Our Latest Insights
Thoughts from our team on current events, new techniques and tools, trends we're seeing, and our culture.
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Spectacle 4.0 Has Arrived
November 14, 2017Since Spectacle was released in early 2016, it’s been fun spotting it in use in presentations at conferences and meetups. The PacMan progress indicator and other familiar UI elements tend give it away, and it is exciting to see every single time. However, plenty of people are still...
Carlos KellyKWKen WheelerIntroducing Webpack Dashboard & Electron Webpack Dashboard 1.0
October 17, 2017After releasing Webpack Dashboard and Electron Webpack Dashboard, we realized that we had hit a sweet spot for developer tooling. Developers wanted to be able to have more transparency and more visual feedback from their build processes (and they like...Carlos KellyKWKen WheelerAdaptive UIs with react-image-palette
October 9, 2017When you have an application driven by rich media, like images, it can be hard to develop a cohesive, universal color scheme. A lot of the time, applications end up defaulting to shades of black and white to avoid clashing with the rich colors in their content. If you...BDBrandon DailBuilding an Offline-Only Website
September 27, 2017This summer I released a small personal project: Offline. It might be the only website that you forces you offline to view it. (I know, it’s weird.)The project’s seed was planted a few years ago when I was having a really hard time concentrating while writing my thesis...
Chris BolinIntroducing Electron Webpack Dashboard
August 16, 2017One year ago yesterday, I released webpack-dashboard. It ended up getting a lot more popular than I thought it would! As it turns out, everyone wants to pretend like they are working at NASA. Shortly after releasing it, and selling it under the guise of it feeling like...KWKen WheelerWhy React Native is the Best Choice for Making Native Apps
June 14, 2017Companies often eschew building native apps, thinking hybrid solutions will be easier and more cost effective to build. They end up shoving a not-so-responsive web app into some kind of native web frame, which ultimately leads to terrible user experience. Many companies opt to have...Carlos KellyJavascript Power Tools Part III: Real-world redux-saga Patterns
June 7, 2017In the past two articles, we've talked a lot about redux-saga in the abstract, without much concern for real-world applications. Now that we’re equipped with new knowledge, we're ready to jump in and start putting the pieces back together. First, we'll take a look at a pattern...
Matt HinkLive Editing React Components for Better Documentation
May 31, 2017As stated in a previous post about documentation, Your Docs And You, the best response to well made docs is simply, 'I get it!' When writing documentation, it's sometimes easy to forget that someone on the other end will actually be reading your docs. Writing docs can be as difficult as...
Phil PlückthunJavaScript Power Tools Part II: Composition Patterns in redux-saga
May 17, 2017In the last article, we investigated redux-saga's approach to the Saga pattern in JavaScript. Specifically, the concept of a generator function that yields command objects, which describe the effects we want to happen, and rely on an external driver to actually perform those effects...Matt HinkJavaScript Power Tools: redux-saga
May 10, 2017At Formidable, we're always refining our knowledge of modern JavaScript tech. This blog series, entitled JavaScript Power Tools, will take a deeper look at some of the tools, frameworks, and libraries we use to deliver reliable and maintainable code. Today, I want to talk about [`redux-saga`]...Matt HinkDon't Fear the Fractal: Infinite State Composition with Freactal
May 3, 2017In the beginning, there was React. You used `createClass` to define an OOP-style UI component with associated reactive state, and custom mixins managed cross-cutting concerns. It was good. Then came ES6 classes. You used standard language features and semantics to define a component...
Tyler ThompsonJoin Formidable at SeattleJS Conference
April 26, 2017The SeattleJS Conference conference is coming this August 10th and 11th, and Formidable is the presenting sponsor. Have you bought your tickets yet? For background, when we heard that CascadiaFest wasn’t happening this summer, the Formidable crew was super bummed. As the ongoing...BLBecca LeeFun with Fiber Custom Renderers at React Amsterdam
April 18, 2017Ken Wheeler, Formidable at large, will be speaking at React Amsterdam on April 21st. His talk, Fun with Fiber Custom Renderers, will explore the new custom renderer API in React Fiber, a soon-to-be-released architectural rewrite of React. Ken will cover Fiber basics, the anatomy...BLBecca LeeYour Docs and You: A Guide for Your First OSS Portfolio
April 12, 2017Open Source Software is arguably fated to a life of loneliness without great documentation. I’ve heard more than one developer proclaim the importance of docs, and their corresponding awe and appreciation when they find docs that are really well-made. One of my favorite responses to a docs site...
Paula Lavalle