What does the <meta charset='UTF-8'> tag do?
Anonymous Quiz
0%
Sets page title
50%
Defines character encoding
50%
Adds CSS
0%
Increases speed
CodePen Blog
Chris’ Corner: Offlinin’ Aint Easy
I kinda like the idea of the “minimal” service worker. Service Workers can be pretty damn complicated and the power of them honestly makes me a little nervous. They are middlemen between the browser and the network and I can imagine really dinking that up, myself. Not to dissuade you from using them, as they can useful things no other technology can do.
That’s why I like the “minimal” part. I want to understand what it’s doing extremely clearly! The less code the better. Tantek posted about that recently, with a minimal idea:
You have a service worker (and “offline” HTML page) on your personal site, installed from any page on your site, that all it does is cache the offline page, and on future requests to your site checks to see if the requested page is available, and if so serves it, otherwise it displays your offline page with a “site appears to be unreachable” message that a lot of service workers provide, AND provides an algorithmically constructed link to the page on an archive (e.g. Internet Archive) or static mirror of your site (typically at another domain).
That seems clearly useful. The bit about linking to an archive of the page though seems a smidge off to me. If the reason a user can’t see the page is because they are offline, a page that sends them to the Internet Archive isn’t going to work either. But I like the bit about caching and at least trying to do something. Jeremy Keith did some thinking about this back in 2018 as well:
The logic works like this:
* If there’s a request for an HTML page, fetch it from the network and store a copy in a cache (but if the network request fails, try looking in the cache instead).
* For any other files, look for a copy in the cache first but meanwhile fetch a fresh version from the network to update the cache (and if there’s no existing version in the cache, fetch the file from the network and store a copy of it in the cache).
The implementation is actually just a few lines of code. A variation of it handles Tantek’s idea as well, implementing a custom offline page that could do the thing where it links off to an archive elsewhere.
I’ll leave you with a couple more links. Have you heard the term LoFi? I’m not the biggest fan of the shortening of it because “Lo-fi” is a pretty established musical term not to mention “low fidelity” is useful in all sorts of contexts. But recently in web tech it refers to “Local First”.
I see “local-first” as shifting reads and writes to an embedded database in each client via “sync engines” that facilitate data exchange between clients and servers. Applications like Figma and Linear pioneered this approach, but it’s becoming increasingly easy to do. Some notes on Local-First Development, Kyle Matthews
I dig the idea honestly and do see it as a place for technology (and companies that make technology) to step and really make this style of working easy. Plenty of stuff already works this way. I think of the Notes app on my phone. Those notes are always available. It doesn’t (seem to) care if I’m online or offline. If I’m online, they’ll sync up with the cloud so other devices and backups will have the latest, but if not, so be it. It better as heck work that way! And I’m glad it does, but lots of stuff on the web does not (CodePen doesn’t). But I’d like to build stuff that works that way and have it not be some huge mountain to climb.
That eh, we’ll just sync later/whenever when we have network access is super non-trivial, is part of the issue. Technology could make easy/dumb choices like “last write wins”, but that tends to be dangerous data-loss territory that users don’t put up with. Instead data need to be intelligently merged, and that isn’t easy. Dropbox is multi-billion dollar company that deals with this and they admittedly don’t always have it perfect. One of the major solutions is the concept of CRDTs, which are an [...]
Chris’ Corner: Offlinin’ Aint Easy
I kinda like the idea of the “minimal” service worker. Service Workers can be pretty damn complicated and the power of them honestly makes me a little nervous. They are middlemen between the browser and the network and I can imagine really dinking that up, myself. Not to dissuade you from using them, as they can useful things no other technology can do.
That’s why I like the “minimal” part. I want to understand what it’s doing extremely clearly! The less code the better. Tantek posted about that recently, with a minimal idea:
You have a service worker (and “offline” HTML page) on your personal site, installed from any page on your site, that all it does is cache the offline page, and on future requests to your site checks to see if the requested page is available, and if so serves it, otherwise it displays your offline page with a “site appears to be unreachable” message that a lot of service workers provide, AND provides an algorithmically constructed link to the page on an archive (e.g. Internet Archive) or static mirror of your site (typically at another domain).
That seems clearly useful. The bit about linking to an archive of the page though seems a smidge off to me. If the reason a user can’t see the page is because they are offline, a page that sends them to the Internet Archive isn’t going to work either. But I like the bit about caching and at least trying to do something. Jeremy Keith did some thinking about this back in 2018 as well:
The logic works like this:
* If there’s a request for an HTML page, fetch it from the network and store a copy in a cache (but if the network request fails, try looking in the cache instead).
* For any other files, look for a copy in the cache first but meanwhile fetch a fresh version from the network to update the cache (and if there’s no existing version in the cache, fetch the file from the network and store a copy of it in the cache).
The implementation is actually just a few lines of code. A variation of it handles Tantek’s idea as well, implementing a custom offline page that could do the thing where it links off to an archive elsewhere.
