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by: Team LHB Tue, 22 Jul 2025 17:50:55 +0530 This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

by: Team LHB Tue, 22 Jul 2025 16:43:38 +0530 This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

by: Abhishek Prakash Tue, 22 Jul 2025 07:05:00 GMT When it comes to grammar checking, Grammarly is the premium tool for it. It's a proprietary tool and it was among the first one to make a mark as a web-based Grammar checking tool. Then there is LanguageTool (partner link). This is the tool that we use here in our team. It is/was open source, made in Germany and offers hosted service for free or for a price (you get additional features). LanguageTool was acquired a couple of years back and since then it's privacy policy has changed as it processes data on US servers, instead of European ones. Recently, I came across a new grammar checker tool, Harper, and I am sharing my experience and my views on this new open source tool. Meet Harper, a local first open source grammar checkerHarper is a new project coming from Automattic developer, Elijah Potter. Automattic is the company behind WordPress, world's most popular Content Management System (CMS). The idea is to have a local first tool that doesn't depend on the cloud for any processing or stores away the data. That's a W right there. Harper is currently available as browser extension and plugin for Obsidian and VS Code. It is a new project and I hope they release more extensions, specially for LibreOffice, in the future. Try HarperI tried the Firefox add-on and tested it while writing this review itself. Features that I likeNow, Firefox already has a built-in spell checker and I believe Chrome and other browsers may also have it. So, do we need a third-party browser extension for this purpose? The short answer is yes. The built-in spell checker in Firefox is limited. It will underline even when you use a brand name. It is essentially a spell checker and hence it just checks for spelling mistakes. It won't warn you if you use "the the" two times in row. It won't warn you even if you write 'an pineapple'. Harper is definitely msarter than the default spellchecker of your web browserHarper does these things and it does that without interacting with a central server. Everything is processed locally. Here's what Harper is capable of: Spell checking (obvious)Spotting repetition (example, double the the)Spotting multiple simultaneous spaces in a sentenceSave words to dictionary (excellent)Correcting the use of a/anCommon misused words like "despite of" which should be "in spite of" or "despite" or "its/it's"Styling issue with comma usageAnother interesting feature is that Harper uses different colors for different type of mistakes. This way it is easier to visualize the mistakes and their types. The option to add strangely spelled words into the local dictionary is an excellent feature. Save special words in your local dictionaryYou can access this local dictionary by accessing the extension settings. And this is where you'll see various settings that you can change. You can even bring your custom dictionary as long as the words are in their own line. You can also choose between American, British, Canadian, and Australian English dialect. Harper extension settings📋As you can see, it seems Harper only supports English language at the time of writing this article.There are also a huge list of rules that detects errors like "along time" and suggest "a long time" as the alternative. The list is huge and that's why there is the option to search for a rule. There is no option to add your own rules though. Fast but how fast, rally?Harper claims to be faster than both Grammarly and LanguageTool. I don't have data to prove it. But I cal show you this video in which I show how quickly Harper gets into action as I type. 0:00 /0:28 1× Since the processing is local, the suggestions are pretty fast actually. Harper is not perfect, of courseFor example, here I deliberately mistyped "video in" as "videoin" and Harper didn't suggest it as one of the possible correct options. And I think it limits itself to suggest maximum three suggestions or the most it can fit in a line. Harper offers limited suggestionsAnother thing is that Harper is not as intelligent as I would want it to be. I am an excellent tester for grammar tools. I make so many mistakes and on so many levels that even the best grammar checkers throw in the towel. That's why I tested Harper against LanguageTool with a sentence with multiple grammatical issues. Harper was primarily so focused on the spelling of Wikimedia and Cloudflare that it forgot to point out other grammatical mistakes. The weird thing is that both Cloudflare and Wikimedia were correctly spelled. Usually, Harper is good at recognizing brand names, except in this case where it made two false positives in a single sentence. On the other hand, LanguageTool did indicate that there are some grammatical mistakes worth looking for. Neither could correct the sentence entirely, as the correct sentence I was aiming for was: Grammarly, LanguageTool, and Cloudflare went to a bar run by Wikimedia but it was closed, so they went to Wikipedia. Yeah! I know. No AI can guess what goes in my mind when I make these typos. It takes real intelligence to deal with such stupidity 😜 At least in Ghost, the CMS I use to publish content on It's FOSS, sometime the suggestions tooltip wouldn't close until I start typing something. It's minor but annoying. ConclusionBoth Grammarly and LanguageTool have evolved to writing assistant with AI features. But here's the thing. Sometime simplicity is the best feature you look for. Not everyone is a professional writer looking for additional features to improve their work. For a casual user, a no-fluff, simple grammar checker is more than sufficient to save them from embarrassing typos and grammatical mistakes in their emails. And Harper is an excellent choice at that. It is definitely better than your browser's built-in spell checker, it is an open source software and it processes your data locally. If you are not dependent on a more professional tool like LanguageTool or Grammarly, you should definitely 'upgrade' to Harper.

by: Chris Coyier Mon, 21 Jul 2025 17:54:20 +0000 Our very own Stephen Shaw was on an episode of Web Dev Challenge on CodeTV: Build the Future of AI-Native UX in 4 Hours. I started watching this on my computer, but then moved to my living room couch to put it on the big screen. Because it deserves it! It honestly feels like “real” TV, as good as any episode of a home renovation show or the like. Only obviously better as it’s straight down the niche of web maker nerds like us. All three teams in the episode were building something that incorporated AI usage directly for the user. In all three cases, using the app started with a user typing in what they wanted into a textbox. That’s what the input for LLMs thrives on. I’m sure in all three cases it was also augmented with additional prompting and whatnot, invisible to the user, but ultimately, you ask something in your own words. LLMs were interacted with via API and the teams then dealt with the responses they got back. We didn’t get to see how they dealt with the responses much, but you get the sense that 1) they can be a bit slow so you have to account for that 2) they are non-deterministic so you need to be prepared for highly unknown responses. The episode was sponsored by Algolia, which provides search functionality at it’s core. Algolia’s APIs are, in stark contrast to the LLM APIs, 1) very fast 2) largely deterministic, meaning you essentially know and can control what you get back. I found this style of application development interesting: using two very different types of APIs, leaning into what each are good at doing. That’s not a new concept, I suppose, but it feels like a fresh new era of specifically this. It’s not AI everywhere all the time for everything! It’s more like use AI sparingly because it’s expensive and slow but extremely good at certain things. I admit I’m using AI more and more these days, but 95% just for coding help. I wouldn’t call it “vibe coding” because I’m very critical of what I get back and tend to work on a codebase where I already essentially know what I’m doing; I just want advice on doing things faster and help with all the rote work. What started as AI helping with line completion has expanded into much more general prompting and “agents” roaming a whole codebase, performing various tasks. I’m not sure when it flipped for me, but this whole agent approach to getting AI help is actually the most comfortable way working with AI and code for me now. I haven’t tried Claude Code yet, mostly because it’s command-line only (right??) and I just don’t live on the command line like that. So I’ve been mostly using Cursor. I tried Windsurf a while back and was impressed by that, but they are going through quite a bit of turmoil lately so I think I’ll stay away from that unless I hear it’s great again or whatever. The agentic tools that you use outside of your code editor itself kind of weird me out. I used Jules the other day for a decently rote task and it did a fine job for me, but was weird to be looking at diffs in a place I couldn’t manually edit them. It almost forces you to vibe code, asking for changes in text rather than making them yourself. There must be some market for this, as Cursor has them now, too. It really is the “simple but ughgkghkgh” tasks for me that AI excels at. Just the other day I was working on an update to this very CodePen blog/podcast/docs site which we have on WordPress. I had switched hosting companies lately, and with that came a loss in how I was doing cache-busting CSS. Basically I needed to edit the header.php file with a cache-busting ?v=xxx string where I <link>ed up the CSS, otherwise shipping updated CSS wouldn’t apply when I changed it. Blech. CodePen deployed sites will not have this problem. So, anyway, I needed a simple build process to do this. I was thinking Gulp, but I asked an AI agent to suggest something. It gave me a variety of decent options, including Gulp. So I picked Gulp and it happily added a build process to handle this. It required maybe 3-4 rounds of discussion to get it perfectly dialed in, but all in all, maybe a 10-minute job. I’d say that was easily a 2-3 hour job if I had to hand-code it all out, and much more if I hadn’t already done exactly this sort of thing many times in my career. I’m definitely starting to think that the more you know what you’re doing, the more value you get out of AI. While we’re at it, I’ll leave you with some AI-ish bookmarks I’ve had sitting around: humanify: “Deobfuscate Javascript code using ChatGPT” Derick Ruiz: LLMs.txt Explained (Basically dump your docs into one big .txt file for LLMs to slurp up on purpose. Weird/funny to me, but I get it. Seems like npm modules should start doing this.) Ryan Law also has What Is llms.txt, and Should You Care About It? Steve Klabnik: I am disappointed in the AI discourse. (If you’re going to argue about something, at least be informed.) Video: Transformers.js: State-of-the-art Machine Learning for the web. AI APIs baked into browsers will be a big deal. More privacy, no network round-trip, offline support, etc.

by: Sreenath V Mon, 21 Jul 2025 19:58:16 +0530 This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

by: Team LHB Mon, 21 Jul 2025 19:50:16 +0530 This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

by: Zell Liew Mon, 21 Jul 2025 13:14:17 +0000 Focus trapping is a term that refers to managing focus within an element, such that focus always stays within it: If a user tries to tab out from the last element, we return focus to the first one. If the user tries to Shift + Tab out of the first element, we return focus back to the last one. This whole focus trap thing is used to create accessible modal dialogs since it’s a whole ‘nother trouble to inert everything else — but you don’t need it anymore if you’re building modals with the dialog API (assuming you do it right). Anyway, back to focus trapping. The whole process sounds simple in theory, but it can quite difficult to build in practice, mostly because of the numerous parts to you got to manage. Simple and easy focus trapping with Splendid Labz If you are not averse to using code built by others, you might want to consider this snippet with the code I’ve created in Splendid Labz. The basic idea is: We detect all focusable elements within an element. We manage focus with a keydown event listener. import { getFocusableElements, trapFocus } from '@splendidlabz/utils/dom' const dialog = document.querySelector('dialog') // Get all focusable content const focusables = getFocusableElements(node) // Traps focus within the dialog dialog.addEventListener('keydown', event => { trapFocus({ event, focusables }) }) The above code snippet makes focus trapping extremely easy. But, since you’re reading this, I’m sure you wanna know the details that go within each of these functions. Perhaps you wanna build your own, or learn what’s going on. Either way, both are cool — so let’s dive into it. Selecting all focusable elements I did research when I wrote about this some time ago. It seems like you could only focus an a handful of elements: a button input textarea select details iframe embed object summary dialog audio[controls] video[controls] [contenteditable] [tabindex] So, the first step in getFocusableElements is to search for all focusable elements within a container: export function getFocusableElements(container = document.body ) { return { get all () { const elements = Array.from( container.querySelectorAll( `a, button, input, textarea, select, details, iframe, embed, object, summary, dialog, audio[controls], video[controls], [contenteditable], [tabindex] `, ), ) } } } Next, we want to filter away elements that are disabled, hidden or set with display: none, since they cannot be focused on. We can do this with a simple filter function. export function getFocusableElements(container = document.body ) { return { get all () { // ... return elements.filter(el => { if (el.hasAttribute('disabled')) return false if (el.hasAttribute('hidden')) return false if (window.getComputedStyle(el).display === 'none') return false return true }) } } } Next, since we want to trap keyboard focus, it’s only natural to retrieve a list of keyboard-only focusable elements. We can do that easily too. We only need to remove all tabindex values that are less than 0. export function getFocusableElements(container = document.body ) { return { get all () { /* ... */ }, get keyboardOnly() { return this.all.filter(el => el.tabIndex > -1) } } } Now, remember that there are two things we need to do for focus trapping: If a user tries to tab out from the last element, we return focus to the first one. If the user tries to Shift + Tab out of the first element, we return focus back to the last one. This means we need to be able to find the first focusable item and the last focusable item. Luckily, we can add first and last getters to retrieve these elements easily inside getFocusableElements. In this case, since we’re dealing with keyboard elements, we can grab the first and last items from keyboardOnly: export function getFocusableElements(container = document.body ) { return { // ... get first() { return this.keyboardOnly[0] }, get last() { return this.keyboardOnly[0] }, } } We have everything we need — next is to implement the focus trapping functionality. How to trap focus First, we need to detect a keyboard event. We can do this easily with addEventListener: const container = document.querySelector('.some-element') container.addEventListener('keydown', event => {/* ... */}) We need to check if the user is: Pressing tab (without Shift) Pressing tab (with Shift) Splendid Labz has convenient functions to detect these as well: import { isTab, isShiftTab } from '@splendidlabz/utils/dom' // ... container.addEventListener('keydown', event => { if (isTab(event)) // Handle Tab if (isShiftTab(event)) // Handle Shift Tab /* ... */ }) Of course, in the spirit of learning, let’s figure out how to write the code from scratch: You can use event.key to detect whether the Tab key is being pressed. You can use event.shiftKey to detect if the Shift key is being pressed Combine these two, you will be able to write your own isTab and isShiftTab functions: export function isTab(event) { return !event.shiftKey && event.key === 'Tab' } export function isShiftTab(event) { return event.shiftKey && event.key === 'Tab' } Since we’re only handling the Tab key, we can use an early return statement to skip the handling of other keys. container.addEventListener('keydown', event => { if (event.key !== 'Tab') return if (isTab(event)) // Handle Tab if (isShiftTab(event)) // Handle Shift Tab /* ... */ }) We have almost everything we need now. The only thing is to know where the current focused element is at — so we can decide whether to trap focus or allow the default focus action to proceed. We can do this with document.activeElement. Going back to the steps: Shift focus if user Tab on the last item Shift focus if the user Shift + Tab on the first item Naturally, you can tell that we need to check whether document.activeElement is the first or last focusable item. container.addEventListener('keydown', event => { // ... const focusables = getFocusableElements(container) const first = focusables.first const last = focusables.last if (document.activeElement === last && isTab(event)) { // Shift focus to the first item } if (document.activeElement === first && isShiftTab(event)) { // Shift focus to the last item } }) The final step is to use focus to bring focus to the item. container.addEventListener('keydown', event => { // ... if (document.activeElement === last && isTab(event)) { first.focus() } if (document.activeElement === first && isShiftTab(event)) { last.focus() } }) That’s it! Pretty simple if you go through the sequence step-by-step, isn’t it? Final callout to Splendid Labz As I resolve myself to stop teaching (so much) and begin building applications, I find myself needing many common components, utilities, even styles. Since I have the capability to build things for myself, (plus the fact that I’m super particular when it comes to good DX), I’ve decided to gather these things I find or build into a couple of easy-to-use libraries. Just sharing these with you in hopes that they will help speed up your development workflow. Thanks for reading my shameless plug. All the best for whatever you decide to code! A Primer on Focus Trapping originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

