btxx.org RSS Feed

Improving Tufte CSS for Jekyll 2019-11-01 After creating the ET-Jekyll theme almost two years ago, I finally got around to revamping the structure and improving a lot of minor performance issues.

Stop Using Sticky Navigation on Mobile 2019-10-06 Stop styling your web elements to be “sticky” on mobile.

Being More Efficient as a Designer and Developer 2019-09-28 I recently began working on a small side project (a marketing site / blog for an upcoming UX book I’m writing, but I have nothing to promote yet - sorry) and found myself circling around different

Plain Text Emails, Please 2019-09-09 When it comes to website / product design and development most devs should try to keep things simple.

Dynamic Checkboxes 2019-07-30 Checkboxes are used quite frequently on forms across the web.

Styling Empty Table Cells 2019-07-17 Often when designing tables on the web you’re bound to come across empty pockets of data.

Using HTML Validator Badges Again 2019-07-05 There was a time on the Internet when websites wore badges of honor, declaring that their code was semantic and followed the W3C guidelines.

They Won’t Wait: A Warning for Slow Websites 2019-06-25 Your website is probably slow.

Publishing Simple Books With Jekyll 2019-06-20 When thinking about writing, designing and ultimately publishing an ebook, most people don’t think of using a static site generator.

Using Hamburger Menus?

Making Tables Responsive With Minimal CSS 2019-06-11 Update (Oct 2019): @aardrian wrote a previous post about how changing the display properties on tables can impact screen readers.

Write HTML Like It’s 1999 2019-06-06 I am sure it’s safe to say that most developers love to use the latest and greatest web tools available.

Using User-Select 2019-06-04 Highlighting text in order to copy, cut or paste content is a staple action across the web.

News Websites Are Dumpster Fires 2019-05-29 Online news outlets are a dying breed and many users have decided to consume information elsewhere.

Text Align: Justify 2019-05-22 The text-align property is fairly well known in the world of CSS, even among those just starting out with the language.

Improving Receipt UX 2019-05-15 There was a pretty interesting article posted a couple days ago about rethinking the standard receipt design that I found quite compelling.

Cut Your Forms in Half 2019-05-09 Building web forms can sometimes feel like a boring or daunting task.

First Letter Pseudo Element 2019-05-03 In today’s TypeTip we will be taking a look at the often overlooked :first-letter CSS pseudo element.

Minimal CSS: Dropdown Menu 2019-04-26 I love the idea of stripping away as much CSS as possible, while still maintaining the original UI concept.

CSS Character Unit 2019-04-23 When it comes to proper readability with large portions of text, the golden standard is to have no more than 75 characters per line.

Browser History Sucks 2019-04-20 Have you ever needed to step back through your browser history to find a particular site or product?

Yes, I Still Use jQuery 2019-04-15 I have seen a handful of condescending comments from front-end developers since the newest build of (jQuery 3.4.0) released a couple of days ago.

CSS Value: currentColor 2019-04-13 There are a large number of nuanced and mostly unheard of CSS value types, but today we are going to focus on currentColor.

CSS: Indenting Text 2019-04-05 A lot of developers tend to do the bare minimum when it comes to implementing proper website typography.

Simple Does Not Mean Ugly 2019-03-26 I see new blog posts popping up now and again advocating for designers to keep their products as simple as possible - and I couldn’t agree more.

Skip to Content Button 2019-03-25 One of the golden rules for testing your website’s accessibility is the “keyboard-only” audit.

Prescription Form UI Improvements 2019-03-13 I was browsing the Clearly website a few days ago and ended up using their prescription form to update my worsening eyesight.

Animated Card Tiles 2019-02-27 The design trend of using “cards” or “tiles” to display interactive sections/article headings in an app or website remains a popular choice among designers.

Easy Toggle Switches 2019-02-18 Sometimes there is a need to use toggle elements in-place of the default checkbox inputs.

Super Mario Blocks in CSS 2019-02-15 Just because we can, let’s make a quick demo on how to build interactive elements based off the original Mario punch blocks.

Proper UI Hierarchy 2019-02-05 I often feel like an old man when I complain about flat design and how designers these days have lost (or willfully forgotten) the skill to create accessible UIs with proper visual hierarchy.

Tabbed Content Without JavaScript 2019-01-28 Creating tabs is a fairly trivial and common practice in web design, but many times it requires JavaScript to properly implement.

Easy Custom Radio Inputs 2019-01-21 Default radio inputs are notoriously horrible looking and are something designers tend to over-think when trying to customize them.

Basic Gulp Build for Sass 2019-01-15 Some designers might shy away from build tools when first starting out and I can understand the reasoning - task runners like gulp and grunt can seem daunting at first.

Better Box Shadows 2019-01-08 Box shadow on HTML elements has been widely supported across most browsers for a while now, but I find the default options don’t allow for much visual manipulation of the shadows in general.

Over-Nesting 2019-01-06 I think since our design industry moves so quickly and exciting new technologies get released almost daily, that we often forget some of the basics when writing CSS.

Using Parent Selectors in CSS 2018-12-19 I recently saw a Twitter thread posted by Tommy Hodgins on implementing highly requested styling features in CSS with only a minimal amount of JavaScript.

Width or Flex-Basis?

Adaptable Flexbox Grid 2018-11-22 You can use flexbox for many tricky layout “hacks” and implementing a grid layout is no different.

What Happened to Self-Hosted Blogs?

Using Multiple CSS Background Images 2018-09-28 It isn’t something developers have a need to do very often, but you can set multiple background images on a single element.

Pure CSS Simple Dropdown Plugin 2018-09-20 I find myself blowing away default browser select styling and implementing my own custom dropdowns far more often than I’d like.

Simple Accessibility 2018-09-07 Implementing proper accessibility practices can seem a little daunting at first, but there are a few basic standards you can introduce into your project work-flow that are fairly straightforward: Basic design Test that your…

Setting Up a Free SSL 2018-08-07 I never had to worry about SSL certificates when I originally hosted my blog through Github Pages, but since switching over to Surge.sh I lost my ability to utilize https protocol.

CSS Video Backgrounds 2018-04-16 With the release of Safari 11.1 on macOS and Safari on iOS 11.3, developers now have the ability to support background videos (mp4 support only - at the time of this article) with pure CSS.

CSS Variables 2018-03-24 The CSS language is becoming even more awesome and powerful everyday.

Stay Hungry 2018-02-12 It can feel daunting in this developer / designer landscape to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest and greatest technologies available.

Open Source Typeface Pairings 2018-01-25 I always love finding new typeface pairings to use across my personal and client projects, but I find many suggested pairings come with a hefty price tag (rightly so - premium typefaces are normally always worth th…

ET-Jekyll Theme 2018-01-14 ET-Jekyll theme is based off of Dave Liepmann’s awesome Tufte CSS - which takes it’s style and inspiration from the wonderful book and handout designs of Edward Tufte.

Chasing Performance 2017-11-20 Update This post is no longer relevant since this blog has been redesigned since.