I’ll leave you with a couple more links. Have you heard the term LoFi? I’m not the biggest fan of the shortening of it because “Lo-fi” is a pretty established musical term not to mention “low fidelity” is useful in all sorts of contexts. But recently in web tech it refers to “Local First”.
I see “local-first” as shifting reads and writes to an embedded database in each client via “sync engines” that facilitate data exchange between clients and servers. Applications like Figma and Linear pioneered this approach, but it’s becoming increasingly easy to do. Some notes on Local-First Development, Kyle Matthews
I dig the idea honestly and do see it as a place for technology (and companies that make technology) to step and really make this style of working easy. Plenty of stuff already works this way. I think of the Notes app on my phone. Those notes are always available. It doesn’t (seem to) care if I’m online or offline. If I’m online, they’ll sync up with the cloud so other devices and backups will have the latest, but if not, so be it. It better as heck work that way! And I’m glad it does, but lots of stuff on the web does not (CodePen doesn’t). But I’d like to build stuff that works that way and have it not be some huge mountain to climb.
That eh, we’ll just sync later/whenever when we have network access is super non-trivial, is part of the issue. Technology could make easy/dumb choices like “last write wins”, but that tends to be dangerous data-loss territory that users don’t put up with. Instead data need to be intelligently merged, and that isn’t easy. Dropbox is multi-billion dollar company that deals with this and they admittedly don’t always have it perfect. One of the major solutions is the concept of CRDTs, which are an [...]
Html codes
CodePen Blog Chris’ Corner: Offlinin’ Aint Easy I kinda like the idea of the “minimal” service worker. Service Workers can be pretty damn complicated and the power of them honestly makes me a little nervous. They are middlemen between the browser and the…
impressive idea to say the least, but are complex enough that most of us will gently back away. So I’ll simply leave you with A Gentle Introduction to CRDTs.
👍1
🇨🇳 Ex-Google engineer busted for stealing AI secrets for China!
A former Google software engineer, Linwei Ding, has been charged with stealing AI trade secrets and allegedly funneling them to China.
Ding, hired in 2019, secretly uploaded 1,000+ confidential Google files while working with Chinese tech firms—and even launched his own AI startup in China.
Prosecutors say he stole supercomputing and chip design secrets to benefit the Chinese government.
@aipost 🪙 | Our X 🥇
A former Google software engineer, Linwei Ding, has been charged with stealing AI trade secrets and allegedly funneling them to China.
Ding, hired in 2019, secretly uploaded 1,000+ confidential Google files while working with Chinese tech firms—and even launched his own AI startup in China.
Prosecutors say he stole supercomputing and chip design secrets to benefit the Chinese government.
@aipost 🪙 | Our X 🥇
🔥 Must-Know APIs for Developers! 🔥
If you're a developer, these APIs will save you time and boost your productivity! 🚀
Which API do you use the most? Let us know in the comments! 💬
📌 Follow for more dev tips: @Html_codee
If you're a developer, these APIs will save you time and boost your productivity! 🚀
1️⃣ OpenAI API – Add AI-powered features like ChatGPT to your apps.
🔗 https://platform.openai.com
2️⃣ GitHub API – Automate repo management, CI/CD, and more.
🔗 https://docs.github.com/en/rest
3️⃣ Unsplash API – Get high-quality images for free.
🔗 https://unsplash.com/developers
4️⃣ Weather API (OpenWeatherMap) – Fetch real-time weather data.
🔗 https://openweathermap.org/api
5️⃣ Firebase API – Manage databases, authentication, and hosting easily.
🔗 https://firebase.google.com/docs
6️⃣ Twilio API – Send SMS, WhatsApp, and make calls programmatically.
🔗 https://www.twilio.com/docs
7️⃣ Stripe API – Integrate secure payments into your apps.
🔗 https://stripe.com/docs/api
8️⃣ Telegram Bot API – Build powerful Telegram bots.
🔗 https://core.telegram.org/bots/api
9️⃣ Google Maps API – Add interactive maps and geolocation to apps.
🔗 https://developers.google.com/maps
🔟 OCR API (Tesseract.js, Google Vision) – Extract text from images.
🔗 https://cloud.google.com/vision
Which API do you use the most? Let us know in the comments! 💬
📌 Follow for more dev tips: @Html_codee
Fun Fact about HTML: 🎉
Did you know that the infamous <blink> tag was once a real part of HTML? Introduced by Netscape in the 1990s, it made text on a webpage flash on and off uncontrollably. Although wildly popular (or notorious!) at the time, it became a symbol of poor web design and accessibility issues. The tag was never officially part of the HTML standard and is deprecateded**, but its legacy lives on as a nostalgic reminder of the early, wild-west days of the web. Modern CSS can replicate the effect, but developers are strongly advised *not to blink*... for everyone's sanity. 😜
Bonus: The equally cringey <marquee> tag (scrolling text) also exists in browser memory but meets the same deprecated fate. Thank goodness for CSS animations! 🎬
Did you know that the infamous <blink> tag was once a real part of HTML? Introduced by Netscape in the 1990s, it made text on a webpage flash on and off uncontrollably. Although wildly popular (or notorious!) at the time, it became a symbol of poor web design and accessibility issues. The tag was never officially part of the HTML standard and is deprecateded**, but its legacy lives on as a nostalgic reminder of the early, wild-west days of the web. Modern CSS can replicate the effect, but developers are strongly advised *not to blink*... for everyone's sanity. 😜
Bonus: The equally cringey <marquee> tag (scrolling text) also exists in browser memory but meets the same deprecated fate. Thank goodness for CSS animations! 🎬
CodePen Blog
Chris’ Corner: Creative Coding
Jake thinks developers should embrace creative coding again, which, ya know, it’s hard to disagree with from my desk at what often feels like creative coding headquarters. Why tho? From Jake’s perspective it’s about exposure.
