Dave has this classic idea for a Web Components Sommelier. Like many of Dave’s ideas, it’s equal parts joke and brilliance. The idea is a person with deep knowledge of an absolute ton of different Web Components who can suggest ones that do just the right thing in any situation. Like a wine sommelier who can suggest the perfect wine to pair with a meal and meet the diner’s tastes.

Need to compare two images? Of course, ma’am, here you go. Need pinch-and-zoom support on any element? Right away, here you go. Need to render some Markdown? As you wish, here you are.

I think of the sommelier thing every time I see a new cool web component, especially if it’s got that “stand-alone” quality where you can just link it up and use it immediately. Here’s an example! spoilerjs. All you do is:

import 'spoilerjs/spoiler-span';Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Then you can use the web component to wrap whatever, which hides it with these cool particles.

<spoiler-span>
  It's a sled.
</spoiler-span>Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Click it, and the particles disperse, revealing the spoiler.

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I’ve seen TWO games that:

1. Involve horses.
2. Use the .horse TLD

I dunno, just seems notable.

The game at enclose.horse has you building walls to enclose areas that yield the most area/points. The “game” at gradient.horse has you drawing your own horse (and horse parts) that then goes to join a parade of other rather happy horses.

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I’m honestly not sure if liquid glass is still interesting or not (I suspect interest has waned), but I do quite like this generator thingy: Aether CSS. I like it because there are lots of options for the final look. Sometimes it’s frosted, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes there is a lot of distortion; sometimes, a little. Sometimes the light hits harder than in other examples. There is no right or wrong (until you can’t read the text, then it’s wrong).

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The Web Audio API remains extremely cool. But sometimes you just need a little audio file of a neat little sound. jsfxr is kinda both.

Jsfxr is an online 8 bit sound maker and sfx generator. All you need to make retro sound effects with jsfxr is a web browser. It’s a JavaScript port of the original sfxr by DrPetter. You can also use it as a JavaScript library for playing and rendering sfxr sound effects in your games.

You adjust all these levers to make small sounds, then can output the sound to use without any API or library usage. The random button is very fun.

Weird aside: remember when we used to have the term adaptive, as an alternative to responsive? As best I can remember, it meant a site that had @media query breakpoints that changed layout, but the layouts were rather fixed after that, as opposed to the fluid grids of responsive design. The jsfxr site is adaptive.