~frontendfocus | Issue 673 - Here's what went down in 2024 (15)

CSS Grid Generator — This handy browser-based tool got plenty of you clicking — you can use it to easily create custom CSS grid layouts — you can specify the number of columns, rows, and gutter size.

Anchor Position Tool — CSS anchor positioning is on the way, and one rather neat layout mechanism that’s part of the spec is position-area. This (Chromium 129+ only) demo from Una demonstrates how it works. There was plenty of interest in this one, and although it's still in draft, it should prove rather powerful once widely available.

Speedometer 3.0: A Browser Benchmark for Webapp Responsiveness — 2024 gave us a new major release of Speedometer — the first with a cross-industry collaborative approach supported by each major browser engine (Blink, Gecko, WebKit). Version 3 added in many new tests, performance wins, and improvements. You can run the test for yourself here.

01: Twelve Modern CSS One-Line Upgrades — Stephanie shared this list of a dozen CSS properties that are well worth knowing earlier in the year — the one-line upgrades here will help reduce technical debt, remove unnecessary lines of JavaScript, and score some easy wins for the user experience, too.

Complete Intro to React v9: New Project, Modern Stack — Join Brian Holt in building a pizza delivery app from scratch. Master hooks, TanStack Router, testing, and React 19 features in this comprehensive guide to modern React development. No prior React experience needed.

02: Five CSS Snippets Every Frontend Developer Should Know in 2024 — Adam did this in 2023, and the 2024 version proved very popular too. All the snippets here are toolbelt worthy, powerful, CSS tips (including nesting, sub grid, container query units, etc) that will be just as valuable as we head into 2025.

03: Inline Conditionals in CSS? — In the summer the CSS Working Group resolved to add an inline if() to CSS. An exciting step for CSS, but one that raises lots of questions too. This explainer from Lea proved valuable for many.

04: What You Need to Know about Modern CSS — A bookmarkable guide from this past Spring featuring a list of all the then new additions to CSS (think nesting, view transitions, :has(), etc). It remains really handy, as there’s an explainer, demo, code example, and a quick bit of detail as to why you should care about each entry. If you want to scrub up...

05: How to Center a Div — The fact that so many of you tapped on this one tells us that it's still something of a tricky ordeal to get right. Yes, it's easier now thanks to new tools (Flex, Grid, etc), but which to use? Josh shares the trade-offs between different approaches, and the best strategies to use.

06: The Magic of Clip Path — This post sets out to “inspire you and show you that thinking outside the box can lead to some great animations” — all via the magic of the very powerful clip-path CSS property.

07: CSS Selectors — A thorough, complete guide covering all of the various methods we have to select elements in CSS (such as pseudo-selectors, nested selectors, attribute selectors, etc) and how to use them for applying styles.

08: An Interactive Guide to CSS Container Queries — This is a detailed explainer on CSS container queries, exploring the problems they solve, how they work, and how we can use them in our workflows. Lots of code and visuals to help things along too. Well worth bookmarking.

10: The Frontend Developer/Engineer Handbook 2024 — This incredibly in-depth and detailed guide on the current web development landscape was well received. It's remains a superb resource for getting up to speed on everything from code editors, CSS, UX, UI, the command line, performance, accessibility, testing, AI, and much, much more.

AuthKit: The World’s Best Login Box — Powered by WorkOS & Radix — AuthKit is a complete solution for authentication, authorization, and user management. It’s free up to 1 million MAUs and comes standard with RBAC, bot protection, MFA, and more.

How to Make Your Web Page Faster Before It Even Loads — Can we measure the events that happen before the first byte of a web page is received by the browser, and in turn optimize them to make our web pages and apps load even faster?