While many designers and developers have been working within familiar constraints, browsers have undergone a quiet revolution. The web now supports features like container queries, advanced scoping and inheritance, and responsiveness to user preference. It’s gotten much more sophisticated in terms of color, typography, dynamic units, layouts, and animation. Yet so many young designers and developers I talk to as a Developer Advocate at Figma aren’t aware of these possibilities
Creative coding can be coding under whatever constraints you feel like applying, not what your job requires, which might just broaden your horizons. And with a twist of irony make you better at that job.
If you think of creative coding as whirls, swirls, bleeps, bloops, and monkeys in sunglasses and none of that does anything for you, you might need a horizon widening to get started. I think Dave’s recent journey of poking at his code editor to make this less annoying absolutely qualifies as creative (group) coding. It went as far as turning the five characters “this.” into a glyph in a programming font to reduce the size, since it was so incredibly repetitive in the world of Web Components.
How about some other creative ideas that aren’t necessarily making art, but are flexing the creative mind anyway.
What if you wanted every “A” character automatically 2✕ the size of every other character wherever it shows up? That would be weird. I can’t think of an amazing use case off the top of my head, but the web is big place and you never know. Terence Eden actually played with this though, not with the “A” character, but “Any Emoji”. It’s a nice little trick, incorporating a custom
Adam covered a bit of a classic CSS trick the other day, when when you hover over an element, all the elements fade out except the one you’re on. The usage of
OK last one. Maybe channel some creative coding into making your RSS feed look cool? Here’s a tool to see what it could look like. It uses the absolutely strange
Chris’ Corner: Creative Coding
Jake thinks developers should embrace creative coding again, which, ya know, it’s hard to disagree with from my desk at what often feels like creative coding headquarters. Why tho? From Jake’s perspective it’s about exposure.
While many designers and developers have been working within familiar constraints, browsers have undergone a quiet revolution. The web now supports features like container queries, advanced scoping and inheritance, and responsiveness to user preference. It’s gotten much more sophisticated in terms of color, typography, dynamic units, layouts, and animation. Yet so many young designers and developers I talk to as a Developer Advocate at Figma aren’t aware of these possibilities
Creative coding can be coding under whatever constraints you feel like applying, not what your job requires, which might just broaden your horizons. And with a twist of irony make you better at that job.
If you think of creative coding as whirls, swirls, bleeps, bloops, and monkeys in sunglasses and none of that does anything for you, you might need a horizon widening to get started. I think Dave’s recent journey of poking at his code editor to make this less annoying absolutely qualifies as creative (group) coding. It went as far as turning the five characters “this.” into a glyph in a programming font to reduce the size, since it was so incredibly repetitive in the world of Web Components.
How about some other creative ideas that aren’t necessarily making art, but are flexing the creative mind anyway.
What if you wanted every “A” character automatically 2✕ the size of every other character wherever it shows up? That would be weird. I can’t think of an amazing use case off the top of my head, but the web is big place and you never know. Terence Eden actually played with this though, not with the “A” character, but “Any Emoji”. It’s a nice little trick, incorporating a custom
@font-face font that only matches a subset of characters (the emojis) via a unicode-range property, then uses size-adjust to boost them up. Just include the font in the used stack and it works! I think this qualifies as creative coding as much as anything else does.Adam covered a bit of a classic CSS trick the other day, when when you hover over an element, all the elements fade out except the one you’re on. The usage of
@media (hover) is funky looking to me, but it’s a nice touch, ensuring the effect only happens on devices that actually have “normal” hover states as it were. Again that’s the kind of creative coding that leads fairly directly into everyday useful concepts.OK last one. Maybe channel some creative coding into making your RSS feed look cool? Here’s a tool to see what it could look like. It uses the absolutely strange
<?xml-stylesheetline that you plop into the XML and it loads up like a stylesheet, which is totally a thing.CodePen
jake on CodePen
What is the correct order of execution in the JavaScript event loop?
Anonymous Quiz
50%
Call stack → Web APIs → Callback queue → Event loop
25%
Web APIs → Call stack → Event loop → Callback queue
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Call stack → Event loop → Web APIs → Callback queue
25%
Event loop → Call stack → Callback queue → Web APIs
Which CSS rule has the highest specificity?
Anonymous Quiz
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#id .class p {}
25%
.class1.class2 p {}
25%
div#id p {}
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p:hover {}