The Collective #909: WebGL powered photo editor, TypeScript library bundler and accessibility essentials
Your weekly digest of dev & design links
Codrops Publication
April 29, 2025
Olá, frontend friends! 👋
Apologies for the delay in sending out the Collective – we were affected by a blackout in Portugal that left us without internet access yesterday!
Here’s a fresh roundup of the latest frontend news, links, and resources to inspire and inform you. Whether you're looking for new ideas or just something interesting, we hope you'll discover something exciting in this edition!
Happy exploring! 💙
P.S. We've been hosting Codrops with Liquid Web for almost a decade now—super reliable and solid support. Highly recommended.
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GSAP's Site of the Week is Noomo ValenTime, a stunning interactive experience built with WebGPU, Blender, Houdini, and Nuxt.js, featuring ScrollTrigger, ScrollSmoother and DrawSVG.
web-trends
🎥 tsdown
A TypeScript library bundler built on Rolldown and Oxc, designed to generate declaration files quickly and support popular plugin ecosystems with minimal configuration.
typescript
⚙️ Magnitude
An open-source, AI-native testing framework that uses visual agents and natural language to create adaptive, end-to-end tests for web apps with minimal setup and high reliability.
ai
Julie Zhuo examines how AI’s ability to replicate artistic styles challenges traditional notions of quality, arguing that true excellence still lies in original narrative, craftsmanship, and emotional depth.
ai / article / creativity
A WebGL-based online photo editor with filters, effects, and cropping. Source here.
photography / tool / webgl
🔧 Sim
An open-source platform to build, deploy, and self-host agentic LLM workflows easily via Docker or dev containers.
ai
Jen Simmons explains new CSS line-height units for better typography control in web design.
article / css / typography
Mihael Miklosic made a fun little Perlin noise graphics tool with p5.js—customizable, creative, and a joy to play with.
generative-art / tool
Martijn Hols shares foundational accessibility practices every front-end dev should follow—covering semantic HTML, forms, keyboard nav, modals, alt text & more.
accessibility / css / tutorial
Ricky Hanlon introduces <ViewTransition> and <Activity>, new experimental React features for smooth UI transitions and stateful hidden components.
react / tutorial / view-transitions
A deep dive into advanced TypeScript features like generics, indexed access, and mapped types—applied to real-world modeling.
tutorial / typescript
Local, open-source AI CLI that converts natural language to shell commands using models like phi-4-mini. No API key needed.
ai / terminal
🌀 CSS Hell
CSS Hell is a delightfully cursed set of 15 torturous CSS layout puzzles designed to challenge your styling skills and punish your past CSS sins — all in good fun.
css / interactive-games
Thorsten Ball shows how to build a functioning, code-editing AI agent with just a loop, an LLM, and a few tools — in under 400 lines of Go.
ai / tutorial
Dan Abramov explains how to create "impossible components" that span backend and frontend logic by splitting React components into server and client parts.
react / tutorial
Michelle Barker shares a script for converting nested JS theme objects into CSS variables, eliminating the need to maintain styles in two places.
css / javascript / productivity / tutorial
Step into Aurel’s Grand Theater—a portfolio like no other. Solve mysteries, smash props, and uncover hidden gems about Aurelien Vigne’s creative world.
3d / blender / cannonjs / immersive-experience / portfolio / three-js
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