#174 - Watching, observing, questioning, and exploring
Hey everyone,
Welcome to issue #174.
This month we go deeper into working with Eleventy and Sanity. You’ll also find a great read on information overload, which I think we all struggle with from time to time.
There’s a piece on creating privacy-friendly video embeds – yes it’s a thing! And we have a new platform for really good free fonts. Let’s face it… who doesn’t like free fonts? As usual there’s plenty of other interesting bits and pieces from in and around the world of web development.
Thought provoking #
“Thoroughly processing what you read increases the quality of your learning; inevitably, you generate questions that lead to better mastery.” The One Thing You Need To Learn To Fight Information Overload from Al Khan.
“It’s in this in-between state that we get to reinvent ourselves. Reinvent who we want to be, what kind of impact we’d like to create. We get to reinvent the new world, as it emerges!”
Leo Babauta in Meaningful Impact When the New World Has Not Emerged Yet
“Watching, observing, questioning, and exploring” Regine Gilbert in Keeping Your Design Mind New and Fresh.
Things from me #
Extending the Sanity Eleventy Blog starter. Learn about GROQ, the Vision plugin, templating in Eleventy and how to add a few key features which are missing from the starter.
Breaking changes when upgrading Hugo. Documenting errors which might break a Hugo site as you upgrade and the solutions to fix them.
I just launched a new website for BuxtonThreeTwo, designed in Figma and built using Sanity and Eleventy.
Design and Code #
Privacy-friendly video embeds. Thomas Vantuycom explains how to be mindful of your users’ privacy when embedding content from Youtube and Vimeo.
Performant Placeholders. Why use placeholder images? How can you load them quickly? How do they affect Largest Contentful Paint? An analysis by Brian Louis Ramirez.
How to Improve CSS Performance. Lots of useful tips from Milica Mihajlija.
A Deep Dive Into Eleventy Static Site Generator. A nice intro from Stephanie Eckles.
Typography #
Fontshare is a free fonts service launched by the Indian Type Foundry (ITF). It’s a growing collection of professional grade fonts that are 100% free for personal and commercial use.
System fonts don’t have to be ugly. Make your site faster and more environmentally-friendly by taking a system-fonts-first approach
Homelessfonts is a collection of typefaces based on the handwriting of homeless people living in the streets of Barcelona. All profits are intended to help the 1400 people supported by the Arrels Foundation.
Something to watch #
This series on Page transitions with Barba.js and GSAP from Petr Tichy is excellent. Admittedly, I’ve not done much with animation before, but I’ve been learning lots for a current project. It’s a lot of fun and I highly recommend Petr’s tutorials as a starting point.