazyload, insecure usage of DeviceMotionEvent and the DeviceOrientationEvent. If you use them, please ensure you use a secure context by now or replace them by their successors.
• Firefox 68 is out and this is new: BigInts for JavaScript, Accessibility Checks in DevTools, CSS Scroll Snapping and Marker Styling, access to cameras, microphones, and other media devices is no longer allowed in insecure contexts like plain HTTP. It’s now possible to resend a network request without editing the method, URL, parameters, and headers via DevTools, and a lot of (compatibility) fixes are included for CSS features as well.
• Chrome 76 brings image support for the async clipboard API, making it easy to programmatically copy and paste image/png (currently, this is the only supported format though, unfortunately) images.
• Tracking prevention is now available in Microsoft Edge preview, following other browsers like Safari and Firefox.

Generic

• Have you heard of the concept of “good trouble”? Frank Chimero defines it as questioning and re-imagining the status quo, and having your actions stand in contrast to the norm. But the interview with the designer shows much more than a new concept, it’s challenging how we work today and how to do your own thing that doesn’t match the norm of the society.

Particularly, I like this quote here:

“Slow down, find a quiet place and create time for solitude so you can hear yourself. It’s so noisy out there.”

• What if control is only an illusion? We would realize that the true nature of an experience is revealed only in the interplay with the people who use it and that an invalidated design is nothing but an opinion. Quite a thought that puts our assumptions and approach on projects into a different light.

UI/UX

• Many single toggle buttons fail at either showing the current state or making the unselected option visible — here’s how to do toggle buttons and indicators the right way.

Accessibility

• Lindsey Kopacz shares how we can create custom, yet keyboard accessible checkboxes with modern CSS techniques.

JavaScript

• Marta Wiśniewska shares how flat(), flatMap(), and fromEntries() and other ES2019 features work and when to use them.
• Addy Osmani on the cost of JavaScript in 2019. An article (or video, if you prefer) for everyone who builds JavaScript applications.

CSS

• Miriam Suzanne explains CSS Custom Properties and their role in the cascade in a deep dive article.

Work & Life

• Active Listening is a skill that helps us listening for meaning, and how the other person is feeling instead of that usual listening that focuses on ‘how can I reply or comment on this or how will we solve this?’. Buffer’s guide written by Marcus Wermuth is a great resource to learn and practice Active Listening.
• Christoph Rumpel shares what he learned from self-publishing a book and shows interesting insights into finances of it and what to avoid or do better.
• Ben Werdmüller on doing well while doing good: This is a personal story about struggling with revenue, investments, third-party capital, trying to earn money on your own by selling your product while having free competitors and how to still produce good things while doing financially well.
• Shape Up — Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters is a new, free online book by Ryan Singer about project management, leading a company and product. It’s amazing and while I only had time to flick through it quickly and read some individual chapters and sections, this will definitely become a resource to save and refer to regularly.

Going Beyond…

I was in the cinema last week to watch a movie about some people who created a farm. The trailer was nice and while I wasn’t 100% convinced of it, it was an evening where I was up to go out to watch a movie. So I did and it was good that I went to see “The Biggest Little Farm”. The farmer made the film himself as he’s a wildlife filmmaker so expect some quite stunning pictures and sequences of wildlife animals in there!

The most revealing part was how much of an impact only a handful of people can make out of desert land in a few years of time, and how much we as humans can influence wildlife, give a habitat to insects, and produce quality food while including CO2 from the air into our soil to make plants grow better, in order to restore nature and make an impact in the effort to fight climate change.

At several points during the movie, I was close to tears and I was extremely thankful that I’m able to have my little garden space as well where I can do similar things (though way smaller than their farm). If you’re up for something new, to learn something about food, meat, economy and how it all connects or how to create a beautiful green space out of desert, this movie is for you.

Last but not least, solar panels are a good way to produce renewable energy and it’s good usage of roofs. In China though, air pollution is currently so bad that solar panels sometimes stop working. Another reason to act quickly! If solar panels don’t work due to missing sunrays, our bodies will suffer the same lack of sunlight and we need it for our health.

Further Reading

• Breaking Out Of The Box: Design Inspiration
• Modern Art Movements To Inspire Your Logo Design
• 33 Tempting E-Commerce Icons For Free
• Inspiring Everyday Graphic Design

(il, mrn)