Author Ben Frain

May 6, 2020 — How much thought have you put into your primary input device? Ever considered how much better your interface with your computer might be? For decades, keyboards have been the primary mechanisms by which we interact with our computers. In this article, Ben Frain is going to dive into the possibilities of mechanical keyboards. The different layouts, switch types and even keycap material. Strap yourself in — this will be a deep dive! Read more…

November 19, 2019 — In UI/UX, a common pattern that’s needed time and again is that of a simple animated opening and closing panel, or ‘drawer’. You don’t need a library to make these. With some basic HTML/CSS and JavaScript, we’re going to learn how to do it ourselves. In this article, Ben Frain is going to share the details of his ‘go-to’ method in detail in this article. Let’s consider possible approaches first. Read more…

July 30, 2019 — In this article, Ben Frain concludes a three-part series about the trials and tribulations of designing and writing a basic web application with vanilla JavaScript. In part one he covered the why, part two dealt mostly with the how and this part concludes by looking at how the project was drawn to a close and what was learned from the experience. Ben will cover turning a basic web application into a Progressive Web Application (PWA) and ‘shipping’ the application before looking at the most valuable lessons learned by making the simple web application In/Out. Read more…

July 25, 2019 — In the first article of this series, your author, a JavaScript novice, had set themselves the goal of designing and coding a basic web application. The ‘app’ was to be called ‘In/Out’ — an application to organize team-based games. In this article, Ben Frain is going to concentrate on how the application ‘In/Out’ actually got made. Read more…

July 23, 2019 — You don’t need to be a Computer Science graduate or know a JavaScript framework to create a Progressive Web Application. With some HTML and CSS knowledge and basic competency with JavaScript, you have all the skills you need. In three parts, Ben Frain is going to share the journey of designing and building a simple Progressive Web Application called ‘In/Out’, built without a framework. You can view it here. Read more…