Weeknotes 26:13

Posted 5 hours ago

Week of March 22–28

I worked on a wide variety of things this week in my day job. A lot of small tasks to improve small pieces of UI on the Revive Our Hearts website. Here are some of the things I did this week.

  • Setup up homepage features and pop-up ads for April
  • Made some refinements on a new daily email template (MJML)
  • Created a new page for radio stations to sample the programs Revive Our Hearts have to offer
  • Continued to explore a CSS only parallax solution to replace a JavaScript solution
  • Replaced Glide.js carousels with Splide on a our store page
  • Created a new page for the South African site we are moving from WordPress to Django
  • Launched a Spanish version of Wonder of the Word (new layout and content)
  • Added hero graphics to donation pages or book promotions

Front End Study Hall #49

I participated in Front End Study Hall on Thursday. I enjoyed meeting with this group of front-end folks and discussing some different topics. We discussed:

  • Have we solved the WYSIWYG problem? – Our consensus was that we have not solved this problem. There are still a lot of shortcomings in these tools and you don’t also get what you expect. I mentioned that I remember FrontPage deleting code that I added by hand that caused rendering issues in IE’s competitor at the time, Netscape.
  • James asked, “Why did we end up with React?” – Several of us weighed in on the history of React. It emerged from Facebook’s team as a way to solve problems related to the complexity of their app. I was aware of the history after watching this documentary (ReactJS: The Documentary) a couple of years ago and I shared the link with the group.
  • We discussed the evolving nature of projects and when they go from page to an application and the decision to use a framework to solve the problem versus a bespoke solution. We weighed the pros and cons of the approaches. Frameworks bring the problems of dependencies. What costs an I willing to pay as part of developing?
  • What other areas of human endeavor can are similar? – Several members discussed the parallels of gardening to software development. We also discussed the parallels with construction. That led to a short discussion about the Indie Book Club’s book this month, The Timeless Way of Building. It was written by an architect in the late 70’s.
  • We finished up by sharing what we would take away from the conversation. I shared that my takeaway was to take responsibility for what you build, applying what you think is best and ethical and in line with your values. We cannot control what others choose to do but we can make personal choices.

I left the conversation energized and with a feeling of connection to a bunch of like-minded people who care about what they build and hold very similar values. It is nice to have that connection.

Layout Maestro

Ahmad Shadeed’s new course, The Layout Maestro, launched last week. My work approved spending some development budget for me to buy it. I am excited about diving into it. I enjoyed Ahmad’s talk at CSS Day last year and have been looking forward to the launch of this course. I am looking forward to reading his ideas about making interfaces more flexible with modern CSS.

You can still take advantage of launch pricing ($199) through April 1 at 6:00 PM UTC.

Articles I read

Caught my eye

Begoña Pereda (site by Andy Clarke) – I love the typography and animated SVGs.

Scroll-driven corner shape animation – I like the use of contrast here to create the white/black text. I need to read the CSS Tricks article about what Daniel did.

San Rita Creative Studio – You can read more about the project on Codrops.

What I watched

Books I am reading

Walking – 5.95 miles

  • Wednesday – 1.37 miles in 25 minutes (a short walk to cool down after a frustrating phone call)
  • Friday – 1.43 miles in 27 minutes (a short walk to reset after wrangling with a code solution)
  • Saturday – 3.15 miles in 59 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 6-2 this week. I finished a series with the Braves (sweep), played the Rays (2-1), the Pirates (swept 3 games), and started a series with the Angels (lost game 1).

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