CSS Shapes: What are They?
So what exactly are CSS Shapes? Well, it’s probably easiest to understand what they are by contrasting them with what they are not. So let's look at some examples.
Recent Posts
CSS Shapes: Introduction
When designing for print, the sky is the limit. We can really push the envelope especially when it comes to layout. We can wrap content around any shape we’d like. But on the web, everything is contained within rectangles. We’ve been pretty creative while building in this boxy world but what if we could break free and build designs more similar to those found in editorial design?
Create a Slide-in/Slide-out Animation
When you build things in Angular, you’ll probably end up wanting or needing to add animations and transitions to parts of your UI. One very common one is a “slide-in” or “slide-out” animation where an item transitions from a hidden to a visible state. And since this is something that you’re likely going to need at some point, I figured that I’d show you how to create one. So that’s what we’re going to do in this post.
Feeling the Effects With the Angular effect() Function
Signals are a pretty big deal in Angular now a days. I’ve created several videos on them recently because there’s a lot to consider when using them. As you use them more over time, you’ll probably run into scenarios where you need to execute code when signal values change. Now, one way to do this is to use computed signals which is something I’ve covered in the past, but there is a possibility that even this won’t work for your situation. We’ll if this is the case, there is another possibility. You can use the effect function.
Create a Signal From Another Signal
Signals are now a core concept in the Angular framework. When you build components, directives, and services, you’re going to want use them going forward. And as you do, at some point you’ll likely ask yourself the question: how can I create a signal based on the values from another signal? Well, in this post, I’m going to show you how, and it won’t take very long either!
3 Ways to add Dynamic CSS Custom Properties in Angular
Sometimes you may need to programmatically set the value for a CSS custom property while building components in Angular. I occasionally run into situations where I need to use a custom property based on a dynamic value. Like a bar chart for example, where the items in the chart are based on data from an api. Well in this example, we’re going to look at three different ways to set custom properties programmatically. We’ll use basic style binding, then we’ll use the Renederer2 setStyle() method, and after that, we’ll use host element binding.
Template variables in Angular using the new @let syntax
In Angular, we can now create variables for reuse right within our component templates. Now that might seem odd but it’s actually pretty cool. If you’re like me, you may have a hard time understanding the benefits at first. So, in this example, I’ll show you how to create these template variables, and then I’ll show you several different possible use cases and benefits to help you better understand why you may want to use them in your projects.
Create a Custom Loading Screen in Your Angular App
If you’ve built apps in angular in the past, I’m sure you’ve experienced the blank screen while you wait for the app to be bootstrapped. In smaller applications, it’s not as noticeable but in larger, more complex applications, we may need to wait for a little bit before we see the actual content loaded. And staring at a blank screen while we wait is not ideal. Well, we can upgrade this experience by adding our own custom loading screen and it’s pretty easy to do too. In this example that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
Host Decorators Are Dead… Use Host Element Binding Instead
In the newest versions of Angular, the @HostBinding and @HostListener decorators are no longer intended for use. As the new documentation states, they “exist exclusively for backwards compatibility”. There’s a new, more streamlined way to do this type of thing, and if you’ve worked with Angular in the past, it may look familiar to you. It’s kind of an old concept made new again. In this video we’ll look at a couple of examples I created for past videos about these decorators, and we’ll replace them with the newer methods. Also, we’ll update a few other concepts in these components and directives along the way too. Ok, let’s start with a @HostBinding example.
Angular CDK: Auto-Resizing Textareas!
By default, an HTML textarea control doesn’t expand or contract as content is added and removed. Sometimes this is ok, but often it would be better if we did have some control where we could allow the height to resize automatically, to better fit the content. Well, this is possible and, in fact, it’s really easy to do in Angular when using the CDK. In this example I’ll show you just how easy it is. Alright, let’s get to it!
Angular CDK: The Accordion Module
An accordion component is a component that has one or more expandable sections within it. It’s pretty common to have the need for this type of thing when building apps in Angular. And, it’s not the most difficult thing to do even if you’re creating your own from scratch but the CDK makes it really simple. In this example I’ll show you just how easy it is. And after we create the accordion using the CDK, we’ll even make it accessible with some ARIA. Alright, let’s get to it!
