Codepen Radio

I got to talk to Varun! Varun is an incredible artist and would have been interesting to talk with him about literally anything, but since he's dipped numerous toes into the world of NFTs, I wanted to chat with him about that in conjunction with his own art and other artists he's a fan of. Time Jumps Sponsor: Linode Visit linode.com/codepen and see why over a million developers trust Linode for the infrastructure.  From their award-winning support (offered 24/7/365 to every level of user) to ease of use and set up; it’s clear why developers have been trusting Linode for projects both big and small since 2003.   Linode offers the industry’s best price-to-performance value for all compute instances, including shared, dedicated, high memory, and GPUs. Linode makes cloud computing simple, affordable, and accessible allowing you to focus on your customers, not your infrastructure.  Visit linode.com/codepen, create a free account and you’ll get $100 in credit.

This week I got a chance to talk to Kyle Shook. Kyle has started a new job at Foxtrot so we talked about what that process was like. In addition to creating all sorts of incredibly creative work on CodePen (just look at this Collection of Menus), Kyle helps other people level up their front-end skills too, with sites like Frontend Practice. Time Jumps Sponsor: Notion Notion is an amazing collaborative tool that not only helps organize your companies information, but helps with project management as well. We know that all to well here at CodePen, as we use Notion for countless business tasks. Learn more and get started for free at notion.com/codepen. Take your first step toward an organized, happier team, today.

This week I got to speak with Chris Nager! I've known Chris quite a while. I remember being inspired by his hand-drawn SVG plus symbol and subsequent guide to <path> commands, which inspired my own shortly after I was properly obsessed with SVG. We talk about all sorts of things like accessibility, how far CSS has come, and some of the amazing stuff that has shipped recently in Safari Technical Preview. Check out Chris' Twitter, personal site, and classic great project Give 'n' Go, a CodePen/Dribbble crossover website. Time Jumps

If you Command (Mac) or Control (PC) click the Fork button, it will open the newly forked Pen in a new tab in your browser. That's new behavior. Before, it would open the fork in the same tab, no matter how you click. That was unfortunate, as Cassie called out: Why didn't it work like this before? Well, that's what Shaw and I get into in this podcast. It's a smidge complicated. The root of it is that that Fork button isn't a hyperlink. It's a button handled by JavaScript because of the nature of how it works (a fork might have data that only the client knows about: unsaved code changes). But Shaw found a way to make it work anyway, by essentially passing the metaKey information through all the forking process until that moment we had an opportunity to open that new tab. Time Jumps Sponsor: Notion Notion is an incredible organizational tool. Individuals can get a ton out of it, but I find the most benefit in making it a home base for teams. It can replace so many separate tools (documents, mee

I got to talk to Sarah Fossheim this week! One of the impressive things that Sarah does is near photograph-quality recreations of iconic old technology in HTML & CSS. I enjoyed the fact that neither of us quite totally knows what some of these machines even did, but appreciate their incredible aesthetics. Perhaps my favorite part of the conversation was emphasizing that this work, while almost being a relaxing hobby in the vein of knitting, still levels up one's CSS ability. Sarah got me thinking that it's not just CSS, but perhaps equally or more importantly HTML ability, the ability to break down sections into components and think about how smaller parts become a whole, just like any other website work. Time Jumps Sponsor: Retool Custom dashboards, admin panels, CRUD apps—build any internal tool faster in Retool. Visually design apps that interface with any database or API. Switch to code nearly anywhere to customize how your apps look and work. With Retool, you ship more apps and move your

I had tons of fun talking to Tiffany Choong this week! I loved learning her process on creating countless code art Pokémon characters. Just look at it and wing it! Wild. While I'm not nearly as creative as Tiffany, I feel some kinship looking through her Pens. Like how there are all these amazingly creative ones that clearly took tons of effort, that don't have nearly the hearts they deserve (c'mon dino loader!), and then relatively simple practical Pens (like a menu) that go nuts with popularity and it's hard to know why. Time Jumps

I got to chat with CJ Gammon this week! CJ is a creative technologist, a term he's tried to hang onto as he does more development work, so he can continue to communicate that he's a designer as well. CJ has been at Adobe for nearly 10 years and has played with a huge variety of interesting creative technologies. Time Jumps

