I see VuePress just went 1.0. Explained simply, it’s a static site generator based on Vue. But of course, you work in Vue, which means you work in components.

All the modern JavaScript frameworks are component-based. Even when they disagree with each other about specific things (like how Svelte requires compilation), they all seem to agree on the model of working in components. React is all components. A popular static site generator for React is Next.js. The Vue version of that is Nuxt.js.

Then there is Gatsby which is all React. (Listen to our latest ShopTalk Show as we discuss it.) Gridsome seems like the most 1-to-1 comparison in Vue-land, the notable comparison being how they both are designed to suck in data from any source. Components though, of course. I’m not sure there is a flagship Angular-based static site generator, but they are out there, and Angular is components all the way down.

Components are so ubiquitous that perhaps you don’t even think about it anymore. But you might feel it, particularly if you jump back and forth between projects that aren’t component-driven. WordPress development, generally, I feel, isn’t component driven. Sure, you’ve got your header.php and footer.php files and such. You can break those apart however you want, but it’s rather ad-hoc. You aren’t explicitly building components and feeding those components local data and testing them as such. (You can get a lot closer with something like Timber.)

Building front-ends out of server-side code is absolutely fine. Server-side rendering is rife with advantages. But server-side languages don’t seem to have embraced components the way JavaScript has. And since everyone seems to like components (front-end devs obviously love it, designers think that way anyway, back-end devs understand it…) it’s no surprise to me to see this surge of beloved projects build server-side (or build-time) generated sites from JavaScript, simply because it’s component-based and components are just a good idea.

The post Components, yo. appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

from …

Šime posts regular content for web developers on webplatform.news.

In this week’s roundup, Chrome is adding an install option for Progressive Web Apps, Opera GX comes to Windows, the ECMAScript proposals get an update, and CSS Scroll Snap is coming to a Firefox browser near you.

An install icon is coming to Chrome on desktop

Pete LePage: The next version of Chrome will automatically show an install icon in the address bar on desktop if the site meets Chrome’s PWA “installability” criteria. You can listen for the appinstalled event to detect if the user installed your PWA.

Opera GX is available on Windows

Maciej Kocemba: The preview version of Opera GX for Windows is now available. This is a special version of Opera that lets users limit how much CPU and RAM is available to the browser.

Updated ECMAScript proposals

Azu The JavaScript optional chaining operator (obj?.prop) and null-ish coalescing operator (x ?? y) proposals have been moved to Stage 2 of the TC39 process. (See Web Platform News issue 902 for more information about the TC39 process.)

// BEFORE
let text = response.settings && response.settings.headerText;
if (text == null) text = "Hello, world!";

// AFTER
let text = response.settings?.headerText ?? "Hello, world!";

CSS Scroll Snap is coming to Firefox

Šime Vidas: CSS Scroll Snap is supported in Chrome, Safari, and the next version of Firefox. Scroll snapping works well on touch screen devices but there are some usability issues on desktop platforms.

The post Weekly Platform News: CSS Scroll Snap, Opera GX, PWA Install Icon appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

from CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com/weekly-platform-news-css-scroll-snap-opera-gx-pwa-install-icon/…

Greek mythology tells the story of Zeus creating the cloud nymph, Nephele. Like other Greek myths, this tale gets pretty bizarre and X-rated. Here’s a very abridged, polite version.

Nephele, we are told, was created by Zeus in the image of his own beautiful wife. A mortal meets Nephele, falls in love with her and, together, they take an adult nap™. Finally, in a strange twist, the cloud gives birth to half-human half-horse Centaur babies.

Weird, right? Personally, I can’t make heads or tails of it. Thankfully, the process for creating clouds in the browser is much more straightforward and far less risqué.

Recently, I discovered that developer Yuan Chuan has realized code-generated, photorealistic clouds. For me, this notion in the browser had long been the stuff of myth.

With one glance at the code in this pen we can imagine that convincing individual clouds are achievable through the use of CSS box-shadow with a <filter> element containing two SVG filters as its complement.

The photorealism we want is achieved with a delicate mix of feTurbulence and feDisplacementMap. These SVG filters are powerful, complex and offer very exciting features (including an Oscar winning algorithm)! However, under the hood, their complexity can be a bit intimidating.

While the physics of SVG filters is beyond the scope of this article, there is ample documentation available on MDN and w3.org. A very informative page on feTurbulence and feDisplacement is freely available (and offered as a chapter of this amazing book).

For this article, we will focus on learning to use these SVG filters to get spectacular results. We don’t need to delve too deeply into what is happening behind the scenes algorithmically, much in the way an artist isn’t required know the molecular structure of paint to render a stunning landscape.

Instead, let’s pay close attention to small handful of SVG attributes that are essential for drawing convincing clouds in the browser. Their use will enable us to bend these powerful …

Lindsey Kopacz has a wonderful blog about accessibility. I’ve seen a number of her articles making the rounds lately and I was like, dang I better make sure I’m subscribed. For example:

• An Introduction to ARIA States
• 3 Simple Tips to Improve Keyboard Accessibility
• Create custom keyboard accessible checkboxes

Regarding that last one, I remember learning from Sara Soueidan that a good tip for this to position them over the new custom checkboxes and hide them via opacity instead of hiding the native checkboxes by clipping them away. That covers the scenario of people exploring a touch screen for native interactive elements.

The post A11Y with Lindsey appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

from CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com/a11y-with-lindsey/…