Reading and Writing With a ConcurrentHashMap

Category Image 073

ConcurrentHashMap provides a Map implementation with thread-safe read and write operations.

The Map and ConcurrentMap interfaces provide methods that ConcurrentHashMap takes advantage of to provide thread-safe interactions. Generally, I tend to solely really on the Map interface as it provides most of the same methods that ConcurrentMap has; however, depending on your use case, it might be beneficial to check out the ConcurrentMap methods yourself.

Typography Inspiration In Web Design

Typography Definitions Cover

Looking for typography inspiration for your next or future web design projects? We’ve rounded up some of the most creative and award-winning examples of typography usage in these websites that follow. Take a look and see what ideas they bring!

Your Web Designer Toolbox
Unlimited Downloads: 500,000+ Web Templates, Icon Sets, Themes & Design Assets


Font Roundup

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - font roundup

Likely Story

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Likely Story

VJ Type

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - VJ Type

Arthur Simonini

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Arthur Simonini

Martine Syms

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Martine Syms

Mama Joyce Peppa Sauce

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Mama Joyce Peppa Sauce

Slava Kirilenko

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Slava Kirilenko

DAD Agency

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - DAD Agency

Pact Media

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Pact Media

Dante

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Dante

Custo

Typography Inspiration In Web Design - Custo

Houseplant

Houseplant

Santa Teresa Fest

Santa Teresa Fest

Kim Kneipp

Kim Kneipp

Panic Studio

Panic Studio

372: Trends

Typography Definitions Cover

This week Marie and Chris get together to chat about what’s been hot hot hot on CodePen lately. We’ve discovered there is a really taking to the creamy cardstock look, for one thing. Typography is always great, but we’re seeing more typographic trickery often including variable fonts. While not new, there are still loads of really wonderfully creative Pens using Three.js and p5.js. Neon-on-dark is a fresh look. We get into those and more, a bit sneakily as we can take an internal look at what the Top 100 might look like this year, but we can’t share those details too early!

Time Jumps

  • 00:24 Trending episode
  • 01:34 The web3 aesthetic
  • 03:33 Pen and ink on cardstock
  • 06:44 Variable fonts
  • 10:18 Ask the database what’s popping?
  • 11:42 Celebrating follower number
  • 12:49 ThreeJS and P5 processing
  • 20:08 Public documentation on what it takes to get picked
  • 26:33 CodePen Challenges

The post 372: Trends appeared first on CodePen Blog.

Writing a Chat With Akka

Category Image 073

Ah, writing chats. So simple yet so complex. Yes, writing chats — as in coding them, not chatting (though that might prove to be problematic too, but that’s a whole different problem). If you’re looking for a step-by-step tutorial on implementing the backend for a basic multichannel chat, read on. 

So let’s dive into the technicalities. To give you some more details, the service will be implemented as a mix of a simple REST API and a Web Socket app. To make this more interesting, I decided to use Akka-related libraries and typed actors in as many numbers as possible. 

New Video Explores Site Building Progress From WordPress 5.0 to 6.0

Typography Definitions Cover

Do you remember what it was like to use WordPress 5.0? Three years and ten major releases have radically changed the site building experience, but it’s not always easy to see recognize when focused on some of the smaller, iterative changes that slowly add up. Anne McCarthy, WordPress product liaison at Automattic and co-release coordinator for 6.0, has created a short 13-minute video that shows the immense amount of progress contributors have made on site building features.

McCarthy takes viewers back in time to WordPress 5.0, released in December 2018, which introduced the block editor and the Twenty Nineteen default theme through the work of 400+ contributors. She demonstrates using the Customizer with the default theme. These were simpler days and it’s clear now how limited the Customizer was for implementing the most basic changes.

The video contrasts that experience with the upcoming 6.0 release, which features the work of 500+ contributors on features that didn’t exist three years ago.

McCarthy quickly demonstrates the 6.0 site editing experience, swapping out template parts, and showcasing the breadth of the customization available for images, colors, typography, controlling the posts that are displayed, style variations, and the impressive array of design tools available.

Ten major versions later, nearly every Aspect of a WordPress site is customizable through the site editor. For those who have not yet made the leap into full-site editing – it’s essentially like the old Customizer but with super powers, better instant previews, and the interface is a panel on the right. At this point, I don’t think the usability is at a level where someone can just get in there and immediately know what they are doing. It takes a little bit of exploring, but it’s moving in the right direction.

Videos like this one show what is possible and just how far WordPress has come since it first introduced the block editor. It also indirectly answers Joost de Valk’s recent claims that the full-site editing project not being done yet is partially to blame for WordPress’ recent decline in market share.

While WordPress remains the uncontested market leader among CMS’s, some say this small percentage of a decline is inconsequential. Matt Mullenweg has stated in previous interviews that he views market share stats as a “trailing indicator” in the quest to create the best possible experience for users and developers. A growing market share, in that sense, is a signal of user satisfaction.

