Adding light and dark mode to my side project was a fun journey. I especially loved how intuitive the entire process was. The prefers-color-scheme CSS property contains the user’s color scheme - light or dark. We then define SASS or CSS styles for both modes, and the browser applies the style the user wants. That’s it! The seamless flow from the operating system to the browser to the website is a huge win for users and developers.
After tinkering with Fediverse, I decided to add light and dark modes to this website as well. I began with some internet research on how to best approach this. This GitHub thread shows the current progress of the feature. And this in-depth POC demonstrates how challenging the process can be.
Deploying Jamstack Sites to Azure
Azure and Static Web Apps
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing service. Developers use it for building and deploying all sorts of applications and services. Many larger organizations rely on their secure, global data centers for managing enterprise applications. But, an increasing number of smaller teams are embracing the platform, especially ones with quick scale in mind.
Recently, Microsoft officially released Azure Static Web Apps at their virtual Code to Scale event. This announcement means that Microsoft users can now use Github CI/CD pipelines and their favorite development tools to deploy static resources and even trigger Azure API functions.
Static Website Generation With Java and Maven (JBake)
Last week, we migrated the entire www.optaplanner.org website (1399 files) to build with Java and Maven, instead of Ruby and Rake. On the face of it, nothing changed. But in the sources, for our team of Java developers, it is a game-changer.
Our java team can now contribute to the website easily. Within hours of completing the migration, there was already a commit of one of our developers who would rather not touch the previous source code with a ten-foot pole.