#191 – Foundations

Hi everyone,

Welcome to issue #191.

Here are a few things that caught my eye through October.

Thought provoking #

“You don’t have to like your work for it to work. Liking or not liking it isn’t the essential part of making something.” Mattaias Ott in None of your business.

Google Fonts illegal in EU. The instructions for using Google Fonts tell you to do something that is clearly illegal in the EU.

Design and Code #

“…all that you need to be a front end developer is HTML. That’s the foundation.” Chris Ferdinandi in Congrats, you’re a front end developer!

“Creeping featurism can kill your product and the morale of your team. Avoid it like the plague!” Brad Taunt on Avoiding Featurism.

“A browser-level control to indicate the “fidelity” of the experience you want, e.g. how much bandwidth, CPU, and battery are required to load and interact with the page“ Jim Nielsen in Website Fidelity.

The Component Gallery. A collection of interface components from real-world design systems put together and beautifully illustrated by Iain Bean. Because most patterns already exist, and naming things is hard. So why try and reinvent the wheel?

Typography #

Typographic hierarchies. Alma Hoffmann discusses six basic variables to establish an effective typographic hierarchy.

Brecht De Ruyte on Easy Fluid Typography With clamp() Using Sass Functions.

Performance and sustainability #

COP27 Egypt: A webpage sustainability review. Following the success of last years audit, Fershad Irani unpacks this year’s COP homepage, providing insight into ways it might be improved.

Sustainable Web Development Strategies Within An Organization. Michelle Barker explores some of the ways we can raise awareness and effect change within an organization to create a more positive environmental impact.

Privacy and security #

Understanding Privacy. A new book from Smashing Magazine all about how to create inclusive, safe and privacy-aware digital experiences.

Cusdis is an open-source, lightweight (~5kb gzipped), privacy-first comment system.

Something to watch #

CSS is awesome. An amusing talk from Anton Gunnarsson at Nordic.js 2022, about the insanely cool things you can now do using a few lines of CSS.

Thank you for reading #

Thanks for tuning in for another issue.

Please share this with a friend if you think they might enjoy it.

If this is your first time here you can subscribe via RSS or subscribe via email. It would be great to have you onboard.

Seeing you in the next one.

Harry


Reply by email

Monthly Newsletter

Once a month I curate a newletter for designers and developers interested in static sites, CSS and web performance. Check out past issues to get an idea.