#188 - Small steps matter
Hey everyone,
Welcome to Issue #188!
Wow it’s been hot here in the UK. The mercury hit 40 for the first time ever and for a couple of days, outside felt more like the Sahara than South London.
Concerning as these temperatures may be, it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s rekindled the climate conversation and sparked some interesting posts. That can only be a good thing, so let’s start there.
Thought provoking #
“We need to look at the good things that are happening, and encourage more good things. From governments, from companies and from ourselves.” Hidde de Vries on Individual climate action: small steps matter.
“If the current European heatwave has nudged you to take #ClimateAction and you work in tech, let me share some helpful communities and resources to get you going…” A Twitter thread from Hannah Smith.
”Get the HTML right and you’ve built a solid foundation. If not, you’re building on sand.“ Be the browser’s mentor, not its micromanager is a fantastic talk from Andy Bell on building websites with progressive enhancement in mind.
Design and Code #
Anthony Hobday shares 37 Easy Ways to Spice Up Your UI Designs.
Technical Writing for Developers. Lots of great tips in this one from Eluda on how programming and writing can come together and take our developer skills to the next level.
In Breaking Out of a Central Wrapper Michelle Barker shares a nice new approach to an old trick.
In Page, Site and Params, I try my best to explain the role these different types of variables play in storing, accessing and returning data in Hugo projects.
Bundling up: rebuilding my Hugo site. Bryce Wray explains why using page bundles is probably a good idea.
I finally switched to a new laptop, having held out for as long as I could. Here’s my web development setup and configuration.
Typography #
“A nicely structured document outline, with a clear hierarchy and no skipped heading levels, is one of the hallmarks of accessible web design.” In Level Up Your Headings Game, Matthias Ott explains how and why headings convey structure and shouldn’t be used to visually style text.
Performance and sustainability #
“Optimizing the size of images can have a bigger impact on performance than all other areas combined.” In Powerful Image Optimization Tools, Louis Lazaris covers different tools available for reducing the size of images.
Minimal Social Markup. Jens Oliver Meiert looks into the least amount of metadata it takes to create appealing cards in social media and messaging tools.
Avoiding layout shifts: aspect-ratio vs width & height attributes. Jake Archibald explains the differences between these two approaches and gives some pointers on when to use which.
Privacy and security #
I recently discovered Brian Lovin’s Security Checklist–a great guide for staying safe on the internet. Brian’s guide walks you through exactly what you should be doing. Whilst offering plenty of resources that explain why you need to do it. And suggesting apps that can help you get there.
Something to watch #
Limitless HTTP requests with Hugo: from basic GET to GraphQL. A great talk by Régis Philibert at Hugo Conf that shows all the cool things you can do with Hugo’s resources.GetRemote function.
Thank you for reading #
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Seeing you in the next one.
Harry