by: Umair Khurshid Mon, 21 Jul 2025 17:00:49 +0530 Modern infrastructure operations depend on automation not only for efficiency, but also for repeatability. Among the many tasks automated in daily workflows, package management is one of the most frequent. For systems based on RPM package formats such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, and older versions of Fedora, Ansible provides a native module that integrates directly with the yum package manager. While newer systems may rely on dnf under the hood, the yum module in Ansible remains fully functional due to backward compatibility. In practice, it continues to be the primary interface for managing packages on RPM-based systems through Ansible playbooks. Let's see some of the usual package management you can do with Yum module in Ainsible. RHCE Ansible EX294 Exam Preparation CourseLearn all the essentials of Ansible with this hands-on tutorial series. It is ideal for RHCE Ansible EX294 exam preparation.Linux HandbookAhmed AlkabaryInstalling and removing packages declarativelyThe most common use of the yum module is to ensure that specific packages are present or absent on a system. Unlike imperative shell tasks that install software unconditionally, Ansible modules operate declaratively. This means administrators specify the desired end state, and Ansible ensures that the system reflects that state. - name: Ensure Apache is installed ansible.builtin.yum: name: httpd state: present This task confirms that the httpd package is installed. If it is already present, no changes are made. If it is missing, it will be installed. Removing package, in our case the Apache package, is also straightforward: - name: Remove Apache if no longer required ansible.builtin.yum: name: httpd state: absent This is how you can install and remove a package cleanly and idempotentlyon the command line just by changing the value of the state parameter. Working with multiple packagesAdministrators frequently need to install or remove multiple packages in one task. The yum module accepts a list as the name argument: - name: Install common utilities ansible.builtin.yum: name: - git - wget - curl state: present This example ensures that Git, wget, and curl are all installed on the target system. The task will only trigger a change if one or more of the listed packages are not already present. Keeping packages up to dateAnother common requirement is to upgrade packages to their latest available version in the configured repository. Here's how you can do it using the yum module: - name: Upgrade nginx to the latest version ansible.builtin.yum: name: nginx state: latest This guarantees that the latest available version of nginx is installed. It is particularly useful in playbooks designed to bring systems to a known and up-to-date state before deployment. Installing RPM files directlyIn addition to repository-based installations, the yum module can also handle local RPM packages. This is useful when installing custom software or vendor packages not found in public repositories. - name: Install a local RPM ansible.builtin.yum: name: /tmp/package-name.rpm state: present If the RPM has unmet dependencies, yum will attempt to resolve them using the system’s configured repositories. It is also possible to disable GPG signature checking when required, such as in development environments or controlled test scenarios: - name: Install without GPG checks ansible.builtin.yum: name: /tmp/unsigned-package.rpm disable_gpg_check: true state: present This should be used cautiously and avoided in production systems. Repository-aware behaviorAnsible separates package management from repository configuration. If custom or third-party repositories are required, the yum_repository module should be used to define them explicitly: - name: Add a third-party repository ansible.builtin.yum_repository: name: example description: Example Repository baseurl: https://repo.example.com/centos/$releasever/os/$basearch/ gpgcheck: true gpgkey: https://repo.example.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-example enabled: true This step is often necessary when deploying systems in air-gapped environments or when using hardened baselines with restricted repository access. Coordinating with services and handlersPackage installation is often tied to service management. A typical pattern is to notify a handler that starts or restarts a service after the package has been installed or upgraded: - name: Install Apache ansible.builtin.yum: name: httpd state: present notify: Restart Apache handlers: - name: Restart Apache ansible.builtin.service: name: httpd state: restarted This mechanism ensures that service restarts only occur when required, reducing unnecessary churn during routine deployments. Platform awareness and compatibilityAlthough many RPM-based systems now rely on dnf internally, the yum module continues to operate correctly. From my experience, you are bound to encounter a legacy CentOS system, often still running CentOS 7 or earlier where yum is the default and only available package manager. For Fedora and RHEL 8+ systems, the dnf binary is usually a drop-in replacement that maintains CLI compatibility, and Ansible handles this transparently. However, if you are seeking full consistency, the dnf module is available as an alternative, with nearly identical syntax and behavior. For most use cases, the choice between yum and dnf is a matter of policy rather than absolute technical necessity. New to Ansible? Learn from our "Learn Ansible Quickly" course. This is a fully practical, hands-on course for learning Ansible Automation. It will get you up and running with Ansible in no time. Ideal for RHCE Ex294 Exam. Ansible Course Wrapping UpWhether used in simple playbooks or integrated into large-scale CI/CD pipelines, the yum module remains an essential component of system provisioning workflows. Its compatibility with RHEL and its derivatives makes it a practical choice for both legacy environments and modern deployments. If you are already familiar with yum commands, adopting the Ansible module is a natural progression. It introduces structure without removing control, and supports fine-grained state management without requiring custom shell logic.

by: Sreenath Mon, 21 Jul 2025 06:38:35 GMT "If there is a media out there, VLC can play it!". I want to say the same thing about Kitty and its versatility. If you didn't know already, Kitty is one of the most comprehensive terminal emulators available in Linux. It offers image support, ligatures, animated cursors, and a whole lot of productivity tweaks. I could write a mini-book if I had to explain each one in full detail. I am not going to do that. Instead, I'll share some of my favorite features and tweaks I use with Kitty. Installing KittySince Kitty is a pretty popular terminal emulator, it is available in the default repository of most of the Linux distributions. In Ubuntu, you can install a slightly older version of Kitty by using the APT command: sudo apt install kittyArch Linux users can install it from the Extra repo: sudo pacman -S kittyFor Fedora, sudo dnf install kittyIf you are any other distro user, or your system repo provides an older version of Kitty, use the official pre-built binary from the Kitty team. curl -L https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/installer.sh | sh /dev/stdinOr, download binary from the GitHub releases page. Download Kitty1. Generating default configKitty offers a huge configuration possibility, but through its config file. This config file should be kitty.conf located in ~/.config/kitty directory. It is always good to use the default config file and make changes to it rather than creating a config from scratch. Open Kitty and use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+F2. This will open the Kitty config in a new window. If not present already, it will create one for you and open it. For me, it opened in the Vi editor. If this is not needed, you can quit the config using the Vi shortcut :q (without any changes). 0:00 /0:11 1× Open Kitty config file using the shortcut in Kitty. This will open the config file in Vi editor. Then open it in your favorite command line editor or GUI-based text editors. nano ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf2. Setting a different fontA proper monospace font can increase the terminal aesthetics. Here, we will set the terminal font as JetBrains Mono font. Before proceeding, make sure the font is installed on your system. First, list the set of supported fonts using the command: kitty +list-fontsFrom the list, note the exact name of the font you want to use: List FontsNow, open Kitty config and scroll down to the line that says font-family. Here, remove the comment in front of the item and change the name as follows: font-family "JetBrains Mono"Set a Font💡Kitty supports setting individual font as well, like Bold, Italics, etc.Setting font alone is not sufficient; you should be able to change the font size as well. Fret not! Kitty has an option here. Search for font-size. Uncomment the line and change the value to sufficiently large. Font Size3. Re-setting scrollbackOne of the most essential features in a terminal is a sufficiently long scrollback lines. Many commands like cat, do not use a pager like less to print text. So, if a text has a huge number of lines, more than your scrollback, then the beginning parts of the text will be unreachable. At the same time, setting a huge scrollback line is also not advised. Since the scrollback lines are stored in RAM, more scrollback lines means more hit on the RAM usage. A value of 10000 will be good for most users, and a 2000 is also fine for a GUI-only user. On the Kitty config file, find the line scrollback_lines. By default, the value is 2000. To change, uncomment the line and add a value, say 5000. scrollback_lines 5000Scrollback LinesThe scrollback pager feature in Kitty allows you to open your terminal’s scrollback history in a full-featured pager program (like less or nvim) for easier navigation, search, and copying. By default, this is disabled. You need to enable it by specifying the value in MB. Scrollback Pager History💡Use most instead of less and add colors to your pager system.4. Hiding mouse on typing (for keyboard addicts)For terminal power users, the mouse may feel like a distraction. In Kitty, you can play with the mouse presence in several ways. Hiding the mouse immediately when you start typing is my preference. To get this action, set the mouse_hide_wait variable to a negative value. mouse_hide_wait -3.0If you make this value any positive number, the terminal will wait for that many seconds and then disable the mouse if no mouse action occurred within that time range. Hide Mouse CursorIn the screenshot above, I set the value to 5.0 seconds. So now, no matter you type or not, the mouse will be disabled if you don't touch your mouse for more than 5 seconds. Set it to 0 and the mouse won't hide at all. 5. Setting window sizeKitty remembers the window size from the last session by default, so you don't need to resize it every time. Still, you can set the default window width in Kitty. Window SizeThe remember_window_size yes is self-explanatory. The window size will be remembered with Kitty instances. You can set the initial_window_width/height key to a required size and then disable the remember_window_size so that the new instances always open in the specified size. This is specifically useful in the next section, where we disable the window decoration and thus you can't resize the terminal with mouse anymore. 6. Hiding window decorationsIf you are using tiling window managers like Hyprland, it is good to avoid the title in Kitty. You won't find any serious use for it, because window resizing is done differently in tiling window managers. Search and locate the hide_window_decorations option. Uncomment the line and change its value to yes from the default no. Hide Window Decorations7. Customizing the tabsLike most of the terminal, Kitty offers tabs as well. The difference is that Kitty offers some ways to make the tabs look unique. Tab bar positionYou can use the tab_bar_edge key to specify whether you want the tab list at top or bottom. The default is bottom, and that is fine. Tab bar styleThere are several cool styles available for the tab bar, like fade, slant, separator, powerline, and custom. We will be going with the powerline, which is pleasing and can be quickly made work. Uncomment the line and change the value. tab_bar_style powerlineNow, the powerline offers another key called the tab_powerline_style. This can be set to angled, slanted, round. All these looks cool, but I will be going with round which along with the Catppuccin Starship prompt will look aligned. tab_powerline_style round 0:00 /0:32 1× Tabs in Kitty 8. Changing the shellMost of the Linux distributions come with Bash as the default shell. Many users, on the other hand, love the ZSH shell. The most common way people follow is to change the system shell. But that applies to all the terminals. Here comes the use of shell key. You can set a shell for only the Kitty terminal and the rest of the system will use the default bash shell. For this, first find the command location of your desired shell using the which command: which zshFor me, it is /usr/bin/zsh. Now, search for the shell key in Kitty config. 💡If you are searching for the shell using the editor's find tool, search for shell ., so that you reach the result directly.The default value is . which means the user's default shell is used as Kitty shell. Remove this . and paste the location of your desired shell. shell /usr/bin/zshChange Shell💡You can set a default editor as well using the editor key in Kitty configuration file. The procedure is the same as changing shell.9. Notifying on command finishWith Kitty, you can get a desktop notification when a long-running command finishes up. For this, uncomment the notify_on_cmd_finish key and set its value to invisible or unfocussed. I am going with invisible, since, as per manual, it will: Only send a notification when the window both is unfocused and not visible to the user, for example, because it is in an inactive tab or its OS window is not currently active.notify_on_cmd_finish invisibleIf you are more into detail, set a time limit for the long command. I am going to set 20 seconds as the duration of a long command. notify_on_cmd_finish invisible 20Notify on Command FinishThere is more to explore in this section for you! 10. Changing themesKitty offers a huge number of themes. Run this command: kitten themesThis will download the themes from the repo and display it to you. Scroll down to see them all. Once you find the perfect one for you, press the ENTER key to apply the theme! Also, use the / button to start a search. In the small video below, you can see that I apply Catppuccin theme to Kitty. Applying theme to Kitty Terminal Once you have selected the theme, press enter and it asks whether you want to modify the config or add the theme to ~/.config/kitty/themes. I will press the M key so that the Kitty Config is modified and the theme is set. 11. Animating cursor tailLatest versions of Kitty support setting a cool cursor animation. 📋The values for the keys in this section need to be fine tuned as needed for your satisfaction.To enable it, first search for the key cursor_trail. Uncomment it. I have set a value of 200 for it. Now, set a value for cursor_trail_decay and cursor_trail_start_threshold as shown in the screenshot below. Cursor Trail ValuesNow, reopen Kitty. You can see a cool cursor trail animation when the cursor is moved significantly. 0:00 /0:19 1× Showing Cursor Trail Animation 12. Automatic dark and light theme changeKitty supports automatically changing themes according to the system dark and light mode. 🚧This is supported in Kitty version 0.38+. So, if you are using Ubuntu 24.04 or related system, the default package repo version of Kitty doesn't support this.For this, first open Kitty and run: kitten themesNow, from the list of dark theme, select a dark theme and press enter. Select a dark themeIn the next page, press the D key so that this theme is the default theme for the dark mode. Now, run the kitten themes command again. This time, select a light theme from the list and press enter. In the next screen, press the L key, to make the selected light theme default for light mode. Set light mode themeRun kitten themes one more time and select a theme at random, and in the settings screen, press the N key to make it the default in case of no preference. No preference mode themeThat's it. Now, the Kitty will show the theme based on the current system mode. You can take a look at the ~/.config/kitty folder to make sure that the dark, light, and no-pref mode themes are present as config file. Theme files saved for different modes. 13. Setting a background imageTake the customization to the next level by adding an image as the background for Kitty terminal. Locate the key background_image in the kitty config file. Background Image and LayoutSet its value as path to the image file. Also, change background_image_layout to a required value, as shown in the screenshot above. And you can see that my kitty terminal now has an entirely different look that matches the theme of It's FOSS. Good for the social media videos. Set background image14. Adding a watermark/logoWant to spice up the terminal even more? Let's add a small logo as well! Make sure you have a small image, say 50x50 sized images. This will make things easy. There is a scale option window_logo_scale, but that may require some trial and error. Now, in the Kitty config, locate the key window_logo_path. Uncomment it and change its value to the path of the logo file. Also, fix the position of the logo using the window_logo_position key. Use the window_logo_alpha key to set a fade to the logo. Set Window LogoThat's it! Save the config file and reopen Kitty to view the result. It's FOSS Logo Applied15. Setting mouse actionsYou can define what the mouse buttons do in Kitty using the mouse_map option in the Mouse Actions section. The general syntax is: mouse_map button-name event-type modes actionFor example, the default middle-click to paste from selection action is set in Kitty using: mouse_map middle release ungrabbed paste_from_selectionKitty offers a wide range of customization, and I have mentioned some of the cool ones that I use regularly. There are more power user friendly features, like: Keyboard shortcuts mapping.Using Kittens to extend the functionality, etc.Explore the vast possibilities of Kitty by using it. ConclusionYou saw a glimpse of customized Kitty terminal in our terminal makeover video first. Subscribe to It's FOSS YouTube ChannelWe discussed internally and decided to do a dedicated tutorial on customizing Kitty. And hence this article. I understand that customizing the terminal is not everyone's preference but I like changing things to make them look asthetically pleasing. Kitty is my current favorite, even though I am thinking of using Ghostty. Please let me know in the comments if you like this article or if you notice any issues with the config changes.

