Stefan Cosma

Just Another Cluster #4

Stefan Cosma -

It's that time again, when I post interesting links / articles / tools.

This is issue number #4.

If you've read the previous ones you might have noticed that I have changed the title of the series from Weekly Cluster to Just Another Cluster. The reason behind this is that I don't have time to post on a weekly basis, so I set up an IFTT applet that sends me an email every now and then with stuff I added to Buffer or Pocket. Once I have a good amount of interesting stuff to share I'll add them to an article and post it.

If you find any interesting tools or articles that I might have missed, let me know @stefanbc I'll share them in the next cluster.

So, here are some interesting links and articles!

  1. CSS Shorthand Syntax Considered an Anti-Pattern
    Harry Roberts talks about why shorthand CSS syntax is bad when it’s affecting properties that you don’t actually need to modify.
  2. You Wouldn't Base64 a Password - Cryptography Decoded
    This article serves as a good introduction to cryptography concepts, so read it!
  3. When everything's important, nothing is!
    Do libraries and frameworks prioritise components on boot? If so, how, and if not what can we do? That is the question this articles tries to answer.
  4. Why Inline SVG is Best SVG
    This video by the guys over at Front End Center will try to explain why inline SVG is better than any another form of SVG.
  5. Who said javascript was easy?
    To paraphrase the author of the article here’s a few tricks and traps that javascript beginners should probably know of.
  6. What is the difference between CSS variables and preprocessor variables?
    Chris Coyier explains the difference between native CSS variables and the ones you would use within Sass or LESS.
  7. FORC: The Fear of Removing CSS
    There is a genuine fear of removing CSS from legacy code. I have it and I believe most of front-end developers I know have it. This article tries to remove that fear.
  8. A Lifetime of Learning to Code
    The title is pretty self explanatory. You should definitely check out the article.
  9. 20 Years of CSS
    20 years of CSS, people! 20 ... years! I've been working with it for about 8 years and it's been a hell of a ride since there's so much to lear and so little time to do it.
  10. Front-End Developers Are Information Architects Too
    As the author already said this article isn’t about what you may consider an information architect to be: someone in the user-experience field, who maybe studied library science, and who talks about taxonomies.
  11. The truth about traditional JavaScript benchmarks
    Another self explanatory title. The ideas and statements in this article are very valid and worth checking out.
  12. Front-End Performance Checklist 2017 (PDF, Apple Pages)
    Vitaly Friedman talks about front-end performance and shares with all of us a wide array of useful things that we should all consider when we think about performance.
  13. Memories from six years of open source.
    I joined Github in 2011 and it has been an amazing tool and resource hub. This article will go through what 6 years of open source mean for anyone involved.

Until next time, code long and prosper!

Stefan

Image credit: Guillaume Kurkdjian