Frontend Focus
Issue 301 — August 2, 2017
A site logo linking to the homepage is not always enough. Here’s some best practices for that key link.
Nielsen Norman Group

A back to basics CSS starter kit “for when you don’t need the whole boot”.
Cory LaViska

Work is underway on standardizing an API for creating extensions that are browser interoperable, as is possible with the non-formalized WebExtensions API.
W3C

Progress
2017 predictions for the key and rising JavaScript libraries and frameworks and JS’s New Frontiers in this whitepaper.
Progress   Sponsor

Elm is a ‘compile to JavaScript’ language for declaratively building front-end Web interfaces. This is one company’s experience with it.
Christian Charukiewicz

..includes Paint Timing API, font loading controls with the CSS font-display property and WebAssembly. Video round-up of features here.
Google Developers

See how you can get attractive webfont visuals, good performance and reliable functionality by properly employing a finely-tuned fallback.
Front End Center

Some more thoughts following last week’s announcement that Adobe is to end support for Flash. Brian notes that “Flash helped make the web what it is today”.
Brian Rinaldi

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In Brief

Updates to Media Playback in Chrome 61 news
On Android, when a video is playing, rotating the device will automatically put it fullscreen.
Google Developers

Build your first Javascript, Android, or iOS app with MongoDB Stitch tutorial
Get started with the beta release of MongoDB's backend-as-a-service with step-by-step tutorials and sample apps.
MONGODB  Sponsor

How to Create An Animated Loader with Nothing But CSS tutorial
Julien Benchetrit

The Lightest Grays You Can Use While Maintaining Good Contrast tutorial
#767676 is relatively safe.
Brent Jackson

Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski on CSS Preprocessors and Structuring CSS podcast
Syntax Podcast

How I Built a Wind Map with WebGL story
Vladimir Agafonkin

Apple’s Refusal to Support PWAs Is A Detriment to Future of The Web opinion
Greg Blass

What is Timeless Web Design? opinion
How would you design a site to look good 10 years from now?
Chris Coyier

The Browser Statistics That Matter opinion
“The browser statistics that matter are the browser usage statics of your web site, and nobody else’s.”
Chris Coyier

Can QML Become The Next Standard for Web UI? opinion
Martin Kutny

Explore the Powerful Features of the ExtReact Grid for React Web Apps 
Try ExtReact and see how to easily add the grid and many other data-driven components into your apps.
Sencha, Inc.  Sponsor

A 'Gigantic' List of 1000+ Useful Frontend Tools and Resources tools
Tim Navrotskyy

GridBugs: A Community Curated List of CSS Grid Layout Bugs tools
Rachel Andrew

Chromeless: Chrome Automation Made Simple code
A TypeScript browser automation library for controlling Chrome.
Graphcool

image-compressor: A Simple JavaScript Image Compressor code
Reduce image sizes client-side before uploading? Demo.
Xkeshi

A Pure CSS 5-Star Rating Control demo
CodePen