January 2021

Slots allow you to write very powerful, expressive components. In this article we'll cover six of those patterns, so that you can take your slot skills to the next level.

June 2020

We all want to write less code, but get more done. To make this happen, we build our components so they can be reused more than just once.

January 2020

If React is so much more popular than Vue, wouldn't it be better to just stick with that? There are 3 specific things here I'd like to cover: 1. Growth of the framework itself (innovation) 2. Career opportunities 3. Ease of learning/getting better

November 2019

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Computed properties are the most important feature in Vue. Sure, scoped slots let you create some nice abstractions and watchers are useful too. But I don't think anything comes close to how valuable computed props are.

January 2021

Slots allow you to write very powerful, expressive components. In this article we'll cover six of those patterns, so that you can take your slot skills to the next level.

October 2020

It's a bold statement to make. But really, it's what we're all after, isn't it? To increase our impact, to make more change, to achieve more and get more done with less.

October 2020

Inversion uses scoped slots heavily, so in this lesson we'll be diving into scoped slots to understand how they work, but at a deeper level. You'll see how thinking about slots as functions can make it much easier to see what's really going on.

October 2020

Slots are better than props, but why is that the case? This video covers the inherent limitations of props, why slots are better, and why sometimes you want to actually avoid reusability.

September 2020

Configuration is all about using props to allow for variations in how a component works (you're likely doing some form of this already)

August 2020

Being able to pass data around your application is extremely important. It seems that child to child data sharing is where most of the confusion and frustration lay.

August 2020

There are different kinds of props that we use in Vue, each with their own unique characteristics. In this article I'm going to explore what template props are, why they're useful, and what we can do with them.

August 2020

One of my favourite things about them is how they let you reuse logic between components — but in a very unique way.

July 2020

You know how to pass data into a slot by using scoped slots, but how do you communicate back?

July 2020

While there are certain fundamental principles of software development that are extremely valuable to understand, most "best practices" are just (useless) opinions that can be safely ignored.

June 2020

We all want to write less code, but get more done. To make this happen, we build our components so they can be reused more than just once.

June 2020

Being able to use the keyboard with your application is necessary for accessibility. In this video series I show how to add keyboard support by managing the focus of the app.

May 2020

I recently discovered that you can destructure in a v-for. It turns out not many of you knew this either, as this ended up being one of my most popular tweets:

May 2020

Underneath it all, components are just functions that return some HTML. It's a huge simplification, and if you've ever looked at the complexity of the Vue codebase you know this isn't actually true. But, fundamentally, this is what Vue is doing for us — plus a million other amazing things.

May 2020

There are times where you'll have to force Vue to re-render a component. Although these edge cases where Vue doesn't automatically update are rare, it's useful to know how to fix this issue when it comes up.

May 2020

Control flow directives, like `v-if` and `v-for`, can create lots of nested code that's difficult to read. I've picked up this trick that makes it simple to transform these nightmares into fairy tales.

May 2020

One of the most confusing attributes in Vue is `key`. It's not a directive like `v-for`. It's not a prop, even though it looks exactly like one. It has nothing to do with slots, lifecycle hooks, computed props or watchers.

April 2020

We often think about the relationships between our components as a tree. The DOM is also represented this way, with parents and children and siblings and ancestors. I've noticed that many other problems can be transformed to look like trees, too.

April 2020

Watchers can be an incredibly powerful tool. But once you know when to use them, you still have to figure out how. So I thought I'd show you an example from a project I've been working on.

April 2020

What if you wanted to manage state, but you didn't want to use Vuex? Don't get me wrong, Vuex is a great tool. But it's not ideal for every use case.

March 2020

How do you open up a package from Amazon? Do you start by jabbing your finger in the side to create a hole, and then tear open from there? Maybe you throw it against the wall until the box disintegrates, leaving behind your prize.

March 2020

I have a problem. I drink waaaay too much tea. But that's not the real issue. Not really. After I'm finished steeping my tea to perfection, I forget to clean things up. Dirty mugs, tea stained spoons, and tea pots with tea leaves still in them.

March 2020

There are a few instances where you want to be able to override the internal state of a component and force it open from the parent. The controlled props pattern is designed for exactly this situation.

March 2020

Watchers are an often misunderstood feature in Vue. Some developers use them all the time. Some never use them. And how exactly are they different from computed props and methods?

February 2020

Understanding how to use Vuex is great and all. But I want to dig deeper than that. You see, there are some fundamental principles for how state works. In any frontend framework.

February 2020

Writing maintainable code is hard. It's hard to learn, and even harder to teach. Mostly, it's won through hard work and experience. But there are a few guidelines I've learned over the years that can get you there quicker.

January 2020

If React is so much more popular than Vue, wouldn't it be better to just stick with that? There are 3 specific things here I'd like to cover: 1. Growth of the framework itself (innovation) 2. Career opportunities 3. Ease of learning/getting better

November 2019

In Vue we have some directives that help us to control what gets rendered to the page, v-for and v-if. We call these things control flow because they control the flow of how code is executed. In Vue, they control the flow of what gets rendered to the page.

November 2019

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Computed properties are the most important feature in Vue. Sure, scoped slots let you create some nice abstractions and watchers are useful too. But I don't think anything comes close to how valuable computed props are.

November 2019

Just because the interface repeats, it doesn't mean your code needs to be repetitive as well. This is exactly why we invented computers — to do the tedious, boring things for us!

