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It's been awhile since I wrote about FOUCE and I've since come up with an improved solution that I think is worth a post. This approach is similar to hiding the page content and then fading it in, but I've noticed it's far less distracting without the fade. It also adds a two second timeout to prevent network issues or latency from rendering an "empty" page. First, we'll add a class called reduce-fouce to the <html> element. <html class="reduce-fouce"> ... </html> Then we'll add this rule to the CSS. <style> html.reduce-fouce { opacity: 0; } </style> Finally, we'll wait until all the custom elements have loaded or two seconds have elapsed, whichever comes first, and we'll remove the class causing the content to show immediately. <script type="module"> await Promise.race([ // Load all custom elements Promise.allSettled([ customElements.whenDefined('my-button'), customElements.whenDefined('my-card'), customElements.whenDefined('my-rating') // ... ]), // Resolve after two seconds new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 2000)) ]); // Remove the class, showing the page content document.documentElement.classList.remove('reduce-fouce'); </script> This approach seems to work especially well and won't end up "stranding" the user if network issues occur.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, "'Tis a design system," I muttered, "bringing order to the core— Ah, distinctly I remember, every button, every splendor, Each component, standardized, like a raven's watchful eyes, Unified in system's might, like patterns we restore— And each separate style injection, linked with careful introspection, 'Tis a design system, nothing more.
Components are like little machines. You build them once. Use them whenever you need them. Every now and then you open them up to oil them or replace a part, then you send them back to work. And work, they do. Little component machines just chugging along so you never have to write them from scratch ever again. Adapted from this tweet.
I've been struggling with the idea of reflecting attributes in custom elements and when it's appropriate. I think I've identified a gap in the platform, but I'm not sure exactly how we should fill it. I'll explain with an example. Let's say I want to make a simple badge component with primary, secondary, and tertiary variants. <my-badge variant="primary">foo</my-badge> <my-badge variant="secondary">bar</my-badge> <my-badge variant="tertiary">baz</my-badge> This is a simple component, but one that demonstrates the problem well. I want to style the badge based on the variant property, but sprouting attributes (which occurs as a result of reflecting a property back to an attribute) is largely considered a bad practice. A lot of web component libraries do it out of necessary to facilitate styling — including Shoelace — but is there a better way? The problem # I need to style the badge without relying on reflected attributes. This means I can't use :host([variant="..."]) because the attribute may or may not be set by the user. For example, if the component is rendered in a framework that sets properties instead of attributes, or if the property is set or changed programmatically, the attribute will be out of sync and my styles will be broken. So how can I style the badge based its variants without reflection? Let's assume we have the following internals, which is all we really need for the badge. <my-badge> #shadowRoot <slot></slot> </my-badge> What can we do about it? # I can't add classes to the slot, because :host(:has(.slot-class)) won't match. I can't set a data attribute on the host element, because that's the same as reflection and might cause issues with SSR and DOM morphing libraries. I could add a wrapper element around the slot and apply classes to it, but I'd prefer not to bloat the internals with additional elements. With a wrapper, users would have to use ::part(wrapper) to target it. Without the wrapper, they can set background, border, and other CSS properties directly on the host element which is more desirable. I could add custom states for each variant, but this gets messy for non-Boolean values and feels like an abuse of the API. Filling the gap # I'm not sure what the best solution is or could be, but one thing that comes to mind is a way to provide some kind of cross-root version of :has that works with :host. Something akin to: :host(:has-in-shadow-root(.some-selector)) { /* maybe one day… */ } If you have any thoughts on this one, hit me up on Twitter.
More in programming
Exploring diagram.website, I came across The Computer is a Feeling by Tim Hwang and Omar Rizwan: the modern internet exerts a tyranny over our imagination. The internet and its commercial power has sculpted the computer-device. It's become the terrain of flat, uniform, common platforms and protocols, not eccentric, local, idiosyncratic ones. Before computers were connected together, they were primarily personal. Once connected, they became primarily social. The purpose of the computer shifted to become social over personal. The triumph of the internet has also impoverished our sense of computers as a tool for private exploration rather than public expression. The pre-network computer has no utility except as a kind of personal notebook, the post-network computer demotes this to a secondary purpose. Smartphones are indisputably the personal computer. And yet, while being so intimately personal, they’re also the largest distribution of behavior-modification devices the world has ever seen. We all willing carry around in our pockets a device whose content is largely designed to modify our behavior and extract our time and money. Making “computer” mean computer-feelings and not computer-devices shifts the boundaries of what is captured by the word. It removes a great many things – smartphones, language models, “social” “media” – from the domain of the computational. It also welcomes a great many things – notebooks, papercraft, diary, kitchen – back into the domain of the computational. I love the feeling of a personal computer, one whose purpose primarily resides in the domain of the individual and secondarily supports the social. It’s part of what I love about the some of the ideas embedded in local-first, which start from the principle of owning and prioritizing what you do on your computer first and foremost, and then secondarily syncing that to other computers for the use of others. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
I started working on Edna several months ago and I’ve implemented lots of functionality. Edna is a note taking application with super powers. I figured I’ll make a series of posts about all the features I’ve added in last few months. The first is multiple notes. By default we start with 3 notes: scratch inbox daily journal Here’s a note switcher (Ctrl + K): From note switcher you can: quickly find a note by partial name open selected note with Enter or mouse click create new note: enter fully unique note name and Enter or Ctrl + Enter if it partially matches existing note. I learned this trick from Notational Velocity delete note with Ctrl + Delete archive notes with icon on the right star / un-star (add to favorites, remove from favorites) by clicking star icon on the left assign quick access shortcut Alt + <n> You can also rename notes: context menu (right click mouse) and This note / Rename Rename current note in command palette (Ctrl + Shift + K) Use context menu This note sub-menu for note-related commands. Note: I use Windows keyboard bindings. For Mac equivalent, visit https://edna.arslexis.io/help#keyboard-shortcuts
I’ve never published an essay quite like this. I’ve written about my life before, reams of stuff actually, because that’s how I process what I think, but never for public consumption. I’ve been pushing myself to write more lately because my co-authors and I have a whole fucking book to write between now and October. […]
As search gets worse and “working code” gets cheaper, apps get easier to make from scratch than to find.
