Zell Liew is a front-end developer, writer, and creator known for deep, practical explorations of CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, and modern web tooling. His work blends thoughtful technical guidance with personal reflections on life, work, and growth, and is frequently featured on CSS-Tricks and Splendid Labz.
340 articles from this blog
A comparison of Bash, Zsh, and Fish shells, highlighting their features, ease of use, and the author's personal recommendation.
A guide to disabling Windows' automatic screen brightness and adaptive contrast features, which often cause distracting changes.
Guide to emulate Mac's Dvorak-Qwerty-⌘ hybrid keyboard layout on Windows, including key remapping for Mac-like shortcuts.
A developer shares a post-mortem analysis of a free workshop they created to help fellow developers build their personal brand and improve job security.
A step-by-step tutorial on building a CRUD application using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB, demonstrated with a Star Wars quotes example.
A guide to setting up a Windows machine for web development, covering WSL, Chocolatey, and Git configuration for developers switching from Mac.
A guide for web developers on improving design skills, including recommended books and courses to create better portfolio pieces and communicate with designers.
Explores the technical differences between using element.focus and aria-activedescendant for managing focus in accessible JavaScript components.
A developer shares their personal journey overcoming fear and anxiety around web accessibility, discussing the pressure to be 'correct' and how they changed their mindset.
Third part of a series on designing a JavaScript course portal, focusing on the Account page for password changes and a Components page for lesson organization.
The author details the design process for a JavaScript course portal, focusing on the content and login pages for better usability.
A step-by-step guide to installing and configuring MongoDB on macOS, including specific instructions for Catalina and newer versions.
The author details the design process for the Learn JavaScript course portal, focusing on typography, layout, and heading structure for optimal learning.
A guide to programmatically finding keyboard-focusable elements for accessible JavaScript widgets, including a reusable function.
A tutorial on creating multi-line gradient text links with CSS, covering browser compatibility and styling underlines.
A tutorial on using Mongoose's Population feature to link MongoDB collections, preventing document size limits by separating blog posts and comments.
A tutorial on using Mongoose subdocuments (embedded documents) in MongoDB, covering schema creation and document manipulation.
A beginner's guide to using Mongoose, a library that simplifies working with MongoDB in Node.js, covering connection and schema creation.
Advice for coding bootcamp students struggling with JavaScript, discussing whether to stay or quit and offering encouragement.
A guide to using Homebrew, the package manager for macOS, covering installation, updating, and managing packages like Node.js.
