 Resources from Stephanie Eckles in 2024

It's tempting to pick up a framework which has preselected flexbox or grid as the layout tool of choice, but it's important to learn when and why to use each method. This leads to slimmer stylesheets which results in better site performance, and less likelihood for "hacks" to make one method do what the other does inherently better. 

Throughout this collection, we will be progressively styling a responsive landing page template while building your knowledge on when to select grid or flexbox for any layout scenario. Spoiler alert: sometimes the best solution is using both!

The specification describes a CSS box model optimized for user interface design. In the flex layout model, the children of a flex container can be laid out in any direction, and can “flex” their sizes, either growing to fill unused space or shrinking to avoid overflowing the parent.

flexbox

Create a Landing Page with CSS Grid and Flexbox

Forms are one of the most common features of a web application. They are also a common cause of headaches. The controls you use, the markup for the structural layout, and the styling all have to be considered.

What you build can look and behave differently depending on the browser being used, and how you build it can impact the accessibility of your application.

Stephanie Eckles has prepared several lessons that work through the creation of a complete form demo featuring the most common controls with a variety of attributes.

You'll create semantic fieldsets, add responsive styles without media queries, and prepare styles for accessible validation.

The demo is built with Sass and Eleventy. Don't worry if you don't have prior experience with these tools— Stephanie's code and explanations make it easy to follow along, and additional resources are available if you need them.

Cascading Style Sheets bring order and beauty to our applications.

Accessible Cross-Browser CSS Form Styling

Learn how to make flexible customized Twitch Scenes using the static site generator Eleventy (11ty), CSS, and ComfyJS.

Throughout this course, you'll create scenes for preshow, host, and main desktop display streaming purposes. Using ComfyJS, we'll add embedded chat and be able to create responses to chat commands. Finally, we'll see how to actually setup the scenes in OBS to prepare to use them for your stream.

Bonus: you'll learn a bit more about CSS grid layout, and also the "cicada principle" to be able to show the commands randomly across the scene!

Eleventy was created to be a JavaScript alternative to Jekyll. It’s zero-config by default but has flexible configuration options. Eleventy works with your project’s existing directory structure.

Eleventy uses independent template engines. We don’t want to hold your content hostage. If you decide to use something else later, having your content decoupled in this way will make migration easier.

11ty

Develop Custom Twitch Scenes and Setup in OBS

Techniques to improve your CSS, Sass, and HTML implementations for everyday scenarios. 

Sass is the most mature, stable, and powerful professional grade CSS extension language in the world.

scss

Learn the Fundamentals of CSS and Sass to Create Modern and Responsive Layouts 

Manage the color palette used in your stylesheets by creating a map of variables and a function to access the values by key. This allows you to update the colors in one location to re-theme your application and eliminate manual find and replace.

Access Theme Color Values With Sass

HTML 5 is the structure of our web pages. It is the markup that represents the DOM (document object model).

html

Learn how to ensure form text inputs are accessible by using semantic HTML. See how to use a fieldset to group related form fields together. Then, preview how proper HTML helps assistive technology like screen readers in identifying form field relationships and purpose.

Create an Accessible Group of Form Fields

Learn about the required and expanded syntax of CSS `box-shadow`. Then, create various kinds of effects such as shadows inside the element, a shadow that equally surrounds the element, realistic placement of the shadow, pseudo-borders, and layered effects by defining multiple shadows.

Create Basic Effects with CSS box-shadow

With just a handful of CSS properties, we can create an intrinsically responsive photo gallery using flexbox. This is accomplished by setting our preferred width as the `flex-basis` value and allowing items to both shrink and grow. The use of `object-fit: cover` on images allows them to fully fill up the list item without distortion or overflow. We finish the gallery with a small animated effect that alters `opacity`.

Create an Automatically Responsive Flexbox Gallery

Learn how to use the modern CSS property `clamp()` to create responsive layout sizing that adjusts to the viewport size without the use of media queries. Instead, use a CSS variable to set the base unit size and combine it with `calc()` and viewport units to define minimum, preferred, and maximum values within `clamp()`.

