Local or session storage?

28 Oct 2022

Local storage tends to be the obvious place to persist data locally in a web application. We tend to grab straight for localStorage, but it’s not the only tool in our workbox. Another option is sessionStorage. Let’s review their similarities and differences, and determine when to use which.

CSS states with attribute selectors

27 Oct 2022 via elisehe.in

Elise Hein compiled a few arguments in favor of using CSS attribute selectors more often. Two examples stood our for me.

Consider existing attributes. Whenever we add state we should take a step back and consider if we can leverage a standard. I often add an .is-active class to links in navbars. However, there’s an ARIA attribute for that. In addition to using a standard, our site becomes more accessible.

a[aria-current="page"] { }

Make invalid states impossible with data attributes. In HTML, we could accidentally end up with a card that .is-small.is-large. Using a data attribute enforces a single value for the attribute.

.card.is-small { }
.card.is-large { }

// vs

.card[data-size="small"] { }
.card[data-size="large"] { }

Read the full post on Elise Hein’s blog.

2022 redesign

24 Oct 2022

This blog’s design has remained roughly the same the past two years. I tweaked the style a lot, but changes were incremental and stay true to the neutral black and white style. Codebases rot over time, and small changes slowly but surely introduce technical debt. I started cleaning house, and before I knew it I was embarked in a full redesign.

Named arguments

15 Sep 2022

I shiver at the sight of a function packed with too-many-to-read-at-a-glance arguments without a description.

Granular interfaces

5 Sep 2022

A few weeks ago a spec change for an application we’re working on forced us to refactor part of the codebase. It was food for thought about the flexibility granular interfaces provide, and choosing the right abstraction at the right time. This is a short writeup on the thought process we went through as we updated our logic to support a new feature now and allow more options in the future.

Using markdown in HTML (in markdown) in Hugo

25 Jul 2022

How to write HTML in Hugo without losing markdown capabilities.

Non-reactive data in Alpine.js

1 Jun 2022

Sometimes you want to store data in your Alpine component without wrapping it in a JavaScript proxy (which is how Alpine keeps everything reactive).

For example, third party libraries might have issues when wrapped in a proxy. Chart.js is one of those. If you store a Chart.js instance in Alpine data, the chart will error.

Composable seeders in Laravel with callOnce

22 Feb 2022

Laravel 9 is fresh out the door, and it contains a small contribution of mine: a new callOnce method for database seeders.

Laravel Blade & View Models

10 Jan 2022

An overview on view models in Laravel

Using MySQL `order by` while keeping one value at the end

16 Dec 2021

The other day I needed to sort a dataset in MySQL and ensure one value was always at the end. I never fully understood how order by works, so I did some research on how to solve my problem and how order by behaves.

Eloquent findOrFail caveats

23 Nov 2021

I use Model::findOrFail a lot in Laravel. Recently, I realized it’s not always the best option.

The Monetization Trap

10 Aug 2021

I want to talk about something I’ve been chewing on for a while: the monetization trap.

Ebb and flow

9 Aug 2021

I’ve been thinking a lot about work-life balance lately. I used to see it as a balancing scale that should remain on the same position at all times. However, I believe a better mental model is to see it as ebb and flow.

Use Blink to execute something once and only once

22 Jul 2021

Our Blink package is marketed as a caching solution to memoize data for the duration of a web request. Recently, we came upon another use case for the package: to execute something once and only once.

Adding backlinks to a GitHub wiki

16 Jul 2021

Backlinks, or bi-directional liks, are becoming table-stakes for productivity apps since they’ve been popularized by Roam. It’s a simple concept: when you create a link from page A to page B, page B will also reference page A. With traditional hyperlinks, page B wouldn’t know about page A unless you explicitly link it back.

Backlinks allow a graph of knowledge to grow organically. When you create a doc for Orders, and mention Products, a Products page will be created or updated with a backlink. Even when not actively documenting Products, readers can get an idea of what they entail because of the linked references.