WordPress jumped into the block paradigm at the right time, just as many other apps began adopting the concept of composable blocks for creating content and designs. Full-site editing is the extension of that vision but it takes time to make it something polished and delightful to use. McCarthy’s video is a good reminder of the limitations that users previously labored under while trying to edit their sites, and the “why” behind all the effort going into FSE.

“As someone who’s currently on the WordPress 6.0 Release Team, I can attest that the project needs more contributors,” WordPress contributor Nick Diego said in response to the recent market share discussion. “The fact that FSE has taken so long is not a lack of effort. There are many contributors pouring their hearts and souls into the project. We just need more help.”

5 Copywriting Tools for Graphic Designers 2022

Category Image 073

Graphic design provides visual communication and expression of concepts and ideas using graphic tools and elements. It incorporates copywriting tools as graphic design is employed in the process of writing advertising promotional materials. In graphic design, copywriters help create web page content, online ads and other online content related to the web in question. Image...

The post 5 Copywriting Tools for Graphic Designers 2022 appeared first on DesignrFix.

8 Interesting Typography Links for January 2022

Typography Definitions Cover

Every now and then, I find that I’ve accumulated a bunch of links about various things I find interesting. Typography is one of those things! Here’s a list of typography links to other articles that I’ve been saving up and think are worth sharing.

A specimen of the Retail typeface, once of the typography links in the list.
An awesome new font from OH no Type Company

Do you have any interesting typography links from the past month worth sharing? Drop ’em in the comments!


8 Interesting Typography Links for January 2022 originally published on CSS-Tricks. You should get the newsletter and become a supporter.

Line length revisited: following the research

Typography Definitions Cover

Mary Dyson produces nitty gritty research on the long-accepted notion that shorter line lengths are more legible than longer ones. The study finds that shorter lines do not necessarily lead to faster reading. If you’re looking for a definitive answer to use in your next design review debate, though, no dice. The big finding is that long lines don’t slow things down as much as previously thought, not that they’re better or worse.

But there’s so much more meat in here that I found much more interesting, mostly because I’m largely ignorant on the topic and gained a dollop of context on writing, legibility, and behavior.

Things like…

There’s a term for transitioning between lines of text

It’s return sweeps. You know, like your eye hits the Return key at the end of the line and sweeps to the start of the next line. Then, there are undershoots. The idea is that eyes may not sweep to the exact start of the next line, instead stopping a bit short.

Showing four muted lines of test with jump arrows across each line taking the eye to the end of the line, followed by dashed arrow leading to the next line. Red arrows highlight where the eye could undershoot a new line and miss content.

Those little rapid eye movements between words and phrases? Those are called saccades. I had to look that up.

The impact of undershoots is what’s being challenged

The previous research we’ve relied on for years comes from 1940(!), a time when we obviously were more concerned with paper pages than bright digital displays. Longer lines, it said, increased the likelihood that eyes undershoot during a return sweep, and undershooting results in a regression that results in a 130ms to 250ms delay where the brain needs to get its bearings. The report refers to that as undersweep-fixation.

We can still process words during undersweep-fixation

This report cites a 2019 study that tried to correct undershoots by bolding the first word at the start of each new line, sort of like an anchor that naturally draws the eye closer to the left margin.

The 2019 study did find that the bolded words did decrease undershot return sweeps But despite that, reading speed did not improve. That’s the impetus for challenging the long-held assumption that shorter is better.

Mary explains further:

In seeking to reconcile why longer line lengths may not slow down reading on screen but do so when reading print, I outlined some differences, e.g. visual angle, time spent scrolling. But although physical differences between reading from screen and reading print still exist, we now have direct evidence to explain why longer lines were read at least as fast as shorter lines. Readers can process words during the brief fixation when undershooting the start of the new line. This saves time in subsequent processing. Now we might also acknowledge that there is greater consistency between the range of optimal line lengths for print and screen.

Where does this leave us today?

Well, nowhere closer to a clear answer we can use in our day-to-day work. But it’s good to dust off our collection of design and copywriting best practices and know that line length is less of a constraint than perhaps it has been.

Again, none of this tells us whether long or short lines are better. Mary ends her report by saying she cannot definitely recommend using longer lines of text because there are clear because there are still some factors at play, including:

  • Shorter lines are more effective for people with dyslexia.
  • More questions about return sweeps and undershooting need to be answered.
  • Several other studies indicate that users prefer shorter lines and judge longer lines as more difficult to read.

