Published at
Updated at
Reading time
5min
The Web Weekly newsletter keeps you up to date, teaches you web development tricks and covers all things working in tech.

Welcome to Web Weekly #4!

This week's edition includes more MacOS menubar apps, too small mouse cursors, a single-div CSS panda and the question if the img HTML element is too complicated.

Ready? Let's do it!

An eight-year-old explains how to build a single-div CSS panda

8 year old explaining how to make a single-div CSS panda

I'm always amazed by single-div CSS art, but I'm mindblown when an 8-year-old enters the CSS magic game and explains how it works! ๐Ÿ‘

Watch Diana explain her CSS panda

Is your mouse cursor too small?

Scott Hanselmann "Hey friends, your mouse cursor is too small.

After watching Scott Hanselmann's ode to big mouse cursors, I increased mine (just a bit) and well... It is much better. ๐Ÿ™ˆ Give it a try!

Join the #BigMouseGang

More menubar apps

Menubar apps

Last week I shared the MeetingBar menubar app. It shows the time left to your next meeting, and you can enter virtual meeting rooms super quickly!

This week, I thought, why not share other menubar apps I don't want to miss.

  • BarTender โ€“ Hide all the unimportant icons in the menubar.
  • Netlify Menubar โ€“ I built this. ๐Ÿ™ˆ The app shows you Netlify build status and notifies you when you're site deployed.
  • MonitorControl โ€“ Control the sound and display of your second monitor.

What are your favourite apps? I always love to discover new tools!

Firefox supports :focus-visible

Explainer video of focus-visible

Firefox soon supports :focus-visible. If you want to learn more about it, I posted an explainer #devsheet on Twitter.

Watch explainer video

How to communicate clearly

Constantly think about audiences  A lot of communication fails because the same thing โ€“ a piece of text, or a video clip, or a presentation โ€“ is used over and over again to communicate to different audiences.

The ability to write and communicate clearly is an essential skill when creating content online. "How to be clear" is an excellent read not only for content creators.

Read "How to be clear"

Why you shouldn't write only "Hello"

No hallo. Please don't say just hello in chat

I love it when I find "random" sites on the internet. It's amazing that people sit down, buy domains and code websites just to make a point. ๐Ÿ™ˆ

nohello.net explains, why you shouldn't just write "Hello" in real-time chats.

Check nohello.net

Complex selectors in CSS :not()

DevSheet explaining complex selectors in CSS not

Complex CSS selectors in :not() pseudo-classes are now supported in evergreen browsers (Chromium, Safari and Firefox). CSS becomes more powerful every month!

Learn more about complex selectors

Don't use functions as callbacks unless they're designed for it

Source code: // We think of: const readableNumbers = someNumbers.map(toReadableNumber); // โ€ฆas being like: const readableNumbers = someNumbers.map((n) => toReadableNumber(n)); // โ€ฆbut it's more like: const readableNumbers = someNumbers.map((item, index, arr) =>   toReadableNumber(item, index, arr), );

Jake Archibald published an article about callback handling. I never realised that passing callbacks directly to native functions can break eventually. This post changed how I'll write JavaScript in the future.

Reconsider your callback code

Did native image loading become too complicated?

Example code snippets for Image components in Eleventy, Next and Gatsby

A while back, I shared a snippet of a complete picture element. It covers future image formats, decoding, viewport handling, and many other things. The snippet shows that image handling is complicated in 2021!

That's why more and more frameworks started implementing user-friendly image handling to make our lives easier:

Are powerful abstractions the future of image loading? I wonder if it's time to rethink the img and picture element.

Blogs with week notes

Screenshots of weekly logs

I started following more people that publish regular notes online. These casual notes often include links and resources that are outside of my usual bubble. Here are three blogs that I enjoy reading:

If you're posting your weekly/monthly notes online, let me know!

New tiny helpers

Three new tiny helpers: Pixelr, Avataaar and SVG Crop

I added more tools to tiny-helpers.dev:

Find more Tiny Helpers

Three useful projects to have a look at

A quote to think about

Wise words from Wylesha Rachell. ๐Ÿ‘

I document purely for selfish reasons because If I'm busy, I don't want anybody to ask me questions.

A song that makes you stop coding

Cover: Moneybrother โ€“ They're building walls around us now

This week, our local independent radio station played Moneybrother's "They're building walls around us". I was a huge Moneybrother fan when I moved to Berlin, and I still love this song. It's a classical indie track with lots of strings. ๐ŸŽป

Listen to Moneybrother

And that's a wrap for the fourth Web Weekly! ๐ŸŽ‰

If you enjoyed this edition, a quick share means the world to me. :)

Stay safe, and I'll talk to you next week! ๐ŸŽ‰ ๐Ÿ‘‹

PS. I heard the cool kids use RSS. You can find multiple feeds on my site.

If you enjoyed this article...

Join 5.5k readers and learn something new every week with Web Weekly.

Web Weekly โ€” Your friendly Web Dev newsletter
Reply to this post and share your thoughts via good old email.
Stefan standing in the park in front of a green background

About Stefan Judis

Frontend nerd with over ten years of experience, freelance dev, "Today I Learned" blogger, conference speaker, and Open Source maintainer.

Related Topics

Related Articles