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Easily the most comprehensive and impressive charting and data visualisation library I've come across. Graphs and charts are keyboard accessible, well-labelled, meaningfully marked up, with colour …

Another great overview of how to use the `react-hooks` extension for the Testing Library suite, with some more complex examples than many other …

I've been getting a lot of hands-on time with React Testing Library recently and, for the most part, I really like it. Still, I get caught out from time-to-time, and this article has a lot of great …

An intriguing new project from some of the brains at ClearLeft for "elegantly scaling type" on the web. Personally, I'm all for anything that reduces or removes the need for breakpoints in my …

When you love a website design, you look into how it was made, right? That's what I did with Robb Owen's recent redesign. Amazingly, his incredibly smooth scroll and cursor tracking is achieved via …

Very informative beginner's guide to testing React websites using Jest and the React Testing …

Ah, the good old "Gouty-Stem Tree" of Australia! Actually, I honestly had no idea that Baobab's had reached the Great Land of Oz; I have (mistakenly) always assumed they were endemic to Africa, but …

Recoil is a new state management library from Facebook (though note this isn't an official React project). Doesn't seem to do anything too fancy, but does use a similar mental model to hooks …

I've been doing a fair amount of testing React hooks recently. Part of that has been learning the `react-hooks` extension for the Testing Library suite, which took a while to wrap my head around. …

Building a tooltip? A carousel? A password input? I can strongly recommend checking if the Component Gallery has a page on whatever UI pattern you're working …

Lots of companies rely on Microsoft Word for internal documentation and training, but code snippets are a readability nightmare. They don't have to be; with some reusable formatting, we can make clear code blocks in any version of Word.

...when the web was young, the free market in ideas was open to anyone with access to a library’s internet connection.But the web rewards network effects and network effects …

Notes from the fully remote React Summit 2020 (or at least the talks I tuned in for). Lots covered, from static-site generators and the Jamstack through to React state management and accessibility. What a fun day!

In which I start off asking a simple question: what content categories should I use on this website? Four hours later, I've discoverd information gardening, now pages, digital-me libraries, and oh so much more. And yes, I think I've answered that first question. Fancy a trip down the rabbit hole?

Well, it only took about a week of dazed puzzling, data tables, and tearing my hair out in clumps, but I think I may finally have a rough content taxonomy for theAdhocracy. A rough first version, that is. Let me explain...

Notes from my second fully remote conference, this time Sparkbox's UnConference. Being able to freely access talks from the US is a rare bonus of everything going on right now, and this did not disappoint. Musical cameos, great talks on UX, accessibility, design systems, and amazing speakers. Great event (despite the time difference).

Progressive summarisation may not be ideally suited for me right now, but it's an idea which stuck with me whilst I was undergoing my own taxonomy building process. It's worth stepping through the …

Having hooked up Algolia with my Gatsby build pipeline and populated a search index from my Craft CMS API, the next step was the build a frontend UI to enable users to actually query my posts. It turned out to be a pretty simple process.

Every time I upload a GIF to this website it ends up rendered as a single frame. It's taken me quite a while to get to the bottom of why that is.

A pretty exhaustive overview of the HTML and CSS options that we now have for responsive image layouts. Here are some key …

Notes from the 2020 Jamstack Conf. Some interesting dives in the Jamstack community and various applications of Jamstack technologies, with tweet threads as usual.

The idea of a great divide in front-end development resonated with me. I'm worried about how the erosion of certain skills could lead to a less inclusive, accessible web, for both users and developers. On the other hand, there are some massive advantages to our new tools. It's a double-edged sword.

Another month, another big and fully remote JavaScript conference. JSNation fit into my schedule a little less (and didn't quite overlap with my interests as neatly) but it was a fun event with some interesting talks on topics that are often only on my periphery. Much to think about!

I love books. I have a huge collection of them and I routinely add to it. But when it comes to the topic of spreading knowledge and information, I think the web wins. It may not be as nice to use, but it is more accessible, and that means it's more valuable.

What do you do when a website has loaded but the content is still being fetched from an API? One answer is to fill the page with animated placeholders, creating a skeleton of what the user can expect, with a dash of CSS animation to let them know that something's still going on behind the scenes.

Some very resonant musings from Jeremy on why he …

100 separate typographic designs, all using free Google fonts, with some absolutely stunning results. What Do-Hee has put together is one of the best showcases for Google's font library, as well as …

For the past couple of weeks I've been lucky enough to take part in Cassie Evans' latest SVG workshop (the first truly exceptional perk of the "new" career 🤩). The workshop was split into five …

An excellent overview from Josh of the pitfalls of using UI frameworks. I particularly enjoyed their focus on why developers often advocate for these tools, and how those needs are often …

Apparently, ARIA live regions don't play nicely with React. Whilst they work fine in many browsers, they simply don't function in VoiceOver without some workarounds.