On the surface, using modern web development tools for WordPress sites seem odd: After all, you install WP on a server, and have a bunch of PHP, CSS and JS files, but they are strewn across WP Core, Themes and Plugins, some of which you control, some of which you don’t. So here is a collection of suggestions and resources for combining the power of modern web dev tools with the convenience of WP.

And speaking of WP and modern development tools, “WP-CLI is a set of command-line tools that provide such functionality for managing WordPress websites“… Wow, like they read our minds… :-)

Think you got Chrome’s DevTools mastered? Well check-out this list of 20 DevTools tips. Many are pretty simple, if not outright obvious, but I’ll bet there are at least a couple in there that you didn’t know!

I remember how excited I was the first time I had a reason to use an HTML5 input type="range" element. Then I started trying to style it, cross-browser, and that excitement turned into something else completely… Which is why I was so impressed with Customising Cross-Browser Range Inputs with CSS and JavaScript.

PostCSS made quite a splash when it first hit the web, but I think a lot of the reaction was because, mostly based on its name, people thought it was something that it is not. This Tuts+ series on PostCSS has started with a fantastically thorough description of what PostCSS is and is not, and I cannot wait to see the rest of the articles!

Great walk-through from Chris Coyier on how to use SVG use. Too bad about no IE support, but both workarounds seem doable, depending on the situation.

Use this (old) trick to send, and update, notifications cross-tab and -window. Thanks for the reminder.

Get a free performance analysis of your site from Zoompf. This site didn’t do too badly, but I do have some easy fixes I can implement.

I like these simple input type="file" design enhancements. Brings a much better look to such UIs.

Elastic progress bar. Cute, and fun. :-)

Wow, Stylesheets is a fantastic collection of CSS information and resources!

When Steve Souders asked us to merge our icons and such into image sprites, we all did it, not because Steve asked us to, but because we saw the obvious merit in doing so. So now when Chris Coyier asked for the same thing, but as a task runner for SVG icons and such, well, someone saw the merit in doing that, so now we can all do that, too!

But that is a Grunt-only task, so for all you cool kids with the fancy Gulp-thingy, you can have one too.

And finally, I cannot count how many times in my normal, day-to-day life I wish I had Ctrl+Z… It would be so handy… But at least with Git we have something close, so let’s learn about all the wonderful ways to “undo” something in Git.

Happy reading,
Atg

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