We asked the Smashing Community for their favorite tips and tricks when editing text and code. With so many great suggestions, Rachel Andrew decided to collect them all into one article so you can add it to your useful bookmarks. Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply and share their best-appreciated tools and techniques — we sincerely appreciate it!
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When it comes to performance, what works in the browser doesn’t necessarily suit Node.js. So, how do we make sure a Node.js implementation is fast and fit for purpose? Node is a very versatile platform, but one of the predominant applications is creating networked processes. In this article David Mark Clements is going to focus on profiling the most common of these: HTTP web servers.
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Since last year, it has been possible to add Siri support to an app if it fits into one of Apple’s pre-defined use cases. Adding Siri support to an app has a lot of steps, with a lot of configuration. But the code needed to handle the requests is fairly simple. In this article, Lou Franco will take you through the steps of setting up a extension on Apple’s developer website and of adding the Siri extension code to the app. Find out if SiriKit will work for you and how to use it.
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Manually clicking through different browsers as they run your development code, either locally or remotely, is a quick way to validate that code. However, it’s not a solution for testing the full breadth of your site’s code base on the assortment of browsers and device types available to your customers. That’s where automated testing really comes into its own. In this article, Jason McConnell provides an overview of the concepts, technologies and coding techniques involved with running test scripts against browsers automatically using WebDriverJS on Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge.
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When Denys Mishunov was invited to speak at one of the best front-end conferences in Europe, he felt like he did not deserve to be at that conference. And he didn’t even know that those feelings of his had a name! This is called impostor syndrome and it is a real psychological issue, rooted deeply in many of us. If we do not pay attention to its symptoms, if we blindly follow its triggers, then we can get into real psychological trouble. The good news is that, even though there is no pill for it, we can change out attitude towards it. Simply acknowledging the feeling can help to neutralize its effect.
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Karim Maaloul decided to start a series of short WebGL experiments on Codepen, and he has finally found the time to compile them all together on a single website named “Moments of Happiness”. In this article, Karim has detailed the solution used to make a running cycle. On his Codepen page, all of these experiments are available, with the code at your disposal. Feel free to play around and make your own interactive toys. As you’ll see, all of the experiments share one principle: The behavior of each character responds programmatically to user input. No precalculated animation — every movement is defined at runtime.
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Making toggle button inclusive is a question of language, visual design, markup, and behavior. In this inaugural post, Heydon Pickering will be exploring what it takes to make toggle buttons inclusive. As with any component, there’s no one way to go about this, especially when such controls are examined under different contexts. However, there’s certainly plenty to forget to do or to otherwise screw up, so let’s try to avoid any of that. You can take the basics explored here and add all sorts of design nuances, including animation. It’s just important to lay a solid foundation first.
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In this article, Serg Hospodarets will teach you more about CSS custom properties, including their syntax, their advantages, good usage examples and how to interact with them from JavaScript. You will learn how to detect whether they are supported, how they are different from CSS preprocessor variables, and how to start using native CSS variables until they are supported across browsers. This is the right time to start using CSS custom properties and to prepare for their native support in browsers.
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If our websites don’t enable users to accomplish the key tasks they come to do, we’ve failed them. We should do everything in our power to ensure our websites function under even the harshest of scenarios, but at the same, we can’t expect our users to have the exact same experience in every browser, on every device. Because none of the solutions Aaron Gustafson found actually complied with the law in either spirit or reality, he opted to roll his own robust solution.
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Is copywork really for you? Unless you’re known the world over for your inimitable style, then yes, you would probably benefit from it. Copywork is a technique that writers and painters have been using for centuries. It is the process of recreating an existing work as closely as possible in order to improve one’s skill. In your case, this means recreating a user interface (UI) design pixel for pixel.
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