Code
Is It Time to Make a New Ghost Theme?
New theme incoming?! On building a new Ghost theme and the possibility of doing it on stream.
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Hey đ I'm Ryan, a Dev Experience Engineer at Ghost. I write on the art of creating compelling websites and the philosophy behind them.
These Are the Latest Posts
Code
A Guide to Image Optimization on the Web
This image is a tiny image, it's smaller than a regular image.
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Code
When Worlds Collide: Philosophy & Code
In my former life, I investigated the code of life â in my present, I bring code to life. I talk about this transition with RedMonk's Kate Holterhoff on her show, The Docs Are In
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Projects
Make Sharing Seamless with This Customizable Share Button
Simplify the sharing process with this all-in-one share button, a custom web component that makes it easy for you and your readers to send content all over the internet.
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Code
Create a music player with the YouTube iframe API
Discover how to enhance your website with a personalized music player using the YouTube iframe API. This guide showcases how to fetch the latest YouTube Music playlists, craft a bespoke UI, and provide real-time track updates.
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Design
The Browser Is Dull: Understanding Color Space on the Web
Don't fall prey to color FOMO. Learn why the browser was dull but doesn't need to be anymore. Get out of grayscale and into polychromia, baby.
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The Good Posts Keep On Rollin'
Code
Build and Deploy with GitHub Actions
Let the machines take the wheel with GitHub Actions. Push an update to your Ghost theme and then see it automatically built and deployed, anywhere and everywhere.
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Design
Automatic Color Theming
With just a single color, you can automatically generate an entire color palette for your UI and solely via CSS. No JavaScript needed!
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Code
Custom Pagination in Ghost
Page by page: The complete code for building a beautiful custom pagination element in Ghost.
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Code
How Saves Work
In the update to my Ghost theme, Smart, I added a saves feature. This article goes through how that feature works and shares some of the code!
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Projects
Smart 2.0
My beautiful, free Ghost theme, Smart, has been totally redesigned and updated for version 2.0. Jam-packed with features, it's perfect for creators, writers, and coders.
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Projects
Inline: Ghost Theme
Out with the old, inline with the new. I discuss the highlights from rolling out yet another website refresh. Built with Ghost, Inline is my bold, fun approach to my personal website, featuring a dynamic color palette, search, and more.
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A Short History of This Site
I published the first post on this site 13 years ago. Since then, I’ve racked up 52 posts and 90+ members. If you’re the type who is interested in building things on the web or just randomly likes to sign up for things, consider subscribing. It’s free, spamless, and you can unsub at any time.
Let's Keep Things Topical
Code17
Essays13
Travel11
Ghost9
Philosophy9
Design6
Projects6
History3
A Smidge More Posts
Design
My 5 Fave Free Icon Sets
They're free, open-source, and beautiful. Here are my top five icon sets to amp up your web design.
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Code
Supercharge Your Ghost Theme
Ghost 4.20.0 introduced custom settings, which gives developers the power to offer a lot more customization in their themes. In this tutorial, I show you what custom settings are and how to use them.
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Code
Image Optimization in Ghost
On average, images are the greatest resource on any webpage. As a result, optimizing images provides an easy performance win. This tutorial will show you how to use Ghost's tools to optimize images on your site to make it fast.
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Code
Create a Dynamic CTA in Ghost
In its essential form, a call to action asks a user to do something. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to leverage the data provided by the publishing platform Ghost to make that ask dynamic, so that it changes in relation to the page it's on.
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Code
Add a Table of Contents to Your Website
Ever on a long article and wished you could jump around easily? Or even return to a section quickly? Want to provide this experience to your readers? I'll show you how you can quickly and easily add a table of contents to your website with a few lines of JavaScript.
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Code
Create a Ghost Theme
A guide to setting up a dev environment for creating a custom Ghost theme with my ghost-theme-starter. Easily and quickly compile and minify CSS and JS assets, start a live reload server, and zip up your theme files.
