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Some interesting thoughts from Heydon on burnout, why it's a positive thing that we're talking about it more, and what a major root cause is for many …

An incredibly extensive collection of single-user tools. Need to check colour contrast? Grab image metadata? Generate a gradient? Yup, all of those are in here. The list is immense and the tools are …

Yesterday, I implied that this site was ugly by design. See, my retreat from web development wasn't due to lack of time, nor waning interest. My love of coding, designing and experimenting with the …

Ana has put together a brilliant overview of the why, what, and how of the IndieWeb. I imagine I'll return many times to look up simplified explanations, but a couple of …

I'm not sure I agree fully with everything Jared has written here – and there's a strong feeling of bias-tinted vision to some of the claims – but I enjoyed the overall trend of the argument and …

A thoughtful look at the idea of sustainability in web development and design, particularly in terms of whether worrying about an individual design choice's carbon footprint is meaningful or simply …

User experience, even over developer …

I am not a fan of alphabetical CSS, but Eric does a really solid job of arguing why, right now, it may be the best option. The short version is that CSS remains so woefully underutilised and …

I've followed Jenn for some time, but somehow missed this absolutely perfect talk they gave in 2016 at XOXO Conf. The humour is fantastic; the overview of the satire Jenn has put out is super …

Welcome to the third version of theAdhocracy! It's been a long time coming, but the site has finally been rebuilt, rehosted, and re-just-about-everything else, so I figured I'd actually formalise the launch with a new post explaining what's happened and why.

Making the case for the title UI Engineer as a meaningful descriptor for those of us that consider our work in front-of-the-front-end terms.

A look back and a look forward... it must be the start of a new year. 2019 held a lot of change and personal improvement, but I can't help but feel that 2020 is going to be a big one. So what exactly do I have planned and what am I hoping for the next 12 months?

An excellent collection of articles, tutorials, and advice on modern web development challenges. From PWAs to accessibility to caching, there's a lot of information …

I've been thinking a lot about an article I read recently that called out technical writing online for being overly trusted. But shouldn't that same argument apply more universally to third-party code coming from any source?

Month in media is an archived project, now with a permanent home in the Reviews section. Films, TV shows, books, video games, and other media watched, read, or played in November 2016.

There are a lot of new web technologies emerging at the moment which really feel like we're entering a new era. Over the last decade, the likes of HTML5, ES6+, flexbox etc. have brought the web, and …

An attempted experiment to replicate the blog layout of ilovetypography.com, which uses floats to great effect, with more modern CSS Grid and Flex techniques. Turned out to not be quite so simple, but taught me a lot about the benefits and limitations of CSS Grid.

Migrating assets to a new CMS can be a complete pain, but working out which files go with each page or article on a website doesn't have to be a nightmare if you start with a solid foundation. For me, that means tightly coupling my folder structure on the server with my content structure on the website, a workflow that Craft is particularly nifty at automating.

Craft CMS has the ability to accept environment variables as well as aliases. It can be worthwhile understanding how these two seemingly similar concepts differ, and when you might want to use one over the other.

An amalgamation of all the data you get fed at the end of a year. From Spotify Wrapped, to Google tracking, to my own beer journal, a look back over 2019 from a (mildly) data-centred viewpoint.

I finally made it to an IndieWebCamp meetup, even if it was remote only due to the increasingly restrictive implications of the coronavirus. I learnt a lot, I had a great time, and I'm ready to start implementing a whole bunch of new ideas right here. I also took a huge number of notes from the speakers and sessions throughout the day.

Static sites don't make search functionality easy, but luckily there are some excellent services that do. I've been messing around with Algolia and finally have it working with Craft and Gatsby the way I want it... on the backend, at least.

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!

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).

Some thoughts on Code Institute's "5 Day Coding Challenge", having just completed it.

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.

Can you use progressive enhancement when building a web app (whatever that is)? Of course you can, HEY have proven so (not that it should have needed …

I can see this article becoming an oft-cited "turning point" in frontend development, like Ethan Marcotte's A List Apart post on responsive design. It's certainly a beautifully crafted …

Ben has crafted an incredibly thoughtful, powerful, and quotable article on just about everything, but particularly life online and how people in the web community might be able to go about improving …