This week I get to talk to Ryan Mulligan! Ryan put together a Collection of some of his personal picks for favorite Pens and we get a chance to talk through a lot of them. There are some classic moments here I really feel, like when something you consider pretty basic gets way more popular than you ever thought it would. Ryan has a knack for feeling out really cool new technologies and then quickly using them to build great demos that play up what those technologies were born to do. Time Jumps Sponsor: Automattic Automattic are the makers of WordPress.com, the fastest and easiest place to spin up a WordPress site, without sacrificing the power of self-hosted options. If you sell stuff on WordPress.com, the built-in help to do that is powered by WooCommerce, the premier eCommerce solution for WordPress. It's the same WooCommerce whether you are on WordPress.com or not. If you are self-hosted, you can almost certainly take advantage of Jetpack, Automattic's WordPress plugin that adds enormous functi

I got to talk with Amit Sheen this week about his journey into creative coding. Even his early work is incredibly interesting and recent work is downright stunning. Now he's entering a phase of sharing what he knows with workshops like Pushing CSS to the Limit. Here's a list of Pens we talk about in the podcast (mostly): Bubbling - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/BxQqxzTurning pages - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/WNweryvBouncing off the walls - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/abBgWvJHouse of CSS cards - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/QWGjRKRFlipBoxes - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/YzQoMxRRadioPoles - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/RwZwGVQ3D Wobbly Disco - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/LYLQQpW4D4D SimplexNoise - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/XWgVKxOTyping effect - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/YzZYoMVText morphing - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/xxqYzvmcsStickman - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/abLPdoQThe Lonely Claw - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/yLzWVYoNewton's

I grabbed Adam intending to chat about all sorts of CSS stuff and his work at Google and on VisBug. But then we chatted pretty much the entire time about color and what's coming there to the web platform. Time Jumps Sponsor: WordPress.com WordPress.com is the fastest way to spin up a WordPress site. You'll be able to build any sort of site around it to power your business or hobby. How do you make the most of it? Subscribe to their brand spankin' new YouTube channel to learn more about using your site and what fellow customers are doing with theirs.

We've got Steve Gardner on this week! We get into all sorts of nitty gritty detail on the ol' Christmas Cannon, a Pen of pure joy. Steve has some absolute classics that show off the web at it's very best, like the Airplanes Pen. Can't beat Steve's cleverness and execution. Time Jumps Sponsor: Netlify Quirrel Joins Netlify and now we have Scheduled Functions (in Beta)! Wanna run your cloud functions on a time-based schedule? Now you can without even leaving your repo.

Louis Hoebregts (aka Mamboleoo) has been creating wonderfully creative Pens on CodePen for many years. His early work, as we learn on this episode, was inspired by the CSS trickery of Lea Verou! He rotates his tools between HTML and CSS, SVG, and canvas, but tends to have an aspect of motion and the unexpected. Some of the most popular Pens have an aspect of education to them as well. Here's a list of Louis' Pens he chose to talk about, covering some of his history here, each of which is symbolic of a personal era and often unlocking new professional doors: https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/ynzCu (March 2014)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/dzyBu (Aug 2014)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/ByxPvG (Feb 2015)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/pvQQde (March 2015)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/dowRJo (Aug 2015)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/xGeELo (Aug 2015)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/PZWPZx (Jan 2016)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/oxaXdj (April 2016)https://codepen.io/Mamboleoo/pen/Bppdda (Jan 2017)htt

Aysenur Turk had a number of appearances on this year's Top Hearted of 2021, including #1! In this podcast, I get to catch up with her, find out where she gets ideas and inspiration, how much time it takes to build something like her amazing layouts, and what her favorites are. Time Jumps Sponsor: Retool Custom dashboards, admin panels, CRUD apps—build any internal tool faster in Retool. Visually design apps that interface with any database or API. Switch to code nearly anywhere to customize how your apps look and work. With Retool, you ship more apps and move your business forward—all in less time. Thousands of teams at companies like Amazon, DoorDash, Peloton, and Brex collaborate around custom-built Retool apps to solve internal workflows. To learn more, visit retool.com.

As you read this, CodePen is 100% on PostgreSQL for our main relational database. It was a transition that took a couple weeks of pretty intense effort, and lots of planning and prep before that. I've got Alex on the show to talk about it, as he was the main instigator and led the effort, but everyone contributed in some way. Wondering why? Well... We were on a pretty old version of MySQL (5.6), and upgrading to something more modern (like 8) would have required just as much effort, so we thought we'd move on to something we saw more value in.We're undertaking big new efforts that require a bunch of data specific work. It'll be more work to change after that, so it felt like a now or never situation. PostgreSQL means consolidating of technology, which is big for our small team. We've done some of this, and it opens the door for more. For example, we can stop using Elasticsearch as a totally separate database for search and lean on PostgreSQL. The same goes for an analytics-focused database, job queuing

