This week I got to speak with Alex Trost ! Alex has been hard at work created Frontend Horse , a clever brand celebrating the beautiful and clever things in our industry via a newsletter, articles, streaming, a Discord community and more. This is the way to do it! Time Jumps Sponsor: Notion Notion is an amazing collaborative tool that not only helps organize your company's information but helps with project management as well. We know that all too well here at CodePen, as we use Notion for count...
Jun 01, 20220
This week I got to speak with Chris Smith ! We got to talk about all sorts of things from blogging, to pushing the boundaries of CSS, to logic in CSS, to digging into some of Chris' most interesting Pens, to Chris' actual favorite Pen of all time. Time Jumps Sponsor: React Summit Ken Wheeler, Tejas Kumar, Sara Vieira, Tanner Linsley – these are just a few of the names coming to this year’s React Summit , the biggest React conference worldwide. Discover the future of the React and meet thousands ...
May 25, 20220
I got to talk with Lea Rosema this week! She's an incredibly talented digital artist and front-end developer. She does quite a bit of art with some of the trickiest web technology out there: shaders! But rather than just learn it and use it, she helps other people learn and get more out of it. Several times that has taken the shape of Web Components. For example, a <shader-art> Web Component that takes some of the boilerplate work out of designing with them. See this Collection of examples...
May 18, 20220
I got to talk with Micah Godbolt this week! Micah is is a long-hauler at Microsoft working on Design Systems and such. His CodePen account looks a lot like mine: steady consistent usage of "just trying to figure something out" Pens sprinkled with some ideas that somehow seem to click with the wider front-end world. I found it fascinating that putting the word "Design Systems" into his book title "Front-end Architecture for Design Systems" was suggested by the publisher, and they were right! Turn...
May 11, 20220
I got to talk to Paulina Hetman this week! Paulina is a heck of a creative coder, using her skills as an illustrator and all-around web developer to make ideas come to life. And she doesn't keep all those ideas to herself, she spends time educating other budding developers both professionally and by building courses and things like her incredibly clever quizzes (as Pens!). Time Jumps Sponsor: Notion Notion is an amazing collaborative tool that not only helps organize your company's information b...
May 05, 20220
Klare is moving on from design at CodePen to design at GitHub. Huge congrats Klare! If you didn't know Klare was our one and only dedicated designer here at CodePen and left a massive mark here in the design and UX of CodePen, the app, as well as internally in our organization practices. I'm talking with Klare here just a few days before her last day to reflect on her years here. Time Jumps
Apr 27, 20220
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 eas...
Apr 20, 20220
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 managem...
Apr 13, 20220
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 ...
Apr 06, 20220
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...
Mar 31, 20220
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 thi...
Mar 23, 20220
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 popular...
Mar 16, 20220
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
Mar 09, 2022•34 min
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 ...
Mar 02, 2022•35 min
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/BxQqxz Turning pages - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/WNweryv Bouncing off the walls - https://codepen.io/amit_sheen/pen/abBgWvJ...
Feb 23, 20220
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 you...
Feb 16, 20220
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....
Feb 09, 20220
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 symbol...
Feb 02, 20220
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 ...
Jan 26, 20220
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 though...
Jan 20, 20220
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 ...
Jan 12, 20220
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 reaso...
Jan 05, 20220
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 b...
Dec 29, 20210
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 l...
Dec 22, 20210
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 lea...
Dec 15, 20210
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 r...
Dec 08, 20210
Today I get the pleasure of talking with Aaron Iker . Aaron builds incredibly delightful bits and bobs of UI that give you the feeling of hey, I bet I could actually use this! And that's exactly what Aaron wants you to do. He takes care to make sure the code is easy for you to use if you wish. This idea of taking somewhat practical-looking UI elements, like buttons, loaders, toggles, etc, and then making them do something unexpected and fun is a perfect fit for popularity on CodePen. Last year ,...
Dec 01, 20210
We've been naming all our services cp____ lately. Get it? cp is short for CodePen. Clever, I know. We have many such services. The latest to join them is cpshots. We've been doing our own screenshotting for a long time now, but like all software we're always working on it for various everchanging reasons. Robert and I discuss this last round of changes to this service. Part of the purpose of this round is that we wanted to bring image resizing in-house to keep costs down. We need screenshots in ...
Nov 24, 20210
Chris and Shaw talk about how CodePen uses Cloudflare Works with the KV storage to power several things on CodePen. We do some cool stuff with them, like serve landing pages with the content provided by WordPress yet served on an entirely different Ruby on Rails powered site. We also serve up assets through them which provides lots of nice features both for us and for users indirectly and directly, like resizing and optimization. Sponsor: Jetpack Thanks to Jetpack for sponsoring CodePen Radio! J...
Nov 17, 20210
Marie and Chris talk about CodePen Challenges , which have been going strong for many years now. The gist is that you pop in and make something along a theme. The "challenge" is doing the work (they aren't meant to be tricky otherwise). We've seen people seriously level up their skills by participating, but of course, there is no obligation, and no prizes other than the satisfaction of a job well done. One interesting twist is that Chris used to do a lot of the challenges while Marie was running...
Nov 11, 20210
