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Article Roundup - Week of 6/16/2017

Article Roundup

Spellbook of Modern Web Dev
This is an amazing collection of links with resources for both frontend and backend web development. It has links to libraries, best practices, and a whole lot more. I will probably end up sending people links to this a lot.

Namespaces
This isn’t about development so much as it is a musing on job titles or how you describe yourself to others. Are you a web developer? Software developer? Software engineer? If two people do the same kind of work does the title really matter or is it just decoration or fluff to make you feel good?

Best Practices For Hero Images
Hero images can be a powerful communication tool on your site, so it makes sense to choose the most appropriate image possible. Messing up the hero image could leave to people not staying on your site long enough to get to your content. This is a nice run through of best practices from Adobe.

React State vs. Redux State: When and Why?
Redux is frequently used in React apps, but it isn’t always appropriate. The article talks about some things to consider when choosing where and how to store your state.

JavaScript’s new #private class fields
Private class fields are in the works for JavaScript. The spec hasn’t been finalized yet but things probably won’t change too drastically at this point. There is another proposal coming on the heels of this one for private methods. Bear in mind both field declarations and private fields are still works in progress.

JavaScript Decorators: What They Are and When to Use Them
The decorators spec for JavaScript in currently in process and in a state where it shouldn’t change too drastically. Decorators are kind of like annotations in Java and C#. This article provides a nice introduction.

Erik Bernhardsson Blogroll
Erik put together a list of some of his favorite blogs. If you’re reading this you might want to take a look at the sites he recommends.

Are You Mentally Overwhelming Users?
This article has a few considerations to remember in regards to design and user experience. They include the warnings signs that you are mentally overwhelming your users as well as how to remedy the situation.

Dropdowns: Design Guidelines
Dropdowns fall into two main categories, menus and selection boxes. This article goes through a few things you should and should not do with your dropdowns and talks about when a dropdown is appropriate.

How to Build Usability Testing Into Everything You Do
Usability testing is probably the best way to identify usability issues in your software. Developers and users think differently, and without involving users you won’t find all the issues. Usability testing is frequently ignored and skipped over. This article from Shopify makes the case for how to ensure you include it in your project and how to get started.

Example UX Docs and Deliverables
User experience design is not sketching out a UI and calling it done. There is a lot more to it than that, this article provides some examples of the documents created in the process of UX design.

How to Track Changes in the DOM Using Mutation Observer
Detecting when the DOM changed used to be a lot hard than it is now. With the Mutation Observer it very easy, and it doesn’t suffer from the performance issues of the old Mutation Event API (which is deprecated and will be removed soon).

MaintainableCSS
I want to call this an ebook, but it is more of a website with chapters. It’s not very long, only 11 real chapters; some barely bigger than a page. The author lays out their preferred method for naming and organizing CSS, and I have to say it is very compelling.

Best practices – AWS Lambda function
AWS Lambda functions can be a great way to get things done in AWS; they are also a quick way to throw together a small API. There is more complexity and nuance behind them than you might think from a cursory look. This post has a nice set of best practices to keep in mind.