By: Janus Atienza Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:11:31 +0000 Photo by Pixabay from Pexels The Internet of Things or IoT is changing a lot of industries. It connects devices and provides levels of automation that you can’t even begin to imagine. However, as connected devices are increasing, which is projected to reach more than 40 billion by 2030, security remains a major concern. A single vulnerability in an IoT ecosystem can expose sensitive data, disrupt operations, and compromise entire networks. As a result, Linux has become very important in secure IoT deployments, offering flexibility and security features. The Demands of IoT Security IoT devices work in diverse environments with limited computational resources. Unlike traditional computing systems, IoT devices face unique challenges like being lightweight, energy-efficient, and capable of running continuously with minimal maintenance. They are also targets for cyberattacks. In critical apps like medical devices or autonomous vehicles, a breach in an IoT device can lead to data theft, unauthorized access, or even physical harm. To address these challenges, IoT deployments require an OS that is: Secure by design Customizable to specific use cases Capable of receiving regular updates to patch vulnerabilities Linux excels in meeting these demands, becoming the main choice for those building secure IoT ecosystems. Linux: A Foundation for Security Linux’s open-source nature is its greatest strength for IoT security. Unlike other OSs, Linux’s source code is publicly available. As a result, the global community of developers can scrutinize, test, and improve it Due to this transparency, vulnerabilities can be identified and patched quickly. For IoT devices, where a single flaw can cause some major issues, this type of fast response can be very helpful. Linux’s modular architecture also lets devs create minimal, purpose-built systems. By stripping away unnecessary components, devs can reduce the attack surface. Over-the-Air Updates for Long-Term Security IoT devices often work in the field for years. So regular software updates are very important to address newly discovered vulnerabilities. However, updating millions of devices which are there all across the globe is a logistical challenge. This is where IoT device management plays a pivotal role. It lets organizations maintain a secure fleet of devices through efficient over-the-air updates. Linux’s flexibility makes it an ideal platform for implementing OTA update systems, allowing developers to push patches, firmware upgrades, and configuration changes seamlessly. Robust Access Controls and Isolation When we talk about securing IoT devices, it comes down to controlling who or what can access things, and keeping different parts of the system separate. That’s where Linux really does it work. It has some powerful tools, like SELinux and AppArmor, that act like very strict bouncers. These tools allow devs to set up rules about what every process and user on the device is allowed to do. Somehow, if a hacker manages to break into any part of an IoT device, these rules will prevent them from making more damages. Also, Linux supports containerization technologies like Docker or LXC. Cost-Effective and Long-Term Viability For those who are deploying IoT solutions, cost is a very critical consideration. Linux’s open-source nature eliminates licensing fees. As a result, it is a cost-effective choice compared to proprietary operating systems. The affordability also extends to dev tools, as Linux offers several free and open-source software for building, testing, and deploying IoT applications. Also, Linux provides long-term support releases, such as those provided by Ubuntu and Debian. It ensures that IoT devices can receive security updates and maintenance for years. Now, this is very important for industries like healthcare and industrial automation. Challenges in Linux-Based IoT Security While Linux offers many advantages, it is not without challenges. The complexity of configuring secure Linux distributions requires expertise. Plus, misconfigurations can introduce vulnerabilities. The diversity of IoT devices also tell you that not all Linux distributions are equally suited for every use case. By mixing Linux’s strengths with security measures, you can mitigate risks and make sure of the integrity of IoT deployments. So, you should adopt best practices, like: Keep your devices updated and patched regularly to tackle any known security flaws. Put strong network security in place, like firewalls and systems that detect intrusions. Use Linux’s built-in security features, such as SELinux and AppArmor, to enforce tight access controls. Make sure to thoroughly test and audit your IoT devices to pinpoint any potential weaknesses. Endnote You can see that Linux really stands out when it comes to securing IoT deployment. It’s very flexible and packed with strong security features. Itc can also handle growth easily, and has an amazing community backing it up. As it can adapt to so many different types of hardware and works well with new security systems, it’s perfect for powering the next generation of IoT devices. IoT is changing everyday and Linux’s open-source nature and collaborative environment will continue to be a key player in building IoT solutions that are secure, dependable, and innovative. For anyone who is planning to build strong, future-ready IoT systems, choosing Linux is very important. The post Why Linux Is the Backbone of Secure IoT Deployments appeared first on Unixmen.

by: Andy Clarke Fri, 18 Jul 2025 16:12:05 +0000 A while back, our man Geoff Graham treated us to a refresher on the CSS initial-letter property, but how can you style drop and initial caps to reflect a brand’s visual identity and help to tell its stories? Here’s how I do it in CSS by combining ::first-letter and initial-letter with other unexpected properties, including border-image, and clip-path. Patty Meltt is an up-and-coming country music sensation. My brief: Patty Meltt is an up-and-coming country music sensation, and she needed a website to launch her new album. She wanted it to be distinctive-looking and memorable, so she called Stuff & Nonsense. Patty’s not real, but the challenges of designing and developing sites like hers are. First, a drop cap recap. Chris Coyier wrote about drop caps several years ago. They are a decorative letter at the beginning of a paragraph, often spanning several lines of text. It’s a typographic flourish found in illuminated manuscripts and traditional book design, where it adds visual interest and helps guide a reader’s eye to where they should begin. Study manuscripts from the Middle Ages onwards, and you’ll find hand-decorated illuminated capitals. The artists who made these initial letters were fabulously called “illuminators.” These medieval versals went beyond showing someone where to start reading; historiated letters also illustrated the stories, which was especially useful since most people in the Middle Ages couldn’t read. A basic drop cap On the web, drop caps can improve readability and reflect a brand’s visual identity. A brief refresher on properties and values In CSS, drop caps are created using the ::first-letter pseudo-element in combination with initial-letter. As you might expect, ::first-letter targets the very first letter of a block of text, enabling you to style it independently from the rest of a paragraph. The first number sets how many lines tall the letter appears, and the second controls its baseline alignment — that is, which line of text the bottom of the cap sits on. p::first-letter { -webkit-initial-letter: 3 3; initial-letter: 3 3; } Because browser support still varies, it’s common to include both the unprefixed and -webkit- prefixed properties for maximum compatibility. And speaking of browser support, it’s also sensible to wrap the initial-letter property inside an @supports CSS at-rule so we can check for browser support and provide a fallback, if needed: @supports (initial-letter:2) or (-webkit-initial-letter:2) { p::first-letter { -webkit-initial-letter: 3 3; initial-letter: 3 3; } } The initial-letter property automatically calculates the font size to match the number of lines a drop cap spans. On its own, this can make for quite a first impression. However, drop caps really start to come to life when you combine initial-letter with other CSS properties. Tip: Interactive examples from this article are available in my lab. Shadows Text shadows applied to first letters (live demo) When I want to lift a drop cap off the page, I can add a single text-shadow. Shadows can be colourful and don’t have to be black. I created a full live demo you can check out. p::first-letter { /* ... *// text-shadow: 6px 6px 0 #e6d5b3; } But why use just one shadow when two hard-edged shadows will turn a cap into a classic graphic typographic element? p::first-letter { /* ... */ text-shadow: -6px -6px 0 #7d6975, 6px 6px 0 #e6d5b3; } Examples showing unstyled, single text shadow, and two text shadows (live demo) Strokes A text shadow applied to a first letter (live demo) The text-stroke property — shorthand for text-stroke-width and text-stroke-color — adds an outline to the centre of the text shape. It’s a Baseline feature and is now widely available. I can make the cap text transparent or colour it to match the page background. p::first-letter { /* ... */ text-stroke: 5px #e6d5b3; } Backgrounds Solid and gradient backgrounds applied to first letters (live demo) Adding a background is a simple way to start making a cap more decorative. I could start by adding a solid background-color. p::first-letter { /* ... */ background-color: #97838f; } To add a lighting effect, I could apply a conical, linear, or radial gradient background image (here’s a demo): p::first-letter { /* ... */ background-color: #e6d5b3; background-image: linear-gradient(135deg,#c8b9c2 0%, #7d6975 50%); } And even an image URL to use a bitmap or vector image as a background (and here’s that demo): p::first-letter { /* ... */ background-color: #e6d5b3; background-image: url(...); background-size: cover; } Background images and a background clipped to text Things become even more interesting by clipping a bitmap, gradient, or vector background image to the text while setting its colour to transparent. Now, the image will only appear inside the text space (demo). p::first-letter { /* ... */ background-clip: text; color: transparent; } Borders Two examples of borders applied to first letters, one square and one rounded You might think borders are boring, but there’s plenty you can do to make them look interesting. I could start by applying a solid border to surround the cap box (demo). p::first-letter { /* ... */ border: 5px solid #e6d5b3; } Then, I could apply border-radius to slightly round all its corners (demo). p::first-letter { /* ... */ border-radius: 1rem; } Or, I might round individual corners for a more interesting look (demo): p::first-letter { /* ... */ border-top-left-radius: 3rem; border-bottom-right-radius: 3rem; } A border radius applied to the first letter, where the top-left and bottom-right edges are rounded (live demo) And then there’s the border-image property, a powerful, yet often overlooked CSS tool. By slicing, repeating, and outsetting images, you can create intricate borders and decorative drop caps with minimal code. A CSS border image applied to a first letter (live demo) You can insert a bitmap or vector format image, or drop a CSS gradient into the border space: p::first-letter { /* ... */ border-style: solid; border-width: 10px; border-image: conic-gradient(...) 1; } Clipping Clipping first letters The clip-path property lets you define a custom shape that controls which parts of an element are visible and which are hidden. Instead of always showing a rectangular box, you can use clip-path to crop elements into circles, polygons, or even complex shapes defined with SVG paths. It’s an effective way to create visual effects like this right-facing arrow. Clipping the drop cap into an arrow shape isn’t just decorative — it reinforces direction and hierarchy, literally pointing readers to where the story begins. Here’s a demo of the following example. p::first-letter { /* ... */ padding-inline: 1rem 2rem; background-color: #e6d5b3; clip-path: polygon(...); } Or a glossy sticker shape cap, made by combining clip-path with a gradient background image and a text shadow (demo). Transforms Two examples of transforming first letters, one rotated (demo) and one scaled (demo) You can transform a drop cap independently from the rest of a paragraph by rotating, scaling, skewing, or translating it to make it feel more dynamic: p::first-letter { /* ... */ margin-inline-end: 2.5em; transform: skew(20deg, 0deg); } And with a little trial and error to arrive at the correct values, you could even flow the remaining paragraph text around the cap using the shape-outside property (demo): p::first-letter { /* ... */ display: block; float: left; shape-outside: polygon(0 0, 0 200px, 250px 600px); shape-margin: 50px; transform: skew(20deg, 0deg) translateX(-60px); } Drop caps don’t just help guide a reader’s eye to where they should begin; they also set the tone for what follows. A well-designed drop cap adds visual interest at the start of a block of text, drawing attention in a way that feels intentional and designed. Because it’s often the first element the reader sees, caps can carry a lot of visual weight, making them powerful tools for expressing a brand’s identity. Designing for Patty Meltt Patty Meltt wanted a website packed with design details. Every element added to a design is an opportunity to be expressive, and that includes her drop caps. Her biography page is presentable, but we felt a focus on where someone should start reading was lacking. Patty Meltt’s biography without a drop cap From the selection of designs I showed her, she felt the sticker-style cap best suited her brand. To implement it, first, I added a cursive typeface which matches her branding and contrasts with the rest of her typographic design: p::first-letter { font-family: "Lobster Two", sans-serif; font-weight: 700; } I changed the cap colour to match the page background and added a semi-transparent text shadow: p::first-letter { /* ... */ color: #140F0A; text-shadow: 6px 6px 0 rgba(163,148, 117, .8); } Next, I clipped the cap box to a visible area shaped like a sticker: p::first-letter { /* ... */ clip-path: polygon(...); } …before applying two background images — a noise-filled SVG and a radial gradient — that I blended using a background-blend-mode: p::first-letter { /* ... */ background-image: url(img/cap-noise.svg), radial-gradient(circle, #e6d5b3 0%, #cdaa65 100%); background-blend-mode: soft-light, normal; } Patty Meltt’s biography with a stylsh new drop cap (demo) The result is a drop cap that’s as stylish as cut-off jeans and a pair of gator-skinned boots. Conclusion Styling drop caps isn’t just about decoration — it’s about setting a tone, drawing readers in, and using every detail to express a brand’s voice. CSS has the tools to go beyond the default: gradients, textures, borders, and even complex shapes all help transform first letters into statements. So don’t waste the opportunities that drop caps give you. Make ’em sing. Getting Creative With Versal Letters originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

by: Abhishek Prakash Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:00:30 +0530 The AWK series continues with two more chapters. I have changed my initial plan to completely publish the AWK series in a couple of weeks. Instead, I'll go for two new chapters each week. The good thing is that we also have an upcoming systemd series by our partner educator, and it should be published next week. I hope you like learning from these new series 💪 💡Next Friday (25th July) will be Sysadmin appreciation day. Would be nice to plan something to observe this day. It's our day after all.       This post is for subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

