CodePen Blog
Chris’ Corner: Reacting

I was listening to Wes and Scott on a recent episode of Syntax talking about RSCs (React Server Components). I wouldn’t say it was particularly glowing.

We use them here at CodePen, and will likely be more and more as we ship more with Next.js, which is part of our most modern stack that we are always moving toward. Me, I like Next.js. React makes good sense to me for use in a very interactive, long-session style application with oodles of state management. By virtue of being on the latest Next.js release, whatever we put in the app directory (“The App Router” as they call it) automatically uses RSCs when it can. I mostly like that. We do have to fight it sometimes, but those fights are generally about server-side rendering and making sure we are set up for that and doing things right to take advantage of it, which honestly we should be doing as much as possible anyway. I’ll also add some anecdotal data that we haven’t exactly seen huge drops in JavaScript bundle size when we move things that direction, which I was hoping would be a big benefit of that work.

But React is more than Next.js, right? Right?! Yes and no. I use React without Next.js sometimes, and we do at CodePen in plenty of places. Without Next.js, usage of RSCs is hard or not happening. Precious few other frameworks are using them, and some have thrown up their hands and refused. To be fair: Parcel has support in Beta and Waku also supports them.

A little hard to call them a big success in this state. But it’s also hard to call the concept of them a bad idea. It’s generally just a good idea to make the servers do more work than browsers, as well as send as little data across the network as possible. If the JavaScript in a React component can be run on the server, and we can make the server part kinda smart, let’s let it?

If you’ve got the time and inclination, Dam Abramov’s React for Two Computers is a massive post that is entirely a conceptual walkthrough abstracting the ideas of RSCs into an “Early World” and “Late World” to understand the why and where it all came from. He just recently followed it up with Impossible Components which gets more directly into using RSCs.

Welp — while we’re talking React lemme drop some related links I found interesting lately.

* React itself, aside from RSCs, isn’t sitting idle. They’ve shipped an experimental <viewtransitioncomponent which is nice to see as someone who has struggled forcing React to do this before. They’ve also shipped an RC (Release Candidate) for the React Compiler (also RC? awkward?). The compiler is interesting in that it doesn’t necessarily make your bundles smaller it makes them run faster.
* Fancy Components is a collection of “mainly React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Motion” components that are… fancy. I’ve seen a bit of pushback on the accessibility of some of them, but I’ve also poked through them and found what look like solid attempts at making them accessible, so YMMV.
* Sahaj Jain says The URL is a great place to store state in React.
* Joshua Wootonn details the construction of a Drag to Select interaction in React which is… pretty complicated.
* The blog Expression Statement (no byline) says HTML Form Validation is heavily underused. I just added a bit of special validation to a form in React this week and I tend to agree. Short story: GMail doesn’t render s where the src has a space in it. 😭. I used pattern directly on the input, and we have our own error message system, otherwise I would have also used setCustomValidity.
* Thoughtbot: Superglue 1.0: React ❤️ Rails

💡 Programming and Microchips: The Digital Duo Behind Modern Tech!

Ever wondered how your phone or computer actually works? At the heart of every smart device are two key elements working together seamlessly.

Let’s break them down:

1️⃣ Microchip (Integrated Circuit): A microchip is like a tiny city made of millions — even billions — of components etched onto a piece of silicon. It’s the “brain” of any electronic device, performing calculations, storing data, and managing operations.

2️⃣ Programming: This is the set of instructions (code) that tells the microchip what to do. Without programming, a chip is just silent hardware. Code gives it purpose — from running your favorite apps to controlling smart devices and enabling AI.

How do they work together?

Microchips provide the processing power and memory (hardware).

Programming gives them intelligence and control (software).
Together, they make possible everything from smartphones and smartwatches to powerful servers and intelligent machines!

Which part of this digital world fascinates you the most? Share your thoughts in the comments!

CodePen Blog
Chris’ Corner: GSAP, more like FREESap

The news is that GSAP, a hugely popular animation library on CodePen and the web writ large, is now entirely free to use thanks to their being acquired by Webflow.

Thanks to Webflow GSAP is now 100% FREE including ALL of the bonus plugins like SplitText, MorphSVG, and all the others that were exclusively available to Club GSAP members. That’s right – the entire GSAP toolset is FREE, even for commercial use! 🤯 You can read more about this on Webflow’s blog

Cool.

In celebration, they are also running a Community Challenge where you make stuff and submit it and maybe win some swag. You make something to submit either with Webflow or CodePen, and they provide a quick Pen template to get started.

As you can see in that template, GSAP is great at animating regular ol’ HTML content, and in this case text content that it splits into individual elements (accessibly!) with the brand-new entirely re-written for betterness SplitText plugin. But GSAP can animate… whatever. I actually think of it as being particularly good at animating SVG, so I figure we ought to spend the rest of our time together here looking at sweet SVG links that caught my eye recently.