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What I'm reading
Dialogs and popovers seem similar. How are they different? | hidde.blog
A deep dive into the semantics, behaviours and characteristics of some of the most common user interface elements of websites today.
10 Weird HTML Hacks That Shaped The Internet
From table hacks to CSS kludges, these are some of the techniques that helped web developers get their fancy pages on the internet.
The Evolving Landscape of DevRel: Trends and Predictions for 2023
A comprehensive look at the shifting dynamics of Developer Relations in 2023, highlighting key trends, challenges, and opportunities for DevRel professionals.
On medium-sized questions in neuroscience
Featuring sensory substitution, fading percepts, and hyperacuity
A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox
When writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it accessible. This is a left over from mass media.
Yes, We Have Free Will. No, We Absolutely Do Not
A volley of new insights reignites the debate over whether our choices are ever truly our own.
The architecture of todayâs LLM applications
Hereâs everything you need to know to build your first LLM app and problem spaces you can start exploring today.
Demystifying LLMs: How they can do things they werenât trained to do
Explore how LLMs generate text, why they sometimes hallucinate information, and the ethical implications surrounding their incredible capabilities.
Is the Hard Problem Really So Hard?
The qualities of our experience seem impossible to describe scientifically, but maybe weâre just not thinking about them right.
Generative AI and intellectual property â Benedict Evans
If you put all the worldâs knowledge into an AI model and use it to make something new, who owns that and who gets paid? This is a completely new problem that weâve been arguing about for 500 years.
These Editors Walk Us Through the Cut of 'Reservation Dogs' Episode "Deer Lady"
No Film School speaks with editors Varun Viswanath and Patrick Tuck.
Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious? - Boston Review
Within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness.
A Beginner's Guide to Using Large Language Models (LLMs) With the PaLM API | HackerNoon
This tutorial is a comprehensive introduction to leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) through the PaLM API for crafting personalized cover letters to enhance
Iterate Like a Pro: Mastering JavaScript Iterators for Effortless Code - DEV Community
Welcome to this blog post, where we're about to unravel the power and versatility of JavaScript...
Educational Sensational Inspirational Foundational
A historical record of foundational web development blog posts.
Marketing for Developers: The Unconventional Guide - DEV Community
You've built an amazing new product. The code is elegant, the interface intuitive. You launch it with...
Why Kant Wouldn't Fear ChatGPT-4 | Time
A key aspect of how we think separates us from even the most advanced AI
Falling For Oklch: A Love Story Of Color Spaces, Gamuts, And CSS
The CSS Color Module Level 4 specification defined a slew of new color features when it became a candidate recommendation in 2022, including Oklab and Oklch, which have widened the field of color we have to work with. Explore the Oklch color space and how to start using it in CSS today.
Patterns for Reactivity with Modern Vanilla JavaScript | Frontend Masters
Reactivity is how systems react to changes in data and is core to web development. Learn JavaScript reactivity patterns to add to your toolbox, no matter what frameworks and libraries you use!
The ideal viewport doesnât exist
Before you settle on basing design decisions on a handful of strict breakpoints, make sure you consider the vast fragmentation of screen sizes and browser viewports.
Carl Linnaeus and the Perilous Project of Labelling All of Life | The New Yorker
He sorted and systematized and coined names for more than twelve thousand species. What do you call someone like that?
Let a website be a worry stone. â ethanmarcotte.com
One turn deserves another.
Things you forgot (or never knew) because of React - Josh Collinsworth blog
If you don't often look beyond established comfortable defaults, you might be surprised to learn just how far the world of frontend has moved away from React, and how big that gap continues to grow.
Uplifting Shopify Polaris
The process of evolving a large scale Design System.
My Journey Away from the JAMstack
The name is all but dead, nerfed by the company who invented it. Hereâs why Netlify was ahead of its time and where everything went wrong.