By: Janus Atienza Fri, 18 Jul 2025 07:42:22 +0000 Today, enterprises require robust, scalable IT infrastructure to maintain competitiveness. As businesses expand, their network demands grow exponentially, necessitating solutions that ensure reliability, security, and efficiency. Managed networks can provide a strategic advantage by offering centralized control, proactive monitoring, and seamless scalability. These services allow organizations to focus on core operations while ensuring their IT backbone remains resilient and adaptable. Read on to learn how managed networks support scalable IT infrastructure in modern enterprises. The Role of Managed Networks in Scalability Managed networks enable enterprises to scale IT infrastructure efficiently in various ways. With managed support, organizations can adapt to growing demands while maintaining reliability and cost efficiency. Here’s the role of managed networks in scalability: Proactive Monitoring and Maintenance One of the primary benefits of managed networks is continuous monitoring. IT teams can detect and resolve issues before they escalate, minimizing downtime. For instance, in Linux/Unix environments, where server uptime is critical, proactive maintenance can ensure optimal performance. Automated tools can also track system health, log anomalies, and apply patches, reducing manual intervention. Hence, for enterprises leveraging Linux/Unix-based systems, investing in managed network support can help optimize performance. These operating systems, known for their stability and security, are widely used in enterprise environments. However, managing large-scale Linux/Unix networks requires specialized expertise, making managed services an invaluable asset. Enhanced Security and Compliance Security remains a top priority for enterprises, especially those handling sensitive data. Managed networks can implement robust security protocols, including firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and regular vulnerability assessments. Linux/Unix systems can also benefit from these measures, as they’re often targeted due to their prevalence in enterprise and cloud environments. By enforcing strict security policies, managed service providers (MSPs) can ensure compliance with industry regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA. Linux/Unix Optimization in Managed Networks Managed networks can enhance Linux/Unix performance. With expert management, businesses can achieve faster deployments, seamless scaling, and reduced latency in high-demand environments. Here’s how managed networks can optimize Linux/Unix performance: Customized Configurations for Peak Performance Linux/Unix systems are highly configurable, allowing enterprises to tailor their environments for specific workloads. Managed network providers can optimize kernel parameters, filesystem settings, and network stack configurations to enhance throughput and reduce latency. For instance, adjusting TCP/IP settings in a Linux server can also significantly improve data transfer speeds in high-traffic scenarios. Automation and Scripting Efficiency Automation is a cornerstone of scalable IT infrastructure. Managed networks can leverage scripting tools to automate repetitive tasks such as backups, user management, and software updates. In Unix-based systems, cron jobs and shell scripts can streamline operations, ensuring consistency across distributed environments. Cost Efficiency and Resource Management Managed networks can drive cost optimization through various solutions, reducing overhead while ensuring scalable, secure networks that grow with enterprise demands. Here’s how modern enterprises can ensure cost efficiency and proper resource management: Reducing Operational Overhead Maintaining dedicated in-house IT teams for enterprise-scale network management requires significant recruitment, training, and retention investments. Managed networks can eliminate these costs by providing on-demand expertise and pay-as-you-go service models. Additionally, businesses can avoid the financial burden of maintaining full-time Linux/Unix specialists while gaining access to enterprise-grade infrastructure management. This operational efficiency allows organizations to reallocate resources toward core business initiatives while maintaining optimal network performance. Scalable Cloud Integration Modern enterprises can increasingly deploy hybrid and multi-cloud architectures combining Linux/Unix servers with leading platforms. Managed network providers can streamline these complex integrations through automated provisioning, cross-platform monitoring, and unified security policies. Their expertise in Kubernetes orchestration, serverless computing, and virtualized environments can ensure seamless workload portability and elastic scaling. This can eliminate cloud vendor lock-in while optimizing performance across distributed infrastructures. Future-Proofing IT Infrastructure Managed networks can empower enterprises to stay ahead of technological evolution by deploying adaptive, forward-looking solutions. These include: Adapting to Emerging Technologies Modern enterprises can face exponential technological evolution with AI workloads, IoT ecosystems, and edge computing architectures. Managed networks can provide the infrastructure agility needed to adopt these innovations seamlessly. For Linux/Unix environments, this translates to optimized support for cutting-edge protocols like MQTT, real-time data processing through Apache Kafka, and distributed computing frameworks like Hadoop while maintaining system stability and performance benchmarks. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Enterprise operations demand bulletproof continuity plans to mitigate risks from cyberattacks, hardware failures, or natural disasters. Managed networks can deliver comprehensive protection through automated encrypted backups, geo-redundant failover clusters, and hot-swappable network configurations. Linux/Unix systems can particularly benefit from enterprise-grade tools for backups, high-availability clusters, and snapshot-based recovery. These can ensure sub-15-minute RTOs and zero data loss scenarios. Final Thoughts Managed networks are indispensable for modern enterprises seeking scalable, secure, and efficient IT infrastructure. By keeping the information mentioned above in mind, businesses can optimize Linux/Unix environments, reduce operational costs, and future-proof their networks. As technology advances, enterprises that adopt managed network solutions will maintain a competitive edge in an increasingly digital world. The post How Managed Networks Support Scalable IT Infrastructure In Modern Enterprises appeared first on Unixmen.

by: Abhishek Prakash Fri, 18 Jul 2025 10:47:19 +0530 AWK isn't just a text processor - it's your personal calculator and string manipulation wizard rolled into one. You have already experienced AWK's mathematical capabilities. Now explore the string functions. AWK offers a bunch of built-in functions to deal with strings. Here's a quick look at them: Function Purpose Syntax Example Result length(s) String length length(string) length("hello") 5 substr(s,p,n) Extract substring substr(string, pos, len) substr("hello", 2, 3) "ell" index(s,t) Find substring position index(string, target) index("hello", "ll") 3 split(s,a,fs) Split into array split(string, array, sep) split("a,b,c", arr, ",") 3 (returns count) sub(r,s,t) Replace first match sub(regex, replacement, target) sub(/o/, "0", "hello") "hell0" gsub(r,s,t) Replace all matches gsub(regex, replacement, target) gsub(/l/, "1", "hello") "he110" match(s,r) Find regex position match(string, regex) match("hello", /ll/) 3 sprintf(f,...) Format string sprintf(format, args...) sprintf("%.2f", 3.14159) "3.14" tolower(s) Convert to lowercase tolower(string) tolower("HELLO") "hello" toupper(s) Convert to uppercase toupper(string) toupper("hello") "HELLO" AWK's string functions let you clean, transform, and analyze text data with precision. Let's create a few sample test files. user_data.txt: john.smith@company.com John Smith Active mary.johnson@company.com Mary Johnson Inactive bob.wilson@COMPANY.COM Bob Wilson Active alice.brown@company.com Alice Brown Pending charlie.davis@external.org Charlie Davis Active sara.miller@company.com Sara Miller Active And log_entries.txt: 2024-06-29 ERROR Database connection failed for user admin 2024-06-29 WARNING High memory usage detected on web01 2024-06-29 INFO Backup completed successfully 2024-06-29 ERROR Invalid login attempt from 192.168.1.100 2024-06-29 DEBUG Session cleanup started 2024-06-29 WARNING Disk space low on /var partition Length and Substring FunctionsLet's find out users who have long email addresses in the user_data.txt file: awk '{ email_length = length($1) printf "%-25s: %d characters", $1, email_length if (email_length > 23) printf " (long email)" printf "\n" }' user_data.txt The length() function gives the length of the string here and then a simple comparison does the job. john.smith@company.com : 22 characters mary.johnson@company.com : 24 characters (long email) bob.wilson@COMPANY.COM : 22 characters alice.brown@company.com : 23 characters charlie.davis@external.org: 26 characters (long email) sara.miller@company.com : 23 characters The length() functionNotice how the email address with 26 characters doesn't fit in the specified field of 25? Now let's take it to the next level by extracting the user and domain names from each email address. This will test the use of substr function. awk '{ at_position = index($1, "@") if (at_position > 0) { domain = substr($1, at_position + 1) username = substr($1, 1, at_position - 1) printf "User: %-15s Domain: %s\n", username, domain } }' user_data.txt So what I did here was to use index() to find the @ symbol and substr() to split email into username and domain parts. User: john.smith Domain: company.com User: mary.johnson Domain: company.com User: bob.wilson Domain: COMPANY.COM User: alice.brown Domain: company.com User: charlie.davis Domain: external.org User: sara.miller Domain: company.com The substr() functionCase Conversion FunctionsLet's standardize email domains to lowercase by using the tolower function: awk '{ printf "%-25s -> %s\n", $1, tolower($1) }' user_data.txt It will convert email address to lowercase for consistent email formatting. john.smith@company.com -> john.smith@company.com mary.johnson@company.com -> mary.johnson@company.com bob.wilson@COMPANY.COM -> bob.wilson@company.com alice.brown@company.com -> alice.brown@company.com charlie.davis@external.org -> charlie.davis@external.org sara.miller@company.com -> sara.miller@company.com Convert email address to lowercaseLet's take it a bit further by creating display names from email addresses. Extract the user name first and then separate them at the dot (.). Also make the first letters in uppercases. awk '{ at_position = index($1, "@") username = substr($1, 1, at_position - 1) # Convert to proper case display_name = toupper(substr(username, 1, 1)) substr(username, 2) gsub(/\./, " ", display_name) # Replace dots with spaces printf "Email: %-25s Display: %s\n", $1, display_name }' user_data.txt Worth noticing is substr(username, 2) which doesn't have length specified and thus it takes everything from position 2 till the end. I also used the global gsub although there is no such need in the sample data bit if a username had multiple names separated by dot, it would be handled properly. More on it in the next section. Email: john.smith@company.com Display: John smith Email: mary.johnson@company.com Display: Mary johnson Email: bob.wilson@COMPANY.COM Display: Bob wilson Email: alice.brown@company.com Display: Alice brown Email: charlie.davis@external.org Display: Charlie davis Email: sara.miller@company.com Display: Sara miller Extract the name from the email address and convert to proper cases.Pattern Replacement with sub Clean up log entries by removing timestamps. Use the subtitue function sub() to remove the date pattern from the beginning of each log line. awk '{ # Remove date at beginning sub(/^[0-9-]+ /, "", $0) print "Clean log:", $0 }' log_entries.txt The regex basically looks one more occurrence of a number or dash at the beginning followed by a space and replaces it with ... nothing. And thus remvoving that part completely. Clean log: ERROR Database connection failed for user admin Clean log: WARNING High memory usage detected on web01 Clean log: INFO Backup completed successfully Clean log: ERROR Invalid login attempt from 192.168.1.100 Clean log: DEBUG Session cleanup started Clean log: WARNING Disk space low on /var partition The sub() functionLet's make our output more readable by adding color emojis. awk '{ sub(/ERROR/, "🔴 ERROR", $0) sub(/WARNING/, "🟡 WARNING", $0) sub(/INFO/, "🔵 INFO", $0) sub(/DEBUG/, "🟢 DEBUG", $0) print $0 }' log_entries.txt It looks better, right? 2024-06-29 🔴 ERROR Database connection failed for user admin 2024-06-29 🟡 WARNING High memory usage detected on web01 2024-06-29 🔵 INFO Backup completed successfully 2024-06-29 🔴 ERROR Invalid login attempt from 192.168.1.100 2024-06-29 🟢 DEBUG Session cleanup started 2024-06-29 🟡 WARNING Disk space low on /var partition Colored emojisgsub is used to replace globally, for all the matches, not just the first one like sub. sub vs gsubBoth sub() and gsub() work on replacing a pattern. The major difference being that gsub will replace all the matches while sub only replaces the first match. Here's a simple expression that uses sub: echo "2024-07-17" | awk '{ x = $0; sub("-", ":", x); print x }'It outputs: 2024:07-17Expression that uses sub() functionAnd if I use gsub: echo "2024-07-17" | awk '{ x = $0; gsub("-", ":", x); print x }'The date is properly formatted with all - replaced with : 2024:07:17Expression using the gsub() function💡 Did you notice I used the entire expression in one line? It could also have been written like this: echo "2024-07-17" | awk '{ x = $0 gsub("-", ":", x) print x }'But when you write an AWK expression in one line, you need to separate the commands with a semi-colon ;. In multiline AWK expression, the commands are separated by newline character. Multi-line awk commandsString SplittingLet's use the server_metrics.txt file from the previous chapter: web01 75.5 4096 85.2 45 web02 82.1 2048 78.9 62 db01 68.9 8192 92.3 38 db02 91.2 4096 88.7 71 cache01 45.3 1024 65.4 22 backup01 88.8 2048 91.1 55Now, we parse server names into components. What kind of servers are they (web or db) and what numbers do they have: awk '{ # Split hostname into parts n = split($1, parts, /[0-9]+/) if (n >= 2) { server_type = parts[1] # Extract number gsub(/[^0-9]/, "", $1) server_num = $1 printf "Type: %-8s Number: %s\n", server_type, server_num } }' server_metrics.txt The split() function separates server type from number in hostname patterns like "web01", "db02". Type: web Number: 01 Type: web Number: 02 Type: db Number: 01 Type: db Number: 02 Type: cache Number: 01 Type: backup Number: 01 The split() functionString FormattingCreate a server status report: awk '{ status = "OK" if ($2 > 85) status = "HIGH CPU" if ($4 > 90) status = "HIGH I/O" if ($5 > 70) status = "HOT" printf "%-12s | CPU:%5.1f%% | RAM:%4dMB | I/O:%5.1f | %3d°C | %s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, status }' server_metrics.txt It creates a formatted status dashboard with aligned columns and status indicators. I let you figure out the code on your own as a practice exercise. 🪧 Time to recallIn this chapter, you learned the following: String functions: Manipulate text with length, substr, index, splitCase conversion: Standardize data with toupper and tolowerPattern replacement: Clean and transform text with sub and gsubThese functions transform AWK from a simple text processor into a complete data analysis and reporting tool. Practice ExercisesTry these exercises with the sample files I've provided: 1. Extract just the domain names from all email addresses 2. Clean email addresses by converting to lowercase and removing extra spaces 3. Calculate the percentage of disk space used across all partitions with the following data: /dev/sda1 50G 35G 12G 75% / /dev/sda2 100G 80G 15G 85% /home /dev/sda3 20G 8G 11G 45% /var /dev/sdb1 500G 300G 175G 65% /data In the next chapter, you'll learn about arrays - AWK's most powerful feature for advanced data analysis and grouping!

