• Browsing the web - Learn web development | MDN

    I really like this explanation of what happens in between the user entering a web address into the browser and the browser displaying the result.

    1. The web browser requests the resource you want to access from the web server it is stored on.
    2. If the request is successful, the web server sends a response back to the web browser containing the requested resource.
    3. In some cases, the requested resource will then fire off more requests, which will result in more responses.
    4. When all of the resources have been requested, the web browser parses and renders them as required, before displaying the result to the user.

  • Just like a word document can be displayed in a word processing application, a web page is simply an HTML document that can be displayed in a web browser. The only difference is that a web page can embed a variety of different types of resources such as styles, fonts, images, scripts, and so on.

  • Ana Tudor wrote on Mastodon:

    Stupid #CSS question because I’m losing my mind here: why isn’t calc(.5*a) working? What am I missing? It doesn’t seem to be working in any browser.

    Ana is trying to use calc(.5 * a) as a part of the relative color syntax, presumably to create semi transparent outlines. But it is not working because calc(.5 * a) is an invalid property value. As Valtteri Laitinen replied, it should actually be alpha in there instead of a.

    .class {
	outline-color: rgb(from currentcolor r g b / calc(0.5 * a)); /* ❌ invalid */
	outline-color: rgb(
		from currentcolor r g b / calc(0.5 * alpha)
	); /* ✅ valid */
}

  • Natural sorting of strings that contain numbers in JavaScript

    In JavaScript, things get interesting when you need to sort strings that contain numbers in a way that matches human expectations.

    const files = ['IMG_2.png', 'IMG_1.png', 'IMG_10.png', 'IMG_20.png'];
files.sort();
// Output: ['IMG_1.png', 'IMG_10.png', 'IMG_2.png', 'IMG_20.png']

    This happens because, by default, when no compare function is provided, JavaScript’s array sort() method converts the elements into strings, then compares their sequences of UTF-16 code unit values.

    This behaviour is well documented on MDN.

    So, how do we sort arrays like the ones above in a more accurate, human-friendly order?

    This is where the compare() method of the Intl.Collator API with the numeric: true option shines. It provides the natural sorting behaviour that correctly handles numbers alongside other characters.

    When numeric: true is set, the collator detects numeric substrings inside the strings and parses those substrings as actual numbers, not as sequences of digits. And then it compares the numbers numerically, not character by character.

    const naturalOrder = new Intl.Collator(undefined, {
	numeric: true,
}).compare;

const files = ['IMG_2.png', 'IMG_1.png', 'IMG_10.png', 'IMG_20.png'];
files.sort((a, b) => naturalOrder(a, b));
// Output: ['IMG_1.png', 'IMG_2.png', 'IMG_10.png', 'IMG_20.png']

    Hat tip to Jan Miksovsky, whose zero dependencies SSG project led me to discover this.

  • Today I learned, grid-auto-columns and grid-auto-rows size implicit tracks as well as any explicit tracks that are not explicitly sized by by grid-template-rows or grid-template-columns.

    Until now, I was under the impression that grid-auto-rows and grid-auto-columns size only implicit grid tracks.

  • Why is `grid-row: 1/-1` not working?

    The grid-row grid-placement property is shorthand for grid-row-start and grid-row-end.

    .grid-item {
	grid-row: 1/-1;
	/* is equivalent to */
	grid-row-start: 1;
	grid-row-end: -1;
}

    In the above declaration, we use integers to position and size the grid item by line numbers.

    As per the spec:

    Numeric indexes in the grid-placement properties count from the edges of the explicit grid. Positive indexes count from the start side (starting from 1 for the start-most explicit line), while negative indexes count from the end side (starting from -1 for the end-most explicit line).

    The important bit is the explicit grid. This begs the question …

    What is the explicit grid?

    As per the spec:

    The three properties grid-template-rows, grid-template-columns, and grid-template-areas together define the explicit grid of a grid container by specifying its explicit grid tracks.

    Simply put, the explicit grid consists of manually defined rows and columns.

    The size of the explicit grid is determined by the larger of the number of rows/columns defined by grid-template-areas and the number of rows/columns sized by grid-template-rows/grid-template-columns. Any rows/columns defined by grid-template-areas but not sized by grid-template-rows/grid-template-columns take their size from the grid-auto-rows/grid-auto-columns properties. If these properties don’t define any explicit tracks the explicit grid still contains one grid line in each axis.

    That last bit is what leads to line -1 being the same line as 1 because the explicit grid still contains one grid line in each axis.

    What is the implicit grid?

    As Manuel Matuzovic puts it:

    If there are more grid items than cells in the grid or when a grid item is placed outside of the explicit grid, the grid container automatically generates grid tracks by adding grid lines to the grid. The explicit grid together with these additional implicit tracks and lines forms the so called implicit grid.

    Conclusion

    Paraphrasing Jen Simmons:

    • -1 is the last line of the explicit grid
    • If you haven’t defined any explicit rows, then all your rows are implicit
    • For implicit rows, -1 is the same line as 1
    • Define explicit rows and grid-row: 1/-1 will work as expected

    Further Reading

  • Why Swiss Trains are the Best in Europe - YouTube

    I love this bit from the video where Jason quotes Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia:

    A developed country is not where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.

    But why is it important that wealthy people take public transportation? Because, as Jason mentions,

    […] for better or for worse, these people are likely to have the power and political influence to demand efficient service.

  • Crowdstruck (Windows Outage) - Computerphile - YouTube

    Dr. Steve Bagley explains in layman’s terms what an operating system is:

    […] Imagine the difference between a house and a hotel. If you own a house, you can decide how to use the rooms, what color to paint the walls. But if that house becomes a hotel, you might give people the option to change the air conditioning temperature, but you wouldn’t let them fit air conditioning into their room without permission from the building owner. And it’s a bit the same with a computer. The operating system is a bit like the people who run the hotel in that it’s controlling all the resources for the system. So if Microsoft Word crashes, these days it’s not going to take down your computer because the operating system is set up in such a way that it can access resources that have been assigned to it and clean that up, and everything else continues hunky-dory.

    And what happens if the operating system crashes and you get the blue screen of death (BSoD):

    At that point, the thing that’s in charge of controlling everything has gone wrong, is corrupted, and can no longer run. So there’s pretty much no option at that point other than to halt the machine, say something’s gone wrong, and let the user reboot and restart.