To Shared LinkPermalink on CSS-Tricks


The post Line length revisited: following the research appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

Some Typography Links VII

Typography Definitions Cover

The post Some Typography Links VII appeared first on CSS-Tricks. You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

CSS Border Font

Featured Imgs 23

Every letter in this “font” by Davor Suljic is a single div and drawn only with border. That means employing some trickery like border-radius with exotic syntax like border-radius: 100% 100% 0 0 / 37.5% 37.5% 0 0; which rounds just the top of an element with a certain chillness that works here. Plus, using pseudo-elements. I love all the wacky variations with colors, shadows, and border styles, leaning into the limits of CSS.

Drawing things with CSS has long fascinated people. Icons are a popular choice (famously, Nicolas Gallagher’s Pure CSS GUI icons from 2010), since we can draw so many shapes with CSS without even needing to lean on the all-powerful clip-path.

But as Lynn Fisher has taught us, a single div is barely a limitation at all.

Direct Link to ArticlePermalink


The post CSS Border Font appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

Some Typography Blog Posts I’ve Bookmarked and Read Lately

Typography Definitions Cover
  • Font-size: An Unexpectedly Complex CSS Property — From Manish Goregaokar in 2017. Of many oddities, I found the one where font: medium monospace renders at 13px where font: medium sans-serif renders at 16px particularly weird.
  • The good line-height — Since CSS supports unitless line-height, you probably shouldn’t be setting a hard number anyway.
  • Time to Say Goodbye to Google Fonts — Simon Wicki doesn’t mean don’t use them, they mean self-host them. Browsers are starting to isolate cache on a per-domain basis so that old argument that you buy speed because “users probably already have it cached” doesn’t hold up. I expected to hear about stuff like having more control over font loading, but this is just about the cache.
  • My Favorite Typefaces of 2020 — John Boardley’s picks for the past year. Have you seen these “color fonts”? They are so cool. Check out LiebeHeide, it looks like real pen-on-paper.
  • How to avoid layout shifts caused by web fonts — We’ve got CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) now and it’s such an important performance metric that will soon start affecting SEO. And because we have CSS control over font loading via font-display, that means if we set things up such that font loading shifts the page, that’s bad. I like Simon Hearne’s suggestion that we tweak both our custom font and fallback font to match perfectly. I think perfect fallback fonts are one of the best CSS tricks.
  • How to pick a Typeface for User Interface and App Design? — Oliver Schöndorfer makes the case for “functional text” which is everything that isn’t body text (e.g. paragraphs of text) or display text (e.g. headers). “Clarity is key.”


The post Some Typography Blog Posts I’ve Bookmarked and Read Lately appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

Gutenberg 9.4 Introduces Button Width Selector and Typography Controls for List Block

Typography Definitions Cover

Gutenberg 9.4.0 was released this week with many small improvements to existing features, while work on full site editing continues. This release will not be included in the upcoming WordPress 5.6 release but those who are using the Gutenberg plugin will have access to the improvements right away.

The button block now has a width selector, which allows the user to set the button to 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of the parent container. By default, a button’s width is determined by the size of its content. If you like bigger buttons, this update will give you more flexibility. Button margins are also included in the width calculations, so users can create multiple buttons in a row, or a grid of buttons, and have them properly fit together and aligned.

Making a button is easier than it has ever been before. Gone are the days of using shortcodes or hunting for the correct CSS class to apply in order to match the theme. Button creation used to be so needlessly difficult with a fragmented, unfriendly workflow, but the block editor continues to chip away at the complexity with each new release.

Version 9.4 also introduces typography controls for the list block. Gutenberg contributors have been discussing adding color and text size customizations to all text-based blocks since 2018, and the list block is finally getting some font size controls.

Social icons can also be resized now. Users can select from several preset sizes, including small, normal, large, and huge.

The 9.4 update adds support for <kbd> tags with a new button in the overflow rich text menu. These tags are useful for displaying content in the browser’s default monospace font, which helps when writing documentation or articles with inline code.

This release lays the groundwork for handling block variation transformations. Block variations are essentially the same block with registered variations that appear as a separate block in the block inserter. For example, the navigation block has horizontal and vertical variations. The editor now introduces a transform option for the scope field in block variations, so developers can control how to handle these transformations.

Enhancements in this release add polish to many Aspects of the UI, including the inserter search, custom select menu styles, the link interface, Search block styling, shortcode block styling, and reduces the UI on hover (an optional setting in preferences).

One handy new feature for writing is that users can now add a header by typing /h1 to /h6 followed by enter/return. While I like the idea of this, it seems unintuitive to have to use enter/return to change the block to a header. This feature would be easier to remember if it mimicked the existing feature that allows users to add a header by typing ### followed by a space. Changing the trigger action to a space instead of a return would make more sense here.

Version 9.4 also includes a great deal of progress behind the scenes on experiments, including the full site editing framework, FSE blocks, the site editor, and global styles. Check out the changelog for a full list of bug fixes and enhancements.