A HTML5 aria-expanded toggle button

A lot is possible with web standards without using frameworks or libraries. Support in browsers has become very good, compared to a couple of years ago. With the introduction of the document.querySelector, CSS selectors can be used with JavaScript in almost all browsers, including IE8. In the past you would have needed a library like…

Only load JS/CSS for Contact Form 7 when needed

Contact Form 7 is a popular plugin for WordPress to add forms to a site. The plugin is free, and a lot of add-ons are also available. To add a form to a page you will have to use a shortcode. A problem with shortcodes is, that one does not know when a shortcode is…

Creating a smoother CSS zoom effect

A zoom effect can be created with the transform and transition CSS properties. I have been using this on a project and was not entirely happy with the result. For the project I created a grid with articles that become larger if you move the mouse over the article. The article contains an image and…

Creating screenshots for WordPress themes

Every WordPress theme should have a screenshot, even if it is a child theme. In the backend this will be shown to WordPress administrators in the list of available themes. A good screenshot makes the theme easily recognisable, especially if you have a couple of themes installed. And it is nice if you can visually…

Is detecting mobile devices with JavaScript all bad?

A tweet about using JavaScript to detect a mobile device from Niels Leenheer (a.k.a. Mr. html5test) got me thinking. Because he says you should never use JavaScript to distinguish between mobile and desktop/laptop. A good reason to ignore this distinction is: What does “mobile” even mean? A cell phone? A tablet? A watch? Any device…