React apps as Chrome extensions

Recently, I wanted to build a Chrome extension’s UI with React. It works well, but there are some quirks compared to regular web apps.

On Air in the home office

Since the pandemic started, I’ve gone all in on working from home. Being at home and mostly accessible to my family is great, but sometimes I need a way to signal to them that I’m on a call and ideally shouldn’t be disturbed.

Richer API documentation with Redoc and Docusaurus

I’ve been focusing a lot on APIs this year, and it’s been a lot of fun. With documentation being really important for an audience of developers, I’ve been using Redoc to document the API itself and building a full site around it with Docusaurus.

Better Pull Requests

I spend a lot of my time on pull requests. I have a few thoughts about what works and what doesn’t in the pull request process.

Designing responsive components in a UI library

I’ve been working on a standard CSS framework and UI library at work for the past little while, and it’s thrown up some tricky challenges. One of the more interesting ones has been that of how to design components to be responsive without knowing which context(s) they’ll be used in.

Elegant Async Code at MK.js

Last night I gave a brief talk at MK.js about writing elegant async code with ES2015 Promises. I’m pretty happy with how I did — it was my first try at public speaking — and the audience seemed to like the content.