* Animating Figma’s SVG Exports by Nanda Syahrasyad — These interactive posts that Nanda does are amazing. It really doesn’t have anything to do with Figma, but that’s a clever title as it will help connect with the kind of developer who needs this. This made me think of GSAP a bit as the last demo relies on a bit of transform-origin which GSAP explicitly fixes cross-browser (or at least that used to be a big sticking point it smoothed over).
* svg-gobbler by Ross Moody — Exporting SVG from a design tool, like above, is one way to get the SVG you need. Another is kiping it from existing sites! There is lots of SVG on the web already to get your hands on (be careful to account for copyright and taste). This browser extension helps you extract them cleanly.
* SVG Coding Examples: Useful Recipes For Writing Vectors By Hand by Myriam Frisano — The other way to get your hands on the SVG you need is to roll up your sleeves and write it, which is an entirely possible thing to do in SVG syntax. This guide doesn’t use <pathon purpose because that’s a whole thing unto itself (which I once documented and have played with on a limited basis). Myriam’s guide here does get into using JavaScript to variable-ize things and do loops and stuff which is all smart and useful stuff.
* From static to interactive: turn SVG diagrams into exciting experiences on your website by Vanessa Fillis — Flouish looks like a pretty cool tool. These demos by Vanessa to me feel like slightly fanci-fied image map demos, which is actually a perfectly great SVG use case.
* Changing Colors in an SVG Element Using CSS and JavaScript by Kirupa Chinnathambi — Just some SVG 101 here, which is always appreciated.
* Vectorpea by Ivan Kutskir— Web-based vector editor (ala Illustrator, with the Pen tool and such) that opens lots of file formats and works quite nicely in my limited experience.
* Lissajous Curve SVG Generator by Eva Decker — So niche.
* SVGFM by Chris Kirknielsen — SVG filters are ultra powerful and, I’ve always felt, a bit inscrutable. Chris brings some language and UI to the party making it a bit easier to experiment and play. But it’s still complex!
* Revisiting SVG filters – my forgotten powerhouse for duotones, noise, and other effects by Brecht De Ruyte — My favorite kind of SVG filters are the ones with one clear purpose and one filter that does the thing. Duotone images are that.
* The Truth(tm) about encoding SVG in data URIs by Stoyan Stefanov — When using SVG in CSS as a background, you can do: background: url('data:image/svg+xml,<svg'); and I mean that quite literally. You can put whatever SVG syntax in there and it’ll work generally a[...]

s expected. No scripting or anything. There is only one thing to worry about: encode any # characters as %23.

Top 30 CSS Libraries Every Developer Should Know

If you're a web developer or designer, using CSS libraries can greatly speed up your workflow and enhance your UI design. Here's a list of the Top 30 most used CSS libraries along with their key features:

1. Bootstrap – Responsive layout, grid system, UI components.
2. Tailwind CSS – Utility-first classes for custom designs.
3. Foundation – Responsive framework with accessibility features.
4. Bulma – Modern CSS framework based on Flexbox.
5. Materialize – Based on Google’s Material Design.
6. Animate.css – Ready-to-use CSS animations.
7. Skeleton – Lightweight boilerplate for basic UI.
8. Pure.css – Small, responsive CSS modules.
9. UIkit – Modern UI components and grid system.
10. Metro 4 UI – Metro-style components and animations.
11. Tachyons – Functional CSS with atomic classes.
12. NES.css – Retro 8-bit game-inspired UI.
13. Cirrus – Clean and responsive CSS framework.
14. Material UI – Material Design for React apps.
15. W3.CSS – Simple, responsive CSS from W3Schools.
16. BEM Methodology – Naming convention for scalable CSS.
17. Clarity Design – Enterprise UI by VMware.
18. Fomantic-UI – Community fork of Semantic UI.
19. Shoelace – Web components for modern apps.
20. Picnic CSS – Lightweight and minimal.
21. Basscss – Low-level CSS toolkit.
22. Wing – Minimal CSS framework with defaults.
23. Blaze UI – Flexible and responsive UI components.
24. Bojler – Email-friendly CSS boilerplate.
25. Water.css – Style websites without writing CSS.
26. Min.css – Minimal, responsive CSS library.
27. CSShake – Shake animations in CSS.
28. Style Framework – Simple and modern CSS framework.
29. LayerCSS – UI layers like modals, alerts, tooltips.
30. Open Props – Custom CSS variables (props) for themes.

🚀 Free Web Dev Courses with Certificates!

✅ freeCodeCamp – Full certifications (HTML, CSS, JS)
✅ Great Learning – Short courses (1-6 hrs, free cert)
✅ IBM SkillsBuild – Beginner-friendly + certificate
📌 *Others: Coursera (audit free), Harvard CS50 (free learning)

💡 Boost your resume & skills for FREE!

❤ @Html_codee

#LearnToCode #WebDev #FreeCertificates

💡 HTML Tip of the Day: The Power of <div> and <span>!

Did you know?

<div> is a block-level container, great for wrapping sections of your content.
<span> is inline, ideal for styling small parts of text or elements!
👉 Try this code:

<div style="background-color: lightgray;">
  <p>This is inside a div.</p>
</div>
<span style="color: red;">This is inside a span.</span>

Subscribe to @Html_codee for more coding tips!