A collection of 5 things from the week that I found interesting, am enjoying, or am working on.

This week:

  • I’ve been amazed by: Photopea - an advanced image editor, which looks and behaves a lot like Photoshop, and runs entirely in your browser
  • I’ve been experimenting with: CSS Grid. It makes my layout life easier, and it’ll make yours easier too.
  • I’ve been watching: Keep Betting on Javascript by Kyle Simpson
  • I’ve been reading: Ryan Holiday’s 32 Thoughts From a 32-Year-Old
  • I’ve been thinking about: How important it is to write online

I’ve been amazed by: Photopea

Photopea is an advanced image editor, which looks and behaves a lot like Photoshop, and runs entirely within your browser.

I first found out about it in a Reddit IAmA thread: I made a free alternative to Photoshop, that is used by 3 millions of people. Ask me Anything!, and was completely blown away by how quickly it loads, how much like Photoshop it is, and how smooth is is to use - entirely within the browser.

It’s not just a Photoshop clone, it even has capabilities that Photoshop does not:

Unlike Photoshop, Photopea can open almost any structured graphics file (XD, Sketch, SVG, PDF, XCF, Corel) and save them in a PSD format. There is a Vectorize Image (bitmap tracing) feature and several other features, that are not present in Photoshop. Also, Photopea runs on Linux, Chrome OS, Android, iOS and anywhere else, where you have a browser :)

I’ve been experimenting with: CSS Grid

Earlier in the week, I was building a form layout for a side project of mine, using Material UI’s grid…. the code was starting to get unwieldy, so I decided to give it a go with CSS grid…. and cut down the amount of code by about three quarters, while making the code much more readable.

CSS Grid is a game changer when it comes to responsive page layouts, without the old layout hacks that we have traditionally resorted to. If you haven’t tried using it, yet, you really should. It’ll make your layout life so much easier.

Check out some examples here: https://gridbyexample.com/examples/

I’ve been watching: Keep Betting on Javascript by Kyle Simpson

Keep Betting on Javascript - You Gotta Love Frontend Code Camp 2019

I’ve been reading: Ryan Holiday’s 32 Thoughts From a 32-Year-Old

Ryan Holiday is the author of The Daily Stoic, Ego Is the Enemy, Trust Me, I’m Lying, The Obstacle Is the Way, and other books about marketing and life. He also writes on Medium, and recently wrote this post: 32 Thoughts From a 32-Year-Old by Ryan Holiday

This particular quote really resonated with me:

I remember at American Apparel we were discussing some project and one of the execs had an opinion that most of the people disagreed with. They were trying to convince him he was wrong and in turn sort of expected him to try to convince them. But he just said, “That’s ok. I’m OK standing alone on this one.” It was an offhand remark but I think about it a lot. The world could use more of that. It’s something I try to model in my own life.

I’ve been thinking about: How amazing it is to write online

I recently got some feedback on one of my posts which reminded me why online writing is so worthwhile:

If you’re wondering where to start, check this out: Writing online is the fastest way to accelerate your career

Thanks for reading!

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