by: Abhishek Prakash Fri, 18 Jul 2025 10:45:01 +0530 AWK handles numbers like a built-in calculator. I would say like a scientific calculator, as it has several built-in mathematical functions. You can perform mathematical operations directly on your data fields without any special setup. Let me create some sample files for you to work with: sales_report.txt: Product Price Quantity Discount_Percent Laptop 1299.99 5 10 Desktop 899.50 3 15 Tablet 599.00 8 5 Monitor 349.99 12 20 Keyboard 99.99 15 0 Mouse 49.99 25 12 server_metrics.txt with fields hostname, cpu_percent, memory_mb, disk_io, temp_celsius: web01 75.5 4096 85.2 45 web02 82.1 2048 78.9 62 db01 68.9 8192 92.3 38 db02 91.2 4096 88.7 71 cache01 45.3 1024 65.4 22 backup01 88.8 2048 91.1 55 🚧I'll be using printf command a lot to format the output in the examples in this chapter. While I explain them a little, it would be much better if you made yourself familiar with printf command in bash.Bash printf Command Examples [Better Than Echo]You may print simple outputs with echo command but that’s not enough for complicated formatted outputs.Linux HandbookAbhishek PrakashBasic Arithmetic OperationsTo refresh your memory, here are the basic arithmetic operators in AWK: Operation Operator Example Result Description Addition + 5 + 3 8 Add two numbers Subtraction - 10 - 4 6 Subtract second from first Multiplication * 6 * 7 42 Multiply two numbers Division / 15 / 3 5 Divide first by second Modulo % 10 % 3 1 Remainder after division Exponentiation ^ or ** 2 ^ 3 8 Raise to power You already know that the order of execution matters in arithmetic. So, let's clear that as well. Priority Operations Example 1 () Parentheses (2 + 3) * 4 = 20 2 ^ ** Exponentiation 2 + 3 ^ 2 = 11 3 - Unary minus -5 * 2 = -10 4 * / % Multiply/Divide/Modulo 6 / 2 * 3 = 9 5 + - Add/Subtract 5 - 2 + 1 = 4 With the basics aside, let's do some calculations. Calculate total revenue and discounted pricingCalculate total revenue for each product in the sales_report.txt. awk 'NR > 1 {total = $2 * $3; print $1, "generates $" total}' sales_report.txt It multiplies price (second field $2) by quantity (third field $3) to show total revenue per product, skipping the header line with NR > 1 (line number greater than 1). Laptop generates $6499.95 Desktop generates $2698.5 Tablet generates $4792 Monitor generates $4199.88 Keyboard generates $1499.85 Mouse generates $1249.75 Total revenue and discounted pricingNow, let's apply discounts to calculate final prices: awk 'NR > 1 { discount_amount = ($2 * $4) / 100 final_price = $2 - discount_amount printf "%-10s: $%.2f (was $%.2f, saved $%.2f)\n", $1, final_price, $2, discount_amount }' sales_report.txt The long expression above calculates the discount amount and final price, showing original price and savings with formatted output. The complicated part here could be to understand the formatting I used with printf. This is why I suggested reading about it at the beginning of this tutorial. Quickly, %-10s sets the width to 10 with left alignment (-), %.2f sets the floating point to two decimal points. Laptop : $1169.99 (was $1299.99, saved $130.00) Desktop : $764.58 (was $899.50, saved $134.93) Tablet : $569.05 (was $599.00, saved $29.95) Monitor : $279.99 (was $349.99, saved $70.00) Keyboard : $99.99 (was $99.99, saved $0.00) Mouse : $43.99 (was $49.99, saved $6.00) Calculate final pricesCalculate server temperature in FahrenheitLet's take it to the next level with temperature converter. awk '{ fahrenheit = ($5 * 9/5) + 32 printf "%-10s: %.1f°C = %.1f°F", $1, $5, fahrenheit if (fahrenheit > 140) printf " (HOT!)" printf "\n" }' server_metrics.txt The expression above converts Celsius to Fahrenheit using the conversion formula and flags hot servers in our sample text file server_metrics.txt: web01 : 45.0°C = 113.0°F web02 : 62.0°C = 143.6°F (HOT!) db01 : 38.0°C = 100.4°F db02 : 71.0°C = 159.8°F (HOT!) cache01 : 22.0°C = 71.6°F backup01 : 55.0°C = 131.0°F Calculate server temperature in FahrenheitAdvanced Mathematical FunctionsAWK provides built-in mathematical functions for more complex calculations and you'll see some of them in this section. Function Purpose Example Result sqrt(x) Square root sqrt(16) 4 sin(x) Sine (radians) sin(1.57) 1 (90°) cos(x) Cosine (radians) cos(0) 1 (0°) atan2(y,x) Arc tangent of y/x atan2(1,1) 0.785 (45°) exp(x) e^x (exponential) exp(1) 2.718 log(x) Natural logarithm log(2.718) 1 int(x) Integer part int(3.14) 3 rand() Random 0 to 1 rand() 0.423 (varies) srand(x) Set random seed srand(42) Sets seed to 42 Calculate the square root for performance metricsLet's create performance index from the server metrics file. It will use the sqrt function: awk '{ performance_index = sqrt($2 * $4) printf "%-10s: Performance Index = %.1f\n", $1, performance_index }' server_metrics.txt It creates a composite performance metric using square root of CPU and disk I/O product. web01 : Performance Index = 80.1 web02 : Performance Index = 80.6 db01 : Performance Index = 79.8 db02 : Performance Index = 89.8 cache01 : Performance Index = 54.4 backup01 : Performance Index = 90.0 Calculate Square Root for Performance MetricsRandom number generationLet's generate random server maintenance schedules: awk '{ maintenance_day = int(rand() * 30) + 1 maintenance_hour = int(rand() * 24) printf "%-10s: Schedule maintenance on day %d at %02d:00\n", $1, maintenance_day, maintenance_hour }' server_metrics.txt Remember rand() generates a random number between 0 and 1. So, I multiplied with 30 (for days of months) and 24 (hours of day) and only tool the integer part with int(). Thus we have a script that assigns random maintenance windows within a 30-day period. web01 : Schedule maintenance on day 15 at 08:00 web02 : Schedule maintenance on day 3 at 14:00 db01 : Schedule maintenance on day 22 at 02:00 db02 : Schedule maintenance on day 8 at 19:00 cache01 : Schedule maintenance on day 11 at 05:00 backup01 : Schedule maintenance on day 27 at 16:00 Random number generation⚠️ rand() is not so random in subsequent runs. Run the script a few times. Do you notice something weird? The output stays the same. What's the big deal? Well, you would expect rand() to generate random values in each run and thus giving a random result each time, right? But that doesn't happen here. You see, rand() will generate a random number between 0 and 1 only for the first run. All the subsequent runs will produce the same random numbers. To make it generate radom numbers in each run, set up seed with srand(). 🪧 Time to recallYou now have essential mathematical capabilities: Arithmetic operations: Perform calculations directly on data fieldsMathematical functions: Use sqrt, int, rand for complex calculationsPractice Exercises1. Create a formatted sales report with sales_report.txt in table format with aligned columns showing product, price, quantity, discount, and final revenue. The final output should look like this: | Laptop | 1299.99 | 5 | 10.00% | 5849.95 | | Desktop | 899.50 | 3 | 15.00% | 2293.73 | | Tablet | 599.00 | 8 | 5.00% | 4552.40 | | Monitor | 349.99 | 12 | 20.00% | 3359.90 | | Keyboard | 99.99 | 15 | 0.00% | 1499.85 | | Mouse | 49.99 | 25 | 12.00% | 1099.78 | 2. Calculate the average price of all products in the sales report 3. Convert all temperatures to Kelvin (K = C + 273.15) 4. Find which server has the highest CPU usage and by how much In the next chapter, you'll learn about dealing with string manipulation in AWK.