Create Viewport Responsive Layout Spacing Using CSS Clamp

Apply a grayscale and blurred effect on an image without the use of graphics software by using the CSS `filter` property. Additionally, use an inset `box-shadow` to create a vignette effect as used by photographers. Learn how to remove each effect by using `transition` to ease out the effects on a `:hover` interaction.

Apply Image Filter Effects With CSS

Bite-size video tutorials for badass web developers.

egghead

See how to include our custom Twitch scenes in [OBS](https://obsproject.com/download), including adding and positioning video and display capture areas. This step includes having our Twitch scenes project running in the background.

Setup Custom Twitch Scenes in OBS

JavaScript® (often shortened to JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions, most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic, and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

javascript

Using the open-source project ComfyJS, display a response to chat commands overlaid on the Twitch scenes. We'll use Eleventy templating to create a partial holding the initial command HTML. Then, using [the cicada principle](https://lea.verou.me/2020/07/the-cicada-principle-revisited-with-css-variables/), we'll enable visuals of each command word to appear in a seemingly random order across the scene. We'll use the `ComfyJS.onCommand` method to enable cloning the command template nodes and adding them as the commands are triggered through Twitch chat. CSS transitions will be used to apply a fade and zoom in/out effect for the added command nodes.

Respond to Twitch Chat Commands With Scene Elements and ComfyJS

To embed Twitch chat, we'll use the open-source project [ComfyJS](https://github.com/instafluff/ComfyJS) which is a JavaScript API to interface with the Twitch API. It offers features like responding to incoming chat messages and chat commands and other events like new subscriptions.

Using ComfyJS, we'll set up a section in the Twitch scenes to show incoming chat messages. This lesson covers the CSS needed to style the chat messages and make older ones scroll out of view once new ones are received. We'll take advantage of Eleventy templating to include the necessary scripts.

Embed Twitch Chat in Scenes Using ComfyJS

Add three Twitch scenes for preshow, host, and main, and style them using CSS. Learn how to include transparent background areas with CSS gradients that will mask capture areas for a webcam and desktop display.

Create Twitch Scene Templates and Style

Our Twitch Scenes will use the static site generator Eleventy (11ty) to leverage templating features for creating the scenes. This lesson covers the base project which is available in the project repo under `/lessons/00-base`.

This lesson includes templating for the stream details and initial styling of the details section within the scene layout. The primary templating language in use is [Nunjucks](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/templating.html).

Setup Eleventy Project for Creating Twitch Scenes

Learn the fundamental difference between CSS grid and flexbox layout, and create utility classes for each `display` value. Then begin to apply and expand these concepts to style the landing page navigation.

Choose Between Grid or Flexbox for CSS Layout

CSS grid is a layout model that allows defining structure in terms of columns and rows. Learn how to replace heavy 12-column grid system frameworks with the unique properties of CSS grid. By leveraging CSS grid, we can create intrinsically responsive layouts, no breakpoint media queries or lengthy list of utility classes required.

Create a Basic Responsive Grid System With CSS Grid

Apply grid layout and see when it's necessary to break out a media query to overcome grid's lack of wrapping behavior. We'll also learn about a property that grid and flexbox share: `align-items`.

Use CSS Grid to Create Layout Columns

Grid offers us the easiest method to responsively center content. We'll use the grid property `place-content` to center the contents of `figure` to showcase our fictional product in use. Additionally, we'll learn about `object-fit` which is a modern technique that allows inline images to scale responsively within defined dimensions without distortion.

Responsively Center an Image and Caption with CSS Grid

See how to use flexbox to layout variable-width content in columns, and take advantage of `justify-content` to keep flex children center-aligned on smaller viewports. We'll also learn how `margin` can be applied to resolve for lack of a well-supported `gap` property in flexbox. At the end of the lesson, we'll have styled both the "Subscribe" section and the site footer.

Use Flexbox to Responsively Layout Variable-Width Content

We'll complete our landing page styles by using CSS grid `auto-fit` in conjunction with the grid functions `repeat` and `minmax`. The result will be a responsive column layout that wraps when content shrinks below the minimum acceptable width. We'll also see how grid and flexbox can be used together by using flexbox to align the content of grid items. Finally, we'll view the fully completed landing page and reflect on how and why grid and flexbox were each used.

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Stephanie Eckles