Rachel Andrew, a web developer, CSSWG member and Perch co-founder, writes about CSS Grid, layout, and running a small web business.
HN commenters call her a champion of CSS Grid and recommend her articles on grid versus flexbox, IE support, and disappearing entry points into web development.
If you've been following CSS grid at all, or if you look up anything related to it, you'll probably encounter something written by Rachel Andrew. She's been doing an incredible job at documenting and promoting CSS grid.
In the past she wrote a CSS grid polyfill [0], but sadly it never got updated to the latest version of the spec. It'd be an easier sell if you could polyfill it reasonably on some older browsers, even if performance suffered a bit.
Right now the last holdout is Edge [1], which is funny because they were the first to ship the older spec, going back as far as IE10 or IE11. Luckily, the next version will be shipping the latest spec.
I've noticed autoprefixer [2] supports a grid option. I'd love a guide that explained any incompatibilities between the two versions. Getting a mostly working grid on IE11 and Edge would probably make it an easier sell for many.
When flexbox started growing popular there were guides showing you could support most features on IE10 and beyond with little effort if you used autoprefixer. Since there are equivalent versions of most attributes on older browsers, you just had to be aware of bugs and gotchas. For example, the default value for flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis (and their older equivalents) changed between versions, so if you always had to set them. In addition to any incompatibilities between versions, all implementations were buggy, so you had to be aware of bugs and their workarounds. Luckily, they're all well…
Just as popular JavaScript libraries spawn many superfluous forks and microframeworks, the landing of Flexbox has resulted in dozens of these CSS 'frameworks' and grid systems:
1. http://basegui.de
2. https://github.com/ButaneCSS/butanecss
3. http://juicedcss.com
4. http://bowlingx.github.io/flexcss
5. http://codepen.io/geoffyuen/pen/ogrPbZ
6. https://github.com/meerita/flexsasscandy
7. http://getmdl.io/components/index.html#layout-section/grid
8. https://kevinpy.com/Projects/Flexo
9. http://philippkuehn.github.io/gridilydidily
10. http://stylusgrid.com
11. https://github.com/IonicaBizau/gridly
12. https://github.com/colourgarden/avalanche
13. https://milligram.github.io/
14. https://github.com/ButaneCSS/butanecss
15. http://bulma.io/documentation/grid/
16. http://gridlex.devlint.fr/
17. http://crabcss.com
and that's but a fraction of the full list.
I haven't bothered to sit down and actually assess whether these flexbox grids actually differ from each other (my gut says that it's not possible for them to differ too much). My gut also tells me that there has to be an apex, an optimal Flex-based grid from which there can be no improvement.
I think a big part of the problem of why websites all look a bit similar is because they're all developed using Bootstrap, Bourbon or Foundation, and apparently on the rare occasion where a front-end framework is not used, an offshoot or "heavily-inspired by" alternative is used instead.
Nobody is thinking about what…
Here are some resources:
Podcasts:
* http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
* http://productpeople.tv/
* http://bootstrapped.fm/
* http://casjam.com/category/podcast/
* http://www.chasingproduct.com/
* http://www.bootstrappedwithkids.com/
* http://www.kalzumeus.com/category/podcasts/
* more here: http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-104-podcasts-for-startup-founders
Books:
* http://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/books/the-profitable-side-project
* http://www.startupbook.net/
My favorite articles and talks:
* https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-end-the-week-with-nothing
* http://youtu.be/0CDXJ6bMkMY (DHH @ Startup School 2008 on making money online)
* http://vimeo.com/92087769 (Nathan Barry @ Pioneer Nation on growing his business)
My advice is to:
(1) Make it a habit to work on your small online service every day -- or one full day per week -- and stick to the schedule. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
(2) Subscribe to one or two podcasts. They're great learning/motivational tools. Listening to other people talk about building a small business will help reinforce your work habits. Don't overdo it, though! Your goal is to build something, not to continually consume and never produce. I know I gave you a huge list, just pick the one you like best!
In that case, the customer could cheat. I am not totally sure about the current discussion on that, but the problem is, that you definitively can not rely on the address given of the customer, because in this case the customer will always give a country with the lowest sales tax. Also you must provide proofs for the location. The IP address is IMHO (and not only my opinion) better and will be more likely be recognized as proof instead of relying solely on some customer input.
But, you (because you are so sure about the best method) by sure know, that the laws are explicitly for non-physical goods, where no delivery-address must be provided, right?
Here is a link, how one company is doing it (forget about government information, they seldom go so much in details!):
https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/12/08/consensus-and-vatmoss/
They use the IP address to validate the user given address and for later proof.
BTW: Downvoting all the time does not help the discussion. I try to discuss this topic seriously and I was bringing some very relevant topic here, and am constantly downvoted. (It is not my fault, that the EU came up with such laws, and provide no useful guide how to implement it!)
> apparently doing a lot of googling finding the random stuff that IE11 doesn't quite support natively
Do you genuinely think the need to lay stuff out in a grid or manage callback workflows is exotic? Have you done any front end development?
> Your idea of IE11 support apparently revolves around people using the worst types of tech and coding practices
No. As written in the comment you're replying to, it revolves around the huge gulf between IE11 support for current tech when compared to Edge/Chrome/Safari/Firefox.
Some links:
From https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-to-use-the-ie-implementation-of-css-grid-layout/
> "However, even where similar properties exist in the two versions of the specification, the capabilities of the older spec and implementation are very different to the new one. This means you can’t simply run Autoprefixer and consider the job done."
The flex implementation is similarly broken. https://github.com/philipwalton/flexbugs
http://caniuse.com/#search=await
The only reason I mention clipboard (despite being less common) is we use it on our own site and the cost of implementing a second implementation in Flash fix is ridiculous.
The NYT headline misses the point somewhat…
Large companies have been 'basing' their sales operations in Luxembourg because it has an extremely low rate of VAT of ebooks, digital music etc.
Their sales operations have mainly been in name only with most of the work being done in other countries, and revenue moved around via high interest rate loans.
The EU have decided to legislate against this and make VAT payable at the rate in the buyers country.
Only problem is in legislating to prevent the likes of Apple and Amazon using the Luxembourg VAT loophole they've created hell for lots of small independent sellers who now have to charge VAT whether they needed to or not before, and charge in at multiple rates depending on where the buyer is.
Rachel Andrew has some good writeup's on this, in particular http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/11/30/how-the-eu-vat-rules-make-eu-startups-and-digital-businesses-uncompetitive-in-a-global-market/ with more in the archives http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/