by: Geoff Graham Thu, 17 Jul 2025 13:23:52 +0000 Folks have a lot to say about “liquid glass,” the design aesthetic that Apple introduced at WWDC 2025. Some love it, some hate it, and others jumped straight into seeing how to they could create it in CSS. There’s a lot to love, hate, and experience with liquid glass. You can love the way content reflects against backgrounds. You can hate the poor contrast between foreground and background. And you can be eager to work with it. All of those can be true at the same time. Image credit: Apple I, for one, am generally neutral with things like this for that exact reason. I’m intrigued by liquid glass, but hold some concern about legibility, particularly as someone who already struggles with the legibility of Apple’s existing design system (notably in Control Center). And I love looking at the many and clever ways that devs have tried to replicate liquid glass in their own experiments. So, I’m in the process of gathering notes on the topic as I wrap my head around this “new” (or not-so-new, depending on who’s talking) thing and figure out where it fits in my own work. These links are a choice selection of posts that I’ve found helpful and definitely not meant to be an exhaustive list of what’s out there. WWDC Introduction Always a good idea to start with information straight from the horse’s mouth. In short: It’s the first design system that is universally applied to all of Apple’s platforms, as opposed to a single platform like Apple’s last major overhaul, iOS 7. It’s designed to refract light and dynamically react to user interactions. By “dynamic” we’re referring to UI elements updating into others as the context changes, such as displaying additional controls. This sounds a lot like the Dynamic Island, supporting shape-shifting animations. There’s a focus on freeing up space by removing hard rectangular edges, allowing UI elements to become part of the content and respond to context. Apple also released a more in-depth video aimed at introducing liquid glass to designers and developers. In short: Liquid glass is an evolution of the “aqua” blue interface from macOS 10, the real-time introduced in iOS 7, the “fluidity” of iOS 10, the flexibility of the Dynamic Island, and the immersive interface of visionOS. It’s a “digital meta-material” that dynamically bends and shapes light while moving fluidly like water. It’s at least partially a response to hardware devices adopting deeper rounded corners. Lensing: Background elements are bended and warped rather than scattering light as it’s been in previous designs. There’s gel-like feel to elements. Translucence helps reveal what is underneath a control, such as a progress indicator you can scrub more precisely by seeing what is behind the surface. Controls are persistent between views for establishing a relationship between controls and states. This reminds me of the View Transition API. Elements automatically adapt to light and dark modes. Liquid glass is composed of layers: highlight (light casting and movement), shadow (added depth for separation between foreground and background), and illumination (the flexible properties of the material). It is not meant to be used everywhere but is most effective for the navigation layer. And avoid using glass on glass. There are two variants: regular (most versatile) and clear (does not have adaptive behaviors for allowing content to be more visible below the surface). Glass can be tinted different colors. Documentation Right on cue, Apple has already made a number of developer resources available for using and implementing liquid glass that are handy references. Introduction to Liquid Glass Adopting Liquid Glass Landmarks: Building an app with Liquid Glass Applying Liquid Glass to custom views ‘Beautiful’ and ‘Hard to Read’: Designers React to Apple’s Liquid Glass Update This Wired piece is a nice general overview of what liquid glass is and context about how it was introduced at WWDC 2025. I like getting a take on this from a general tech perspective as opposed to, say, someone’s quick hot take. It’s a helpful pulse on what’s happening from a high level without a bunch of hyperbole, setting the stage for digging deeper into things. In short: Apple is calling this “Liquid Glass.” It’s Apple’s first significant UI overhaul in 10 years. It will be implemented across all of Apple’s platforms, including iOS, macOS, iPadOS, and even the Vision Pro headset from which it was inspired. “From a technical perspective, it’s a very impressive effect. I applaud the time and effort it must have taken to mimic refraction and dispersion of light to such a high degree.” “Similar to the first beta for iOS 7, what we’ve seen so far is rough on the edges and potentially veers into distracting or challenging to read, especially for users with visual impairments.” Accessibility Let’s get right to the heart of where the pushback against liquid glass is coming from. While the aesthetic, purpose, and principles of liquid glass are broadly applauded, many are concerned about the legibility of content against a glass surface. Traditionally, we fill backgrounds with solid or opaque solid color to establish contrast between the foreground and background, but with refracted light, color plays less a role and it’s possible that highlighting or dimming a light source will not produce enough contrast, particularly for those with low-vision. WCAG 2.2 emphasizes color and font size for improving contrast and does provide guidance for something that’s amorphous like liquid glass where bending the content below it is what establishes contrast. “Apple’s “Liquid Glass” and What It Means for Accessibility”: “When you have translucent elements letting background colors bleed through, you’re creating variable contrast ratios that might work well over one background, but fail over a bright photo of the sunset.” “Apple turned the iPhone’s notch into the Dynamic Island, Android phones that don’t have notches started making fake notches, just so they could have a Dynamic Island too. That’s influence. But here they are making what looks like a purely aesthetic decision without addressing the accessibility implications.” “People with dyslexia, who already struggle with busy backgrounds and low-contrast text, now deal with an interface where visual noise is baked into the design language. People with attention disorders may have their focus messed up when they see multiple translucent layers creating a whole lot of visual noise.” “It’s like having a grand entrance and a side door marked ‘accessible.’ Technically compliant. But missing the point.” “The legal landscape adds another layer. There’s thousands of digital accessibility lawsuits filed in the U.S. yearly for violating the ADA, or the American Disabilities Act. Companies are paying millions in settlements. But this is Apple. They have millions. Plus all the resources in the world to save them from legal risks. But their influence means they’re setting precedents.” “Liquid Glass: Apple vs accessibility”: “Yet even in Apple’s press release, linked earlier, there are multiple screenshots where key interface components are, at best, very difficult to read. That is the new foundational point for Apple design. And those screenshots will have been designed to show the best of things.” “Apple is still very often reactive rather than proactive regarding vision accessibility. Even today, there are major problems with the previous versions of its operating systems (one example being the vestibular trigger if you tap-hold the Focus button in Control Centre). One year on, they aren’t fixed.” “State, correctly, that Apple is a leader in accessibility. But stop assuming that just because this new design might be OK for you and because Apple has controls in place that might help people avoid the worst effects of design changes, everything is just peachy. Because it isn’t.” “Liquid Glass” by Hardik Pandya “The effect is technically impressive, but it introduces a layer of visual processing between you and your memories. What was once immediate now feels mediated. What was once direct now feels filtered.” “While Apple’s rationale for Liquid Glass centers on ‘seeing’ content through a refractive surface, user interface controls are not meant to be seen—they are meant to be operated. When you tap a button, slide a slider, or toggle a switch, you are not observing these elements. You are manipulating them directly.” “Buttons become amorphous shapes. Sliders lose their mechanical clarity. Toggle switches abandon their physical affordances. They appear as abstract forms floating behind glass—beautiful perhaps, but disconnected from the fundamental purpose of interface controls: to invite and respond to direct manipulation.” “The most forward-thinking interface design today focuses on invisibility – making the interaction so seamless that the interface itself disappears. Liquid Glass makes the interface more visible, more present, and more demanding of attention.” “Liquid glass, now with frosted tips”: It’s easy to dump on liquid glass in its introductory form, but it’s worth remembering that it’s in beta and that Apple is actively developing it ahead of its formal release. A lot has changed between the Beta 2 and Beta 3 releases. The opacity between glass and content has been bumped up in several key areas. Tutorials, Generators, and Frameworks It’s fun to see the difference approaches many folks have used to re-create the liquid glass effect in these early days. It amazes me that there is already a deluge of tutorials, generators, and even UI frameworks when we’re only a month past the WWDC 2025 introduction. Create this trendy blurry glass effect with CSS (Kevin Powell) Liquid Glass design using CSS (Nordcraft) Adopting Apple’s Liquid Glass: Examples and best practices (LogRocket) Liquid Glass Figma File CSS Liquid Glass Effects (DesignFast) Liquid Glass UI Framework Liquid Glass CSS Generator Experiments Let’s drop in a few interesting demos that folks have created. To be clear, glass-based interfaces are not new and have been plenty explored, which you can find over at CodePen in abundance. These are recent experiments. The most common approaches appear to reach for SVG filters and background blurs, though there are many programmatic demos as well. Using a CSS-only approach with an SVG filter with backdrop-filter with a series of nested containers that sorta mimics how Apple describes glass as being composed of three layers (highlight, shadow and illumination): CodePen Embed Fallback Same sort of deal here, but in the context of a theme toggle switch that demonstrates how glass can be tinted: CodePen Embed Fallback Comparing a straight-up CSS blur with an SVG backdrop: CodePen Embed Fallback Contextual example of a slider component: CodePen Embed Fallback Using WebGL: CodePen Embed Fallback Assorted links and coverage A few more links from this browser tab group I have open: “Apple’s Liquid Glass is exactly as ambitious as Apple” (Fast Company) “Apple unveils iOS 26 with Liquid Glass” (9to5Mac) “Apple Announces All-New ‘Liquid Glass’ Software Redesign Across iOS 26 and More” (MacRumors) “Apple just added more frost to its Liquid Glass design” (The Verge) “Apple tones down Liquid Glass effect in iOS 26 beta 3” (The Apple Post) “More assorted notes on Liquid Glass” (Riccardo Mori) A bunch of CodePen Collections Getting Clarity on Apple’s Liquid Glass originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. 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by: Abhishek Prakash Thu, 17 Jul 2025 04:27:47 GMT After Denmark and France, now we have another positive news from Europe as two major open source projects join hands to offer open source alternatives to popular enterprise tools Jira and Confluence. Europe on a Roll: Plans Open Source Alternative to Confluence and JiraEuropean organizations are going all in for digital sovereignty with open source tools.It's FOSS NewsSourav RudraStart of something new, something good? I sure hope so. 💬 Let's see what else you get in this edition Ubuntu 24.10 EOL.Bottles project needing help.Commodore making a surprise comeback.And other Linux news, tips, and, of course, memes!📰 Linux and Open Source NewsMozilla VPN is finally available on Flathub.Amazon's entry into the vibe coding space is here.Bottles needs your help to sustain development.Plasma Bigscreen has been revived, and it looks very promising.Ubuntu 24.10 has reached end-of-life; upgrade before you face issues.Ubuntu 24.10 Reaches End of Life: Here’s What to Do NextIt’s the end of the line for Ubuntu 24.10.It's FOSS NewsSourav Rudra🧠 What We’re Thinking AboutAI slop in vulnerability reports submitted to curl is becoming a big issue. Death by a thousand slopsI have previously blogged about the relatively new trend of AI slop in vulnerability reports submitted to curl and how it hurts and exhausts us. This trend does not seem to slow down. On the contrary, it seems that we have recently not only received more AI slop but also more human slop. The latter … Continue reading Death by a thousand slops →daniel.haxx.seDaniel Stenberg🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials, and MoreLearn how to use Emacs as a terminal multiplexer.Here are 10 beautiful fonts for your Linux terminal.Uncover the mystery of exit codes in Linux. It's not what you think.Ever had Arch gobble up 30 GB for an Electron update? I investigated it and found a fix.And learn a few things about using the terminal in this article. You might discover something new 😄 19 Basic But Essential Linux Terminal Tips You Must KnowLearn some small, basic but often ignored things about the terminal. With the small tips, you should be able to use the terminal with slightly more efficiency.It's FOSSAbhishek Prakash Desktop Linux is mostly neglected by the industry but loved by the community. For the past 13 years, It's FOSS has been helping people use Linux on their personal computers. And we are now facing the existential threat from AI models stealing our content. If you like what we do and would love to support our work, please become It's FOSS Plus member. It costs $24 a year (less than the cost of a burger meal each month) and you get an ad-free reading experience with the satisfaction of helping the desktop Linux community. Join It's FOSS Plus 👷 Homelab and Hardware CornerCommodore is back from the dead! Well, sort of. Someone has purchased the copyrights and launching new hardware for retro computing fans. Commodore is Back from the Dead!80s called, and they want you to know that you can pre-order the latest version of the Commodore.It's FOSS NewsSourav Rudra✨ Project HighlightIn the mood for listening to podcasts? Cozy is a nice Linux app for that. Cozy: A Super Useful Open Source Audiobook Player for LinuxCozy makes audiobook listening easy with simple controls and an intuitive interface.It's FOSS NewsSourav Rudra📽️ Videos I am Creating for YouI explored Gradia, the new screenshot tool everyone in Linuxverse is talking about. Subscribe to It's FOSS YouTube Channel🧩 Quiz TimeToday we have a fun quiz that will tell you what kind of Linux distribution you are. Which Linux Distro Are You? [Fun Quiz]You are a person, but still, you could match up with a distro.It's FOSSAbhishek PrakashAre you good with Git? Prove it, or Git good (pun intended). 💡 Quick Handy TipOn Dolphin file manager, you can quickly find specific files by enabling the filter bar with Ctrl+I or via Edit → Filter. Type text like .mp3 to show only matching files. Press Esc to hide the filter when done. 🤣 Meme of the Week🗓️ Tech TriviaThe German Army began using the Enigma machine on July 15, 1928, to send secret messages. It looked like a typewriter but scrambled letters into code. Years later, Alan Turing helped figure out how to break it. 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 FOSSverse CornerOne of our FOSSers is proposing a monthly call for talking about Linux from Scratch, are you interested? Linux from Source | Who’s up For a Discussion?I’m considering the idea of possibly having a monthly meeting on Jitsi to discuss aspects of building Linux from source code. It would be somewhat similar to Linux from Scratch or BLFS. It would give members of the group a chance to talk to other people and discuss any issues they may have with building from source. Members could brainstorm what types of applications, configuration settings and/or features they would want in a custom built system. It would be an in depth way to learn more ab…It's FOSS CommunityLaura_MichaelsAs a member, you can now find sign-in link from the header menu. Makes logging in easier. ❤️ With lovePlease share it with your Linux-using friends and encourage them to subscribe (hint: it's here). Share the articles in Linux Subreddits and community forums. Follow us on Google News and stay updated in your News feed. Opt for It's FOSS Plus membership and support us 🙏 Enjoy FOSS 😄

by: Neeraj Mishra Thu, 17 Jul 2025 03:36:01 +0000 DevOps tooling has become mission-critical. What used to be a niche engineering function is now a core business driver. And with the DevOps automation market projected to hit $72.81 billion by 2032, your choice of tools can literally make or break your product velocity. Whether you’re a CTO at a scale-up, a DevOps engineer in the trenches, or a founder juggling release chaos, choosing the right automation tools is no longer optional, it’s strategic. After diving deep into what’s working across the industry, here’s a fresh, no-fluff look at the top DevOps automation tools actually making a difference in 2025. Data-driven, real-world examples, and yes, links included. Why It Matters More Than EverDevOps isn’t just a buzzword anymore it’s the backbone of modern software delivery. If you’re looking to implement or optimize your pipeline, check out our DevOps services to get started the right way. 85% of organizations are using DevOps practices 49% say it helps them ship faster Teams are saving up to 30% in infrastructure costs DevOps-driven pipelines are 60% faster than traditional approachesIn a world where product timelines are measured in sprints, not quarters these numbers aren’t just impressive. They’re survival stats. Top 10 DevOps Tools Making Waves in 20251. GitHub Actions – The Community-Powered Automation EngineIf your team lives in GitHub, Actions probably already lives in your life. With 13,000+ prebuilt workflows, it turns complex CI/CD tasks into something even your intern can automate. Used by: Stripe, deploying thousands of times per day with custom workflows that boosted deployment success from 94% to 99.2%. Why it works: No infra to manage Huge community marketplace Limited flexibility for very custom setupsBest for: Startups, OSS projects, GitHub-native teams 2. GitLab CI/CD – The All-in-One PlatformGitLab isn’t just a Git repoit’s your DevOps Swiss Army knife. CI/CD, issue tracking, security scanning, and even Kubernetes deploys, all in one platform. Used by: GitLab itself (meta!) over 300 daily deployments using AutoDevOps. Why it works: Unified platform, strong DevSecOps features Bit heavy for small teamsBest for: Mid-to-large orgs, security-conscious teams 3. Jenkins – The Customization KingLove it or hate it, Jenkins still powers some of the biggest pipelines in tech. With 1,800+ plugins, it can be whatever you need if you have the patience. Used by: Netflix, with thousands of custom Jenkins jobs powering their microservices. Why it works: Total flexibility Requires hands-on care (and probably a Jenkins wizard)Best for: Large orgs with complex deployment flows 4. CircleCI – The Speed DemonIf you need fast, reliable builds, Circle Is your tool. Intelligent caching and parallelization cut build times dramatically. Used by: Shopify, who dropped test time from 25 to 8 minutes and doubled deployments. Why it works: Fast builds, Docker-first Free tier is tight, pricing can scale quicklyBest for: Fast-growing teams, Docker-heavy apps 5. Azure DevOps – The Enterprise GlueDeep Microsoft integration and enterprise features make Azure DevOps a top pick for large organizations. It’s not the flashiest, but it gets the job done. Used by: Progressive Insurance Cutting deploy times from 4 hours to 30 minutes. Why it works: Enterprise-grade, multi-platform, hybrid-friendly Can feel heavy if you’re not a Microsoft shopBest for: Enterprises, .NET-heavy teams 6. Space lift – IaC Done RightIf Terraform is at the heart of your infrastructure, Space lift should be on your radar. It’s like Jenkins, but designed for infra-as-code from the ground up. Used by: Revolut to manage AWS deployments across 30+ accounts catching 15+ production issues early. Why it works: Drift detection, policy-as-code, great Terraform support Newer ecosystemBest for: Platform teams, IaC-heavy orgs 7. Tekton – Kubernetes-Native PipelinesBuilt for Kubernetes, Tekton brings CI/CD inside your cluster. It’s lightweight, cloud-native, and plays nicely with K8s workflows. Used by: Red Hat for OpenShift Pipelines. Why it works: Kubernetes-native, scalable, cloud-agnostic Needs K8s know-howBest for: Cloud-native teams, Kubernetes shops 8. AWS Code Pipeline – The Serverless SolutionFor AWS-native apps, Code Pipeline offers end-to-end CI/CD with zero servers to manage. Used by: Airbnb Running 2,000+ daily deployments with Lambda and Code Pipeline. Why it works: Fully managed, integrates tightly with AWS Vendor lock-in, not as flexibleBest for: AWS-heavy teams, serverless apps 9. TeamCity – The Developer-Friendly CI/CDBuilt by JetBrains, TeamCity is loved for its smooth UI and tight IDE integration. Used by: Stack Overflow to streamline builds and reduce runtime by 40%. Why it works: Great UX, smart analytics, IDE sync Better suited for JetBrains/tooling-heavy orgsBest for: Dev-focused teams, .NET lovers 10. Harness – The AI-Powered NewcomerHarness is all about intelligence AI that predicts failures, optimizes deploys, and offers killer rollback strategies. Used by: JP Morgan Chase Detecting and preventing 23+ production issues last year. Why it works: Smart automation, strong security, observability built-in Pricey and complex for smaller teamsBest for: Large enterprises, mission-critical apps Which One Should You Choose?No tool is one-size-fits-all. The best advice? Start with your team’s size, budget, stack, and pain points, then choose the DevOps automation tools that actually fit—not the ones with the flashiest feature list. Final TakeThe DevOps world is growing 17.7% CAGR fast. And the tools you choose today? They’ll shape your team’s velocity, stability, and culture for years to come. Just remember: simplicity scales. Don’t over-engineer your pipeline if you don’t have to. The post 10 Best DevOps Automation Tools in 2025 appeared first on The Crazy Programmer.