Angular Animations: Router Transitions
If you’ve ever worked with an Angular application that has routing, you may have wanted to add transitions as you navigate between routes. It just makes the app feel more elegant overall. Well, if you didn’t know, this is totally doable with the Animation module and in this example, I’ll show you just how easy it is. Alright, let’s get to it.
Router Link Accessibility Features
Making apps that are accessible for everyone can be a challenge for many developers. If we don’t have any real issues using devices or seeing what’s on the display, it can be easy for us to overlook simple things that are really important for those of us who don’t have this luxury. So, we need to continually learn how we can be better at this and how we can leverage the tools we already have to help. In this example, I’ll show you how we can easily make an existing breadcrumb list component more accessible for everyone, with a few directives from the Angular Router Module. Alright, let’s get to it.
Angular CDK: Copy to Clipboard
When we build things with Angular, we often find ourselves needing to do stuff that we see on the web or in other applications every day. Like copying text to the clipboard for example. Something like that could take a little work to pull off if we were creating it from scratch. But one of the benefits of working with a framework like angular is that many of these common application concepts have already been figured out for us and made available by either the framework itself or, in this case the Component Dev Kit (a.k.a., CDK). So, in this example we’ll see just how easy this task is thanks to the CDK. Alright, let’s get to it.
Using @HostBinding with Signals
If you’re building apps with Angular, you’re probably using signals more and more every day. This can definitely be a challenge at times because it’s such a different way of working. And, there are things that just don’t quite work with signals yet, like @HostBinding for example. Well in this post, I’m going to demonstrate how we can actually use the @HostBinding decorator with signals, pretty easily right now even though the decorator was not originally built to support them directly. Alright, let’s get to it.
Angular Animations: Disable/Enable Animations
I’m willing to bet, that if you’ve spent very much time working with Angular animations, you’ve had the need or desire to disable them for one reason or another. Something that I encounter quite a bit are animations that run on component initialization. I may only expect them to run when an interaction occurs, or when data changes, or something along those lines. I don’t expect them to run on initialization, but they do anyway. Well, this is something that I’m going to show you how to fix in this post. Alright, let’s get to it.
Angular Animations: Creating Reusable Animations!
As an Angular application grows over time, you probably find that you constantly need to refactor things so that shared concepts, logic, behavior, etcetera can be reused. You build things, then later down the road, you build something that needs to do something similar and now you want to breakout that concept so that it can be shared right? Well, animations in Angular are the same. Once you start building and using them, you probably find that you need to use them in multiple components. Well, in this post I’ll show you how to do this. Alright, let’s get to it.
Angular Animations: Adding Flexibility with Params!
When working with Angular animations, have you ever found yourself needing to provide custom configurations to a specific animation? Like, what if you have something that uses a next button and you want to animate to the right in that case, but then you also have a previous button, in which case you want to animate to the left instead? Well, if you didn’t know this already, this is totally doable with Angular animation options and the params object specifically. And in this post, I’ll show you exactly how to set them up, and use them. Alright, let’s get to it.
Adding Native Fallback Content for Slots in Angular Components
When building Angular components, have you ever found yourself looking for a way to provide fallback content for projected content slots using the ng-content element? If so, you’ve probably been able to find some work arounds to do it but, they’re probably not something you really want to do. It would be better if this concept was built-in to the framework, right? Well, this is actually happening in the latest versions of angular. In this post I’ll show you exactly how it works. Alright, let’s get to it.
Signal Queries: Angular viewChild() and contentChild() Functions
If you work in Angular and haven’t heard yet, many things are in the process of switching away from decorators over to signals. I’ve already shown you how component or directive inputs have changed over from the @Input decorator to signals with the input() function. In this post we’ll take a look at how we can convert the @ViewChild and @ContentChild decorators over to signals with the viewChild() and contentChild() functions. We’ll take an example application that I previously created for a demo about the @ViewChild and @ContentChild decorators, and we’ll switch them over to the new signal functions producing the same end result. Ok, let’s get to it!