Published inClio + Calliope·Jun 13, 2019Show me the money: Justifying performance improvements using Google AnalyticsTrying to convince your company to make site load speed improvements? Maybe Google Analytics can help. Many of us who love the web and want to make it fast feel like we’re shouting out into the ether that performance matters, but I’m not sure anyone is listening. We write articles…Google Analytics7 min readGoogle Analytics7 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Feb 6, 2019Making Google Fonts Faster⚡*** This post is outdated! *** You can read the version updated for 2021 on my site at: https://sia.codes/posts/making-google-fonts-faster/ If you use Google Fonts on your website or web application, a few additional steps can lead to much faster load times. In this article, I will show you how to: Skip over some of the latency time for downloading fonts from Google Fonts Self-host your fonts for faster…Web Development8 min readWeb Development8 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Dec 7, 2018My adventures in turning a Pixelbook into a developer machineToday the FedEx man delivered my brand new Pixelbook. So much fun! I got this little tool to attempt to get off of the Mac platform without going full Linux distro. For the most part, I do web development and only need (1) a terminal, (2) an editor, preferably VS…Terminal4 min readTerminal4 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Oct 11, 2018In search of an extremely-fast blogI love React. I love Next.js and Gatsby.js. However, I want to push performance to the extreme. I want to see how fast I can make a blog that’s still reasonably easy to use from a developer standpoint. …JavaScript2 min readJavaScript2 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Sep 26, 20188 Ways I Took Back My SanityAn inexhaustive list of ways I reduced stress and increased happiness — Our lives aren’t our lives anymore. We distract ourselves with social media. We stress about negative news and discourse. We avoid the tough problems. Over the last eight years, I’ve made a sea change in my levels of stress and happiness. …Life Lessons7 min readLife Lessons7 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Aug 22, 2018How to Disable Source Maps in Gatsby v2Gatsby.js is a great tool for building static websites using React. In addition, it uses the principles of progressive web applications to make them “blazingly fast”. I was building my first static website using version 2 and came across the problem of source maps. Source maps can be great. They…JavaScript2 min readJavaScript2 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Mar 1, 2018Money in the BankCard Errors with React Stripe Elements — Do you React? Do you Stripe? Do you just use the sample code in react-stripe-elements without adding visible errors for your users? I’ll show you how to stop punishing your users and increase your form conversions. I recently converted one of my vanilla JavaScript apps to a React app. Luckily…UX3 min readUX3 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Feb 2, 2018Favicon Gremlins in Static Web Apps + WebpackFavicons, or as I like to call them, image gremlins from hell, can be mildly frustrating to add to your application. I successfully conquered the little beasts, so I figured I owed it to the community to share how I vanquished them. The back story I normally build front end applications using React…JavaScript5 min readJavaScript5 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Oct 27, 2017Google Analytics + caniuse = *MAGIC*Today I learned that you can import your Google Analytics data into caniuse to determine how many of your users would be able to use a particular front-end technology in their browser of choice. Maybe the rest of you have been holding out on this and just didn’t tell me…CSS3 min readCSS3 min read
Published inClio + Calliope·Jun 2, 2017Understanding your options with forms in ReactRare is the application that doesn’t rely on forms to get data from users, but how well do you really understand forms in React? What are your options? Did you know you had options? When should you use one over another? Whether you’re starting out in React or you’re more…JavaScript4 min readJavaScript4 min read