I wasted a day on CSS selector performance to make a website load 2ms faster | Trys Mudford
Picture me holding Trys back and telling him, “Leave it alone, mate, it’s not worth it!”
When Our Tools Hold Us Back | OddBird
What happens if the ‘pace layers’ get out of sync?
A very thoughtful post by Miriam on how tools can adversely affect the pace of progress in the world of web standards.
When tools intervene between you and your access to the web platform, proceed with caution. Ask not only: How well does it work? But also: How well does it fail? Not only: What features do they provide? But also: What features do they prevent?
Related links
How do build tools break backwards compatibility? | Go Make Things
If you have a project that uses just plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can just open up the files and start working on them at any time. A project from 20 years ago will still work just fine, and can be easily modified.
Projects that use build tools? Well… to work with them, you need your build tools to actually build. And that’s not always guaranteed.
Also, it me:
One of my least favorite things as a developer is wanting to do a quick patch fix on an older project—I’m talking a simple one-line of CSS kind of fix—but first having to spend 30 minutes patching my build tools to get them running again.
Clamp calculator | Utopia
Oh, this is a nice addition to the Utopia set of tools: when you don’t need a full-on type scale but you still want to figure out fluid clamp() values, the clamp calculator has you covered.
It’s got permalinks too!
Classic rock, Mario Kart, and why we can’t agree on Tailwind - Josh Collinsworth blog
I suspect most people on opposing sides of the Tailwind debate actually complete agree on Tailwind itself. I don’t think we disagree on atomic CSS, or utility classes; I think our contention comes from the valuations we made long before we ever chose our tools. Where one of us sees a selling point, the other sees a flaw.
This is very much in line with what I’ve been talking about in my presentation on declarative design.
As Jeremy Keith put it so well: where it comes to styling, Builders want imperative programming; they want to specify what they want, where they want, how they want it. No surprises.
Crafters instead want declarative programming; they understand how to wield the power of creating rules of governance within a complex system, and wish to use that power, rather than micromanaging the browser.
CSS { In Real Life } | Cool Tools
I knew of most of these front-end development tools (like Utopia, obviously), but some were new to me.
Related posts
Manual ’till it hurts
Try writing your HTML in HTML, your CSS in CSS, and your JavaScript in JavaScript.
Decision time
Balancing the ledger.
Chain of tools
The driven division.
Re-evaluating technology
The importance of revisiting past decisions. Especially when it comes to the web.
Declarative design
Defining the inputs instead of trying to control the outputs.