November 2019

Computed properties in Vue should never have side effects. But it's really easy to accidentally add them in. A side effect is the modification of state, whether it's component state or global state.

October 2019

In this short article we'll cover how to redirect to internal and external pages, if you're using Vue Router and if you're just using plain Vue.

October 2019

Vue comes with it's own unique levels of scope, in addition to what Javascript has already. Scope controls what variables can be used and where. Understanding the differences between the levels of scope that Vue gives you will help you to write clearer code.

September 2019

You've probably learned that provide and inject allow you to do dependency injection. But they have nothing to do with it, and I'll show you why.

August 2019

Learning is a topic I've been focused on for nearly a decade now, and in this article I'm going to share my thoughts on the subject and how I go about learning in my own life.

August 2019

I recently figured out how to implement nested slots recursively, including how to do this with scoped slots.

July 2019

By the time you're finished reading this guide, you'll know everything you need to know about props in order to be a super productive Vue developer.

July 2019

Is there a way to populate a parent's slot from a child component? It's a thorny Vue architecture problem, but also a very interesting one.

June 2019

I spend quite a bit of time scouring the web for great content on Vue. Over time I've found myself going to back to a few places over and over again. Many of these you've probably heard of, but hopefully you'll find a few gems in this list.

June 2019

It's sort of cool to add a class to a component. But the real fun begins when you can conditionally bind classes — turning them on and off as you wish.

June 2019

If you want to loop over a range in your Vue template, it's not too complicated. The v-for directive in Vue let's us loop over an array. But it also let's us loop over a range.

May 2019

I felt like a freaking genius. My code had transcended bits and bytes. Now it was truly a work of art, worthy of awards and accolades... or so I thought.

May 2019

You've gotten this terrible error, Unknown custom element <CustomComponent> - did you register the component correctly? Don't worry, I'll show you exactly how to fix this.

May 2019

Every now and then you'll need to programmatically focus on an input (or other element). This is often needed for accessibility, or to make the app more convenient to use.

April 2019

Getting your component interface right is _the most_ important thing. And you can't leave it for later. You have to get it right from the very start. But why is this so important?

March 2019

Are you using prop types to their full potential? I know I'm not. It's a part of Vue that's just glossed over. So I collected these 5 tips on getting the most out of prop types.

January 2019

There are lots of you that write blogs, and maybe you've been thinking about switching to a Vue-based platform. Maybe you haven't even gotten started yet. This is the first article in a series documenting my progress and my thoughts as I rebuild my blog in Vue.

January 2019

When writing Vue applications, we waste our time by doing things the wrong way, when we could have been doing it the right way from the start. That's why I put together this list of 26 articles that will help you save time, by teaching you how to avoid some common time-wasters.

December 2018

Being able to add a dynamic class name to your component is really powerful. Adding a dynamic class name is as simple as adding the prop ':class' to your component. Of course, there is a lot more we can do here with dynamic classes in Vue.

November 2018

It's a confusing error: Avoid mutating a prop directly since the value will be overwritten whenever the parent component re-renders. I'll show you a simple pattern you can use to fix this error - and never see it again.

November 2018

While you can pass a function as a prop, this is almost always a bad idea. Instead, there is probably a feature of Vue that is designed exactly to solve your problem. If you keep reading you'll see what I mean.

November 2018

You'll want to use the 'mounted' lifecycle hook so that you can run code as soon as your component is mounted to the DOM. From this lifecycle hook you can fetch data, manipulate the DOM, or do anything else you might need in order to initialize your component.

November 2018

In CSS it's pretty easy to change things on 'hover'. In Vue it gets a little trickier. In this short article you'll learn -- How to implement a hover effect in Vue, how to show an element on mouseover, and how to dynamically update classes with a mouseover.

November 2018

Chances are if you've been developing with Vue for any amount of time, you've gotten this error: Property or method prop is not defined. Most of the time this error is because you misspelled a variable name somewhere. But there are other causes as well.

October 2018

Computed properties and watchers are two of the most fundamental concepts in Vue. In this article you'll learn: what a watcher is and what a computed prop is, common use cases for both, the differences and similarities between them, and how to know which one to use.

October 2018

You have an array or an object as a prop, and you want your app to do something whenever that data changes. So you create a watcher for that property, but Vue doesn't seem to fire the watcher when the nested data changes. Here's how you solve this

October 2018

Vue comes with two different ways of storing variables, props and data. These can be confusing at first, since they seem like they do similar things, and it's not clear when to use one vs the other. So what's the difference between props and data?

October 2018

Which is better, React or Vue? We need to look at the numbers to see not what people think, but what people are doing. The metrics we'll be looking at are Hacker News popularity, NPM downloads, Github stars, Google Trends, and Reddit subscribers.

September 2018

I've been spending the last several weeks experimenting with the different things that we can do with renderless components. I've been pushing the limits pretty far, going past the edges of what Vue is intended to do. Along the way I've discovered a few neat things that I'd like to share with you!

September 2018

You get an error that says: 'this is undefined'. Don't worry, you're not alone -- I've run into this issue countless times, and I'll show you just how to solve it.

September 2018

Sometimes Vue's reactivity system isn't enough, and you just need to re-render a component. Or maybe you just want to blow away the current DOM and start over. So how do you get Vue to re-render a component the right way?