CategoryTools

June 1, 2020 — In this article, Chidi Orji will explore the concept of error boundaries in a React application. You’ll work through an example app to see how we can use error boundaries to deliver a better app experience. Finally, you’ll integrate Sentry into our error boundary for realtime error reporting. The only prerequisite is that you have some familiarity with React class components. Let’s dig in! Read more…

May 20, 2020 — Performance is a competitive advantage that can bring and retain customers. We can’t afford regularly spending time optimizing apps all over again. It’s costly, and complex. As a first step in coming up with a solution for any problem, we need to make the problem visible. In this article, Anton Nemtsev will help you with exactly that It’s not enough to optimize an application. You need to prevent performance from degradation, and the first step to do it is to make performance changes visible. In this article, Anton Nemtsev shows a couple of ways of showing them in the GitLab merge requests. Read more…

May 15, 2020 — A month is a long time to stay on top of things. In today’s monthly post, Iris Lješnjanin brings you an overview of everything we’ve been working on and have also enjoyed reading over the past month. Here at Smashing, we believe that is is now more important than ever to stay in touch and support each other. Behind the scenes, the team is working tirelessly on ways to keep the community connected, and oh boy do we have a lot of things in store for you! You didn’t really think we’d give up that easily, did you? Read more…

May 14, 2020 — React is a fantastic JavaScript library for building rich user interfaces. It provides a great component abstraction for organizing your interfaces into well-functioning code, but what about the look and feel of the app? There are various ways of styling React components from using stylesheets to using external styling libraries.  In this article, Shedrack Akintayo will explain the cons and pros of these styling strategies, and by the end of this tutorial, you’ll know all about styling React components and how they work along with the various methods that can be used for styling these components. Read more…

May 11, 2020 — In this article, Blessing Krofegha introduces Typescript, a superscript of JavaScript that presents the static type feature for spotting common errors as developers codes, which enhances performance, hence results in robust enterprise applications. You’ll also learn how to efficiently set up TypeScript in a React Project as we build a Money Heist Episode Picker App, exploring TypeScript, React hooks such as useReducer, useContext and Reach Router. Read more…

May 6, 2020 — How much thought have you put into your primary input device? Ever considered how much better your interface with your computer might be? For decades, keyboards have been the primary mechanisms by which we interact with our computers. In this article, Ben Frain is going to dive into the possibilities of mechanical keyboards. The different layouts, switch types and even keycap material. Strap yourself in — this will be a deep dive! Read more…

May 1, 2020 — In recent years a slew of ‘readability’ programs have appeared to help us tidy up the things we write. Used everywhere from newsrooms to browser plugins, these systems offer automated feedback on how writing can be clearer, neater, and less contrived. Sounds good right? Well, up to a point. Readability programs may seem like a godsend, but the worst thing writers can do is write to please them above all others. Finding your voice is hard enough without also trying to sound like everyone else. Read more…

April 29, 2020 — Today, as designers, we are lucky as never before because there are dozens of tools available for us to design wireframes and also smoothly integrate this activity in our general design process. In this article, Anton Suprunenko will take a deeper look at one of the most simple yet quite often underrated activities in web development: the design of wireframes. You’ll learn what wireframes are, why we need to design them, how to get the most out of the designs, and how to take it to the next level. Read more…

April 27, 2020 — Developers often worry about the SEO of their SPAs (Single Page Applications) and how well they would do on Google searches (blogs, portfolio websites, product websites, and so on). Sometimes, they also worry about how complex building a server-side rendered application might be. In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create server-side rendered applications by using Nuxt.js, how to configure your application for development, and how to deploy to Heroku. Read more…

April 23, 2020 — Node.js is an interesting tool for web developers. With its high level of concurrency, it has become a leading candidate for people choosing tools to use in web development. In this article, we will learn about what makes up Node.js, give it a meaningful definition, understand how the internals of Node.js interact with one another, and explore the project repository for Node.js on GitHub. Read more…