It's back! We counted up all the hearts given to every Pen created in 2021 and created a list of the top 100. Marie and Chris chat about this year's list. Who's on it, what's on it, and digging into the numbers where we can. Remember that people can heart pens up to 3 times each, so if it looks like a Pen lower down the list has more hearts than one higher up the list, it's because of the density of hearts. The number you see on the card only reflects the number of people that have hearted not the true number of hearts. Lots of folks hitting multiple times. George Francis hit 6(!) times (7, 28, 59, 75, 80, 82), an impressive feat for a member who only joined in late 2020. Four people with four placements: Aysenur Turk (3, 11, 14... and &#x1f941; 1), Yoav Kadosh (17, 33, 72, 95), Dilum Sanjaya (22, 24, 64, 65), and Aybüke Ceylan (38, 46, 63, 91), and a couple of 2-position people. Woot! "Full page" layouts were quite a trend on the Top 100 this year. That is, Pens that look like complete website

Olivia Ng has done loads of wonderful work here on CodePen and off (check out her super cool travel bucket list site) She got started just out of pure desire to build things. "I just really like the internet" she told me. Hear hear! Her eye for design takes all her work to the next level. She had a particular focus on grid for a while there, and used those interesting designs to teach it. Also find her on Twitter and on her personal website. Time Jumps Sponsor: Jetpack There are lots of reasons to look at Jetpack for your self-hosted WordPress site. One of which is the powerful search upgrade you get just by flipping a switch. Say you run a lot of WordPress sites, perhaps for clients as an agency would, now Jetpack offers a Licesning Dashboard for managing all the Jetpack subscriptions so that becomes a lot easier.

Jhey Tompkins is one of the most prolific CodePen creators out there! Find him as @jh3y on CodePen and @jh3yy on Twitter. His creations tend to have a twist of whimsey while being beautifully designed as well as pushing the platform in unique ways. You'll always be surprised at a Jhey Pen! I talk with him about the creative process, problem-solving, and sharing what you learn. Time Jumps Sponsor: Notion For companies of all sizes, Notion provides one central and customizable workspace that can be tailored to fit any team and bring all teams together to get more done and move faster. Notion is an all-in-one team collaboration tool that combines note-taking, document sharing, wikis, project management, and much more into one space that’s simple, powerful, and beautifully designed. Find out how Notion may be the missing piece your team needs to grow, get more done, and delight everyone who uses it in the process.

Rachel and Chris dig into the many, many ways in which we use Notion at CodePen. Heads up, Notion has sponsored a couple of episodes of CodePen Radio lately, but not this. It's just a tool we heavily use and this podcast is all about that sort of thing. Heck, this podcast itself was planned in a calendar database on Notion, which deals with dates, publication status, sponsors, and all sorts of stuff. And it's probably one of the least involved Notion setups we have. Much more involved is stuff like project planning and our individual structures for our company-public weeknotes. Time Jumps Sponsor: Jetpack Backups The big news from Jetpack is that all backups are realtime now. Realtime backups are awesome. Anything that happens on your site, it's backed up immediately. That makes backups extremely useful as there is no risk you have to miss three-quarters of a day of content, purchase, comments or anything else because all you have is daily backups.

You might recognize Ben Evans from his absolutely incredible CSS "paintings", like the portrait of his daughter or the still life. Paintings aren't the quite word as Ben designs them all to be entirely scalable. And sometimes they have interactivity, like the slight parallax in the Vaccum from Space. Like so many other great artists, Ben's skills aren't isolated to CSS trickery, his portfolio reveals artist exploration across nearly every creative outlet there is, including moss, and as I learned in our conversation, even music. Time Jumps Sponsor: Notion For companies of all sizes, Notion provides one central and customizable workspace that can be tailored to fit any team, and bring all teams together to get more done and move faster. Notion is an all-in-one team collaboration tool that combines note-taking, document sharing, wikis, project management and much more into one space that’s simple, powerful, and beautifully-designed. Find out how Notion may be the missing piece your team needs to gro

This week I talk with Gabrielle Wee, who's done loads of creative coding work here on CodePen but like so many other creative people we talk to, her creativity explodes into so many other areas like illustration, photography, drawing, and even gardening. Plus a desire to share those techniques. Her path has led her to be working at Apple, a dream job. Gabrielle on Dribbble and Twitter. Some advice from Gabrielle: doing work that she was personally interested in, rather than pandering to any recent trend, was much more fun and led to more clear success. Also: be curious and inspect element. Time Jumps Sponsor: Jetpack Jetpack has some good news. All backups are now in realtime, whatever plan you are on or buy. If you already have daily backups on your plan, email them them to get on the new system. The blog post has details. Real time backups are amazing, because you can back up to very specific moments in time (say, right before a certain post was edited) rather than the more broad sword of h