by: Chris Coyier Wed, 16 Jul 2025 19:42:27 +0000 Pins are dead! Long live bookmarks! Pins was never a good name for the feature we have on CodePen where you can mark a Pen or Collection to more quickly jump back to it from anywhere on the site. The word is too similar to “Pen” that it’s just awkward, not to mention it’s not exactly and obvious metaphor. A bookmark is a much more clear term and icon, so we decided to switch to it. Switching the UI is kind of the easy part. It’s kind of a cultural thing at CodePen, but when we make a change like this, we change it 100% through the entire code base, down to the database itself. In order to do that, we had to chunk it into stages so that those stages can roll out independently, but in order, to make it seamless. Now that it’s done, we were able to extend the functionality of Bookmarks a bit, such that bookmarking a template is extra useful. One place to see that is on the new Create page. Time Jumps 00:05 You’re still here! Thanks for listening! 01:51 Pins are changing to… 04:51 How do you get alignment on changes or new features? 08:35 Figuring out the new icon 09:44 Updating the documentation 17:32 How does this affect templates?

by: Sourav Rudra Wed, 16 Jul 2025 14:04:59 GMT The rise of AI-powered coding tools has reshaped developer workflows worldwide. Interactive development environments are becoming more intelligent, adapting to how programmers work. Microsoft is actively evolving VS Code into an AI-first IDE by integrating powerful language models and automation. Meanwhile, Amazon recently launched Kiro, aiming to simplify coding with a fresh approach. Amidst all this, Windsurf, the most popular AI code editor out there, has found itself in murky waters, with its founders and top talent being poached by Google and its assets being quickly acquired by Cognition. If all this has made you rethink using Windsurft, then you are not alone. With this list, I will be highlighting some of the most promising AI IDEs and developer tools available for Linux users. 🚧This list includes both FOSS and non-FOSS apps. We included the latter as they are available for Linux.1. ZedZed is a fast, open source code editor built with Rust and designed for modern developer workflows. It supports Linux natively and aims for low latency, real-time collaboration features. Besides core editing, Zed integrates with AI assistants like Copilot, Anthropic, and Gemini, letting you speed up coding with AI-powered completions and code analysis. It also includes native Git support and a built-in terminal for seamless development. ⭐ Key Features Native Linux supportAI-powered code completionsWritten in Rust for performance and safetyZed2. CursorCursor is a popular AI-powered code editor built as a fork of VS Code, designed to provide advanced AI-assisted coding features. It integrates AI models for multi-file code understanding, generation, and chat-based support. Widely adopted by developers seeking a more intelligent IDE experience, Cursor supports Linux natively and offers seamless integration with common development workflows. ⭐ Key Features Native Linux app with regular updatesVS Code fork with built-in AI capabilitiesAdvanced multi-file code understanding and generation3. Flexpilot IDEFlexpilot IDE is a free, open source AI-native IDE that’s a fork of VS Code. It supports Linux and lets you choose your own LLM from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral, and local models via Ollama and LMStudio. It offers features like inline completions, panel chat, multi-file edits, and AI-powered commit messages. Not only that, but it also supports extensions from the VS Code ecosystem, making it easy to adapt to existing workflows. ⭐ Key Features Bring-your-own-LLMCan be used inside a web browserUses native APis for great extension supportFlexpilot IDEFlexpilot is an Open Source IDE for AI-Assisted Coding Experience 🚀Flexpilot is almost like VS Code, only a bit better with built-in AI features. Learn why I created it and how you can use it.It's FOSSCommunity4. KiroKiro is an AI-powered IDE developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that focuses on spec-driven development to help development teams quickly move from prototyping to production. It is powered by Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, with Sonnet 3.7 as a backup option. Kiro is also built on an open source VS Code base, allowing it to leverage a solid foundation to support familiar workflows, seamless plugin compatibility, and effortless migration of user settings. ⭐ Key Features Spec-driven development approachAgent Hooks for automationSupport for MCP ServersKiro5. TabbyTabby is an open source, self-hosted AI coding assistant designed to integrate seamlessly into development workflows. It offers features like code completion, an answer engine, and inline chat to help developers write and debug code more efficiently. In addition to its technical capabilities, Tabby prioritizes transparency and data control. By enabling users to deploy the assistant on their own local infrastructure or private cloud, Tabby allows organizations and individuals to maintain complete ownership of their code and sensitive information. ⭐ Key Features Self hosted, open source solutionAI-powered code completion and contextual suggestionsIntegrated answer engine and inline chat for quick answersTabby6. ClaudiaClaudia is a GUI-based toolkit for Claude Code AI development built as a desktop app. It is designed to make working with Claude-powered code assistants approachable and efficient for developers. It includes essential tools like a visual project browser for organizing sessions with metadata and previews, custom AI agent creation using tailored system prompts, and a session timeline with checkpoints that allow users to branch, save, and review past work using visual diffs. ⭐ Key Features Detailed usage analytics viewGUI for Claude Code AI developmentBuilt-in tools for creating and editing custom AI agentsClaudia7. WarpWarp (partner link) is a modern terminal built for teams, designed to improve developer productivity with a powerful and collaborative command-line experience. Unlike traditional terminals, Warp provides a fast, native UI built in Rust and introduces features like input blocks, autocomplete, and AI command suggestions to streamline workflows and reduce context switching. It includes built-in support for team collaboration, allowing users to share commands, access reusable workflows, and leverage AI assistance directly in the terminal. ⭐ Key Features Fast, native terminalMany collaborative features for teamsCommand palette and AI auto-completionWarp8. TabnineTabnine is an AI-powered code completion assistant designed to accelerate and simplify software development while keeping your code private, secure, and compliant. It offers highly personalized, context-aware code completions for snippets, lines, and full functions. Unlike other coding assistants, Tabnine lets you control where and how it’s deployed, whether SaaS, VPC, or on-premise. This ensures that your intellectual property remains protected without storing or sharing your code externally. ⭐ Key Features Protection from IP liability AI-powered chat assistant to generate codeContext-aware AI code completionsTabnineWhich vibe coding IDE do you think is a worthy Windsurf replacement? Share it in the comments.

by: Sunkanmi Fafowora Wed, 16 Jul 2025 12:54:14 +0000 State of Devs 2025 survey results are out! While the survey isn’t directly related to the code part of what we do for work, I do love the focus Devographics took ever since its inception in 2020. And this year it brought us some rather interesting results through the attendance of 8,717 developers, lots of data, and even more useful insights that I think everyone can look up and learn from. I decided to look at the survey results with an analytical mindset, but wound up pouring my heart out because, well, I am a developer, and the entire survey affects me in a way. I have some personal opinions, it turns out. So, sit back, relax, and indulge me for a bit as we look at a few choice pieces of the survey. And it’s worth noting that this is only part one of the survey results. A second data dump will be published later and I’m interested to poke at those numbers, too. An opportunity to connect One thing I noticed from the Demographics section is how much tech connects us all. The majority of responses come from the U.S. (26%) but many other countries, including Italy, Germany, France, Estonia, Austria, South Africa and many more, account for the remaining 74%. I mean, I am working and communicating with you right now, all the way from Nigeria! Isn’t that beautiful, to be able to communicate with people around the world through this wonderful place we call CSS-Tricks? And into the bigger community of developers that keeps it so fun? I think this is a testament to how much we want to connect. More so, the State of Devs survey gives us an opportunity to express our pain points on issues surrounding our experiences, workplace environments, quality of health, and even what hobbies we have as developers. And while I say developers, the survey makes it clear it’s more than that. Behind anyone’s face is someone encountering life challenges. We’re all people and people are capable of pure emotion. We are all just human. I think this survey offers insights into how much we care about ourselves in tech, and how eager we are to solve issues rarely talked about. And the fact that it’s global in nature illustrates how much in common we all have. More women participated this year From what I noticed, fewer women participated in the 2024 State of JavaScript and State of CSS fewer women (around 6%), while women represented a bigger share in this year’s State of Devs survey. I’d say 15% is still far too low to fairly “represent” an entire key segment of people, but it is certainly encouraging to see a greater slice in this particular survey. We need more women in this male-dominated industry. Experience over talent Contrary to popular opinion, personal performance does not usually equate to higher pay, and this is reflected in the results of this survey. It’s more like, the more experienced you are, the more you’re paid. But even that’s not the full story. If you’re new to the field, you still have to do some personal marketing, find and keep a mentor, and a whole bunch of stuff. Cassidy shares some nice insights on this in a video interview tracing her development career. You should check it out, especially if you’re just starting out. Notice that the average income for those with 10-14 of experience ($115,833) is on par with those with between 15-29 years of experience ($118,000) and not far from those with 30+ years ($120,401). Experience appears to influence income, but perhaps not to the extent you would think, or else we’d see a wider gap between those with 15 years versus those with more than double the service time. More than that, notice how income for the most experienced developers (30+ years) is larger on average but the range of how much they make is lower than than those with 10-29 years under their belts. I’m curious what causes that decline. Is it a lack of keeping up with what’s new? Is it ageism? I’m sure there are lots of explanations. Salary, workplace, and job hunting I prefer not drill into each and every report. I’m interested in very specific areas that are covered in the survey. And what I take away from the survey is bound to be different than your takeaways, despite numbers being what they are. So, here are a few highlights of what stood out to me personally as I combed through the results. Your experience, employment status, and company’s employer count seem to directly affect pay. For example, full-timers report higher salaries than freelancers. I suppose that makes sense, but I doubt it provides the full picture because freelancers freelance for a number of reasons, whether its flexible hours, having more choice to choose their projects, or having personal constraints that limit how much they can work. In some ways, freelancers are able to command higher pay while working less. Bad management and burnout seem to be the most talked-about issues in the workplace. Be on guard during interviews, look up reviews about the company you’re about to work for, and make sure there are far fewer complaints than accolades. Make sure you’re not being too worked up during work hours; breaks are essential for a boost in productivity. Seventy percent of folks reported no discrimination in the workplace, which means we’re perhaps doing something right. That said, it’s still disheartening that 30% experience some form of discrimination and lowering that figure is something we ought to aim for. I’m hoping companies — particularly the tech giants in our space — take note of this and enforce laws and policies surrounding this. Still, we can always call out discriminatory behavior and make corrections where necessary. And who’s to say that everyone who answered the survey felt safe sharing that sort of thing? Silence can be the enemy of progress. Never get too comfortable in your job. Although 69% report having never been laid off, I still think that job security is brittle in this space. Always learn, build, and if possible, try to look for other sources of income. Layoffs are still happening, and looking at the news, it’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future, with the U.S., Australia, and U.K. being leading the way. One number that jumped off the page for me is that it takes an average of four applications for most developers to find a new job. This bamboozles me. I’m looking for a full-time role (yes, I’m available!), and I regularly apply for more than four jobs in a given day. Perhaps I’m doing something wrong, but that’s also not consistent with those in my social and professional circles. I know and see plenty of people who are working hard to find work, and the number of jobs they apply for has to bring that number up. Four applications seems way low, though I don’t have the quantitative proof for it. Your personal network is still the best way to find a job. We will always and forever be social animals, and I think that’s why most survey participants say that coworker relationships are the greatest perk of a job. I find this to be true with my work here at CSS-Tricks. I get to collaborate with other like-minded CSS and front-end enthusiasts far and wide. I’ve developed close relationships with the editors and other writers, and that’s something I value more than any other benefits I could get somewhere else. Compensation is still a top workplace challenge. JavaScript is still the king of programming (bias alert), taking the top spot as the most popular programming language. I know you’re interested, that CSS came in at third. To my surprise, Bluesky is more popular amongst developers than X. I didn’t realize how much toxicity I’ve been exposed to at X until I opened a Bluesky account. I hate saying that the “engagement” is better, or some buzz-worthy thing like that, but I do experience more actual discussions over at Bluesky than I have for a long time at X. And many of you report the same. I hasten to say that Bluesky is a direct replacement for what X (let’s face it, Twitter) used to be, but it seems we at least have a better alternative. Health issues I’m looking closer at the survey’s results on health because of the sheer number of responses that report health issues. I struggle with issues, like back pains, and that forced me to upgrade my work environment with a proper desk and chair. I tend to code on my bed, and well, it worked. But perhaps it wasn’t the best thing for my physical health. I know we can fall into the stereotype of people who spend 8-12 hours staring at two big monitors, sitting in a plush gaming chair, while frantically typing away at a mechanical keyboard. You know, the Hackers stereotype. I know that isn’t an accurate portrayal of who we are, but it’s easy to become that because of how people look at and understand our work. And if you feel a great deal of pressure to keep up with that image, I think it’s worth getting into a more healthy mindset, one that gets more than a few hours of sleep, prioritizes exercise, maintains a balanced diet, and all those things we know are ultimately good for us. Even though 20% of folks say they have no health issues at all, a whopping 80% struggle with health issues ranging from sleep deprivation to keeping a healthy weight. You are important and deserve to feel healthy. Think about your health the way you think about the UI/UX of the websites you design and build. It makes up a part of the design, but has the crucial role of turning ordinary tasks into enjoyable experiences, which in turn, transforms into an overall beautiful experience for the user. Your health is the same. Those small parts often overlooked can and will affect the great machine that is your body. Here’s a small list of life improvements you can make right now. Closing thoughts Diversity, representation, experience, income, and health. That’s what stood out to me in the 2025 State of Devs survey results. I see positive trends in the numbers, but also a huge amount of opportunity to be better, particularly when it comes being more inclusive of women, providing ample chances for upward mobility based on experience, and how we treat ourselves. Please check out the results and see what stands out to you. What do you notice? Is there anything you are able to take away from the survey that you can use in your own work or life? I’d love to know! What I Took From the State of Dev 2025 Survey originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

by: Chris Coyier Tue, 15 Jul 2025 14:56:20 +0000 It’s such a small, simple thing, but I’m very grateful that we’re getting “Gap Decorations” in CSS. I took a look at it the other day. Oh hey, that link is a lightly edited video I did from a stream I did. I’m enjoying the whole streaming thing. I’d love it if you came along for the ride: Chris Coyier on Twitch CodePen on YouTube Part of what I like about it is that you don’t necessarily need to put grid items onto the grid to get the lines. Grid items on the grid might affect it, but it’s not required. That naturally leads on to think about styling grid areas without having to put HTML elements there to style. That’d be head, huh? The Chrome blog has the post on it for whatever reason (does Microsoft not have a good blog for this?). The demos are pretty compelling in that blog post, showcasing some of the more exotic syntax possible. Speaking of turning a stream into a nicer video and demo, I did the same thing for an idea I had about reordering list items with View Transitions. It started as a stream. I cleaned up the demo. I polished it a smidge into a video. I wrote it up as a blog post. Now I’m writing it up here in my column. I probably won’t give every little thing I do on a stream the full content round trip like this, but I thought the result was super fun and cool and I JUST WANTED TO OK. I’m also super envious of Bramus’ idea of If View Transitions and Scroll-Driven Animations having a baby, which is just an ultra-cool idea. He got some good mileage out of that idea, including a meetup talk. 💪 I’ve had Ryan Mulligan’s Scrolling Rails and Button Controls bookmarked for quite a while. He made a <scrolly-rail> web component that makes simple, nice horizontal scrolling elements. That includes scroll snapping, smooth scrolling, pagination controls, and more. The timing of it is a little funny, as all this CSS Carousels stuff dropped very shortly after his work. Not that Ryan’s work was in vain, as it’s more cross-browser friendly than stuff like ::scroll-button() and the fancy features necessary for CSS carousels are. But me, I’m so lazy into progressive enhancement, the last time I wanted to do a carousel, I went right for the fancy new stuff. That was for a template I was working on for our 2.0 Editor, which I streamed about, naturally.

