Category: Journal

The word “bespoke” is often used to describe “custom-made” products. Within the context of web design and development, it is easier to associate the word bespoke with UI design (the visual appearance of a website) than it is for front-end development (the underlying source code used to render the website in the browser) and therefore brings up some interesting questions, such as, “does it matter if it is not seen?” I would argue that it does matter because while it may not be visually seen, it can be “felt” by users due to its direct impact on the UX and performance.

One of my WordPress sites, creativemedia.space, crashed multiple times over the past couple of weeks, so I have been looking into alternative solutions for the site, such as Webflow and Jekyll.

Javascript frameworks and libraries have evolved to resolve many of the early problems faced by web apps. They offer a wide arrange of built-in tools and support for SPA’s (Single Page Apps) like decoupling the front-end, building UI’s with stateful components, and working with dynamic data. They also offer the ability to create rich, native-like user experiences via routing with page transitions. The former sounds great for large-scale, complex apps, but what about small-scale, simple apps and static web sites? I’ve heard great things in regards to server side rendering, but what I want to know is: are they a good fit for creating pre-rendered sites for static hosts like Github Pages or Netlify?

Back when Flash was used to build rich, animated web sites, animated transitions were often used to enrich the user experience. Many Native mobile apps embrace UI animation and page transitions as integral parts of their user experiences. Thanks to HTML5, CSS3, and new JS technologies and libraries, complex UI animations and page transitions are now achievable on the web, and not just for single page websites and SPAs (Single Page Apps), but for small static sites as well.

As a teacher of intro-level web design and front-end development courses, I have always enjoyed the simplicity of static web sites and how the primary three web technologies of HTML, CSS, and JS have persisted throughout the years. As a freelancer, most of my clients require some sort of backend functionality, such as a CMS, a contact form, or more complex systems like custom generated reports or custom web apps. As a front-end designer with little backend experience, WordPress (and it’s many plugins) has been my goto solution, but lately I have been considering other options—namely embracing third-party API’s and services that work well with static sites.

I recently began reading about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and their future potential. In past years, I’ve done several hello-world tests compiling HTML, CSS, & JS into native applications (e.g. using PhoneGap Build), but recently I have been trying to figure out how to best build a PWA, which does not require any device specific compiling (e.g. Swift or Objective-C for iOS or Java for Android apps) and essentially consists of using straight-up web technologies to create mobile apps.