by: Abhishek Prakash Tue, 15 Jul 2025 03:44:05 GMT I am using CachyOS on my primary system these days and pretty content with its performance. Since it is based on Arch Linux, I am using a few software installed from the Arch User Repository (AUR) with Yay AUR Helper. While updating, it showed me a few packages that required upgrades. I did not pay attention as there was nothing alarming and pressed the usual enter keys one after another. Only when it reached a certain stage that I realized that it was taking a lot longer to install these updates. I paid close attention at this stage and noticed an issue. It was trying to download GBs of data for Electron. More than 25GB of updates? That's not usual✅Since it was fetching electron version 32, getting the binary from AUR itself easily fixed the issue: yay -S electron32-bin But there is more to it that I would like to discuss.What's going on here?In simpler terms, Elecron is a JavScript framework that builds a graphical interface of an application on top of the Chromium web browser. From VS Code to Discord, tons of popular applications are built on Electron. When you run these applications, you are basically running a web browser underneath, and not everyone likes that. But it is easier to package an application, and the interface looks modern, and that's why it is popular. Anyways, it is the functioning of AUR that complicates the issue here. It tries to build all the dependencies of a package. It seems like at some point in the past, I just pressed enter keys without paying attention and somehow the AUR system thought that it needed to download a specific version of electron as a dependency. The next problematic thing is that since it tries to build the package from source, it tries to get the entire source code of the Chromium project, which is in GBs. What should you do in such case?🚧I am using electron32 in the example here. Your electron version might be different and thus, you MUST change the commands in the examples here to reflect the correct electron version.First check what goes on with the troubled electron version. Where was it installed from and which packages require it? pacman -Qi electron32It gave me two interesting details. Electron32 came from the 'Extra' (cachyos-extra) repository and it was not required by any packages, not even as an optional dependency. This was interesting and gave me the idea that perhaps it was of no use getting electron's other version using AUR. So, what I did was to exclude electron from the AUR update. I entered 4 here to exclude electron from the updateAnd as I had guessed, rest of the three packages were updated without any issues. I wonder why AUR wanted to get it in the first place. But your case might not be as smooth as mine and you may actually need to get the electron version it needs. But downloading 30GB of update is surely not the way forward. Instead of getting the entire source code and then building the binaries from it, you can directly install the binary itself. So, if it was complaining about elctron32 in my case, I would get the binary in this manner: yay -S electron32-binAnd as you can see in the image below, it only needed a package of around 100 MB. I did this for demonstration purpose and since I had an existing electron version from another source, it showed me a potential conflict and asked me to remove the existing electron version. Once that was done, it installed the electron32-bin package successfully. SummaryWhen you are in a situation where AUR is downloading GBs of electron/chromium source code, you should do this: See if you can exclude electron from the AUR update and the rest goes fine.Otherwise, install the binary of the required electron version instead of getting the source code.Hope this helps some of you awesome readers 😸

by: Daniel Schwarz Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:38:23 +0000 First, what is line length? Line length is the length of a container that holds a body of multi-line text. “Multi-line” is the key part here, because text becomes less readable if the beginning of a line of text is too far away from the end of the prior line of text. This causes users to reread lines by mistake, and generally get lost while reading. Luckily, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) gives us a pretty hard rule to follow: no more than 80 characters on a line (40 if the language is Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), which is super easy to implement using character (ch) units: width: 80ch; The width of 1ch is equal to the width of the number 0 in your chosen font, so the exact width depends on the font. Setting the optimal line length Just because you’re allowed up to 80 characters on a line, it doesn’t mean that you have to aim for that number. A study by the Baymard Institute revealed that a line length of 50-75 characters is the optimal length — this takes into consideration that smaller line lengths mean more lines and, therefore, more opportunities for users to make reading mistakes. That being said, we also have responsive design to think about, so setting a minimum width (e.g., min-width: 50ch) isn’t a good idea because you’re unlikely to fit 50 characters on a line with, for example, a screen/window size that is 320 pixels wide. So, there’s a bit of nuance involved, and the best way to handle that is by combining the clamp() and min() functions: clamp(): Set a fluid value that’s relative to a container using percentage, viewport, or container query units, but with minimum and maximum constraints. min(): Set the smallest value from a list of comma-separated values. Let’s start with min(). One of the arguments is 93.75vw. Assuming that the container extends across the whole viewport, this’d equal 300px when the viewport width is 320px (allowing for 20px of spacing to be distributed as you see fit) and 1350px when the viewport width is 1440px. However, for as long as the other argument (50ch) is the smallest of the two values, that’s the value that min() will resolve to. min(93.75vw, 50ch); Next is clamp(), which accepts three arguments in the following order: the minimum, preferred, and maximum values. This is how we’ll set the line length. For the minimum, you’d plug in your min() function, which sets the 50ch line length but only conditionally. For the maximum, I suggest 75ch, as mentioned before. The preferred value is totally up to you — this will be the width of your container when not hitting the minimum or maximum. width: clamp(min(93.75vw, 50ch), 70vw, 75ch); In addition, you can use min(), max(), and calc() in any of those arguments to add further nuance. If the container feels too narrow, then the font-size might be too large. If it feels too wide, then the font-size might be too small. Fit text to container (with JavaScript) You know that design trend where text is made to fit the width of a container? Typically, to utilize as much of the available space as possible? You’ll often see it applied to headings on marketing pages and blog posts. Well, Chris wrote about it back in 2018, rounding up several ways to achieve the effect with JavaScript or jQuery, unfortunately with limitations. However, the ending reveals that you can just use SVG as long as you know the viewBox values, and I actually have a trick for getting them. Although it still requires 3-5 lines of JavaScript, it’s the shortest method I’ve found. It also slides into HTML and CSS perfectly, particularly since the SVG inherits many CSS properties (including the color, thanks to fill: currentColor): CodePen Embed Fallback <h1 class="container"> <svg> <text>Fit text to container</text> </svg> </h1> h1.container { /* Container size */ width: 100%; /* Type styles (<text> will inherit most of them) */ font: 900 1em system-ui; color: hsl(43 74% 3%); text { /* We have to use fill: instead of color: here But we can use currentColor to inherit the color */ fill: currentColor; } } /* Select all SVGs */ const svg = document.querySelectorAll("svg"); /* Loop all SVGs */ svg.forEach(element => { /* Get bounding box of <text> element */ const bbox = element.querySelector("text").getBBox(); /* Apply bounding box values to SVG element as viewBox */ element.setAttribute("viewBox", [bbox.x, bbox.y, bbox.width, bbox.height].join(" ")); }); Fit text to container (pure CSS) If you’re hell-bent on a pure-CSS method, you are in luck. However, despite the insane things that we can do with CSS these days, Roman Komarov’s fit-to-width hack is a bit complicated (albeit rather impressive). Here’s the gist of it: The text is duplicated a couple of times (although hidden accessibly with aria-hidden and hidden literally with visibility: hidden) so that we can do math with the hidden ones, and then apply the result to the visible one. Using container queries/container query units, the math involves dividing the inline size of the text by the inline size of the container to get a scaling factor, which we then use on the visible text’s font-size to make it grow or shrink. To make the scaling factor unitless, we use the tan(atan2()) type-casting trick. Certain custom properties must be registered using the @property at-rule (otherwise they don’t work as intended). The final font-size value utilizes clamp() to set minimum and maximum font sizes, but these are optional. <span class="text-fit"> <span> <span class="text-fit"> <span><span>fit-to-width text</span></span> <span aria-hidden="true">fit-to-width text</span> </span> </span> <span aria-hidden="true">fit-to-width text</span> </span> .text-fit { display: flex; container-type: inline-size; --captured-length: initial; --support-sentinel: var(--captured-length, 9999px); & > [aria-hidden] { visibility: hidden; } & > :not([aria-hidden]) { flex-grow: 1; container-type: inline-size; --captured-length: 100cqi; --available-space: var(--captured-length); & > * { --support-sentinel: inherit; --captured-length: 100cqi; --ratio: tan( atan2( var(--available-space), var(--available-space) - var(--captured-length) ) ); --font-size: clamp( 1em, 1em * var(--ratio), var(--max-font-size, infinity * 1px) - var(--support-sentinel) ); inline-size: var(--available-space); &:not(.text-fit) { display: block; font-size: var(--font-size); @container (inline-size > 0) { white-space: nowrap; } } /* Necessary for variable fonts that use optical sizing */ &.text-fit { --captured-length2: var(--font-size); font-variation-settings: "opsz" tan(atan2(var(--captured-length2), 1px)); } } } } @property --captured-length { syntax: "<length>"; initial-value: 0px; inherits: true; } @property --captured-length2 { syntax: "<length>"; initial-value: 0px; inherits: true; } CodePen Embed Fallback Watch for new text-grow/text-shrink properties To make fitting text to a container possible in just one line of CSS, a number of solutions have been discussed. The favored solution seems to be two new text-grow and text-shrink properties. Personally, I don’t think we need two different properties. In fact, I prefer the simpler alternative, font-size: fit-width, but since text-grow and text-shrink are already on the table (Chrome intends to prototype and you can track it), let’s take a look at how they could work. The first thing that you need to know is that, as proposed, the text-grow and text-shrink properties can apply to multiple lines of wrapped text within a container, and that’s huge because we can’t do that with my JavaScript technique or Roman’s CSS technique (where each line needs to have its own container). Both have the same syntax, and you’ll need to use both if you want to allow both growing and shrinking: text-grow: <fit-target> <fit-method>? <length>?; text-shrink: <fit-target> <fit-method>? <length>?; <fit-target> per-line: For text-grow, lines of text shorter than the container will grow to fit it. For text-shrink, lines of text longer than the container will shrink to fit it. consistent: For text-grow, the shortest line will grow to fit the container while all other lines grow by the same scaling factor. For text-shrink, the longest line will shrink to fit the container while all other lines shrink by the same scaling factor. <fit-method> (optional) scale: Scale the glyphs instead of changing the font-size. scale-inline: Scale the glyphs instead of changing the font-size, but only horizontally. font-size: Grow or shrink the font size accordingly. (I don’t know what the default value would be, but I imagine this would be it.) letter-spacing: The letter spacing will grow/shrink instead of the font-size. <length> (optional): The maximum font size for text-grow or minimum font size for text-shrink. Again, I think I prefer the font-size: fit-width approach as this would grow and shrink all lines to fit the container in just one line of CSS. The above proposal does way more than I want it to, and there are already a number of roadblocks to overcome (many of which are accessibility-related). That’s just me, though, and I’d be curious to know your thoughts in the comments. Conclusion It’s easier to set line length with CSS now than it was a few years ago. Now we have character units, clamp() and min() (and max() and calc() if you wanted to throw those in too), and wacky things that we can do with SVGs and CSS to fit text to a container. It does look like text-grow and text-shrink (or an equivalent solution) are what we truly need though, at least in some scenarios. Until we get there, this is a good time to weigh-in, which you can do by adding your feedback, tests, and use-cases to the GitHub issue. Setting Line Length in CSS (and Fitting Text to a Container) originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

by: Geoff Graham Fri, 11 Jul 2025 17:07:13 +0000 Layout. It’s one of those easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master things, like they say about playing bass. Not because it’s innately difficult to, say, place two elements next to each other, but because there are many, many ways to tackle it. And layout is one area of CSS that seems to evolve more than others, as we’ve seen in the past 10-ish years with the Flexbox, CSS Grid, Subgrid, and now Masonry to name but a few. May as well toss in Container Queries while we’re at it. And reading flow. And… That’s a good way to start talking about a new online course that Ahmad Shadeed is planning to release called The Layout Maestro. I love that name, by the way. It captures exactly how I think about working with layouts: orchestrating how and where things are arranged on a page. Layouts are rarely static these days. They are expected to adapt to the user’s context, not totally unlike a song changing keys. Ahmad is the perfect maestro to lead a course on layout, as he does more than most when it comes to experimenting with layout features and demonstrating practical use cases, as you may have already seen in his thorough and wildly popular interactive guides on Container Queries, grid areas, box alignment, and positioning (just to name a few). The course is still in development, but you can get a leg up and sign up to be notified by email when it’s ready. That’s literally all of the information I have at this point, but I still feel compelled to share it and encourage you to sign up for updates because I know few people more qualified to wax on about CSS layout than Ahmad and am nothing but confident that it will be great, worth the time, and worth the investment. I’m also learning that I have a really hard time typing “maestro” correctly. 🤓 The Layout Maestro Course originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.