Our Latest Insights
Thoughts from our team on current events, new techniques and tools, trends we're seeing, and our culture.
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Terminal Charts with Victory CLI
August 29, 2016The ability to collect, analyze, triangulate and visualize vast amounts of data in real time is something the human race has never had before. After pushing out webpack-dashboard and seeing how much people enjoy terminal based tooling, I thought perhaps I should see what else I can...Make Dope Beats with ReactJS
August 22, 2016Before I was a software engineer, I was a music producer. Specifically, I made beats for rap songs. Then file sharing put a dent in the music industry, and it became much harder to do as a career. But hey, I had programming to fall back on! I still made music as a hobby over the years...Introducing Webpack Dashboard
August 15, 2016As a child, I always wanted to be a hacker. I remember the first time my father showed me how to dir /p. I thought I was hacking the planet. Then I grew up, and I realized the reality of it was a bit different. I still use the CLI all the time, but it’s far less glamorous...Announcing Victory 0.10.2 and VictoryNative
August 5, 2016It’s been a while since the release of Victory 0.9.0 back in June, so we’re excited to add several new features and bug fixes in order to continue making the creation of D3 charts in React as painless as possible. This post will explore some of the highlights of the new...Let the URL do the Talking, Part 3: Empower the URL with Redux Little Router
July 25, 2016In parts one and two of this series, we found that, even with the help of integration libraries, we could not liberate URL state from the clutches of React Router. History explains the problem: before Redux, React libraries decided for themselves how much state they controlled...Let the URL do the Talking, Part 2: Bargaining and Acceptance with Redux and React Router
July 19, 2016In part one of this series, I explored the pains of integrating React Router into purely-functional Redux applications. There, I discovered that not only does React Router dictate an architectural coupling between your state and view layers, but also renders a set of powerful URL-driven...Let the URL do the Talking, Part 1: The Pain of React Router in Redux
July 11, 2016“Just use React Router!” This is how most conversations about routing end in the React/Redux ecosystem. There’s no doubt that React Router is the standard-bearer for SPA routing in the React world, and there’s more to its success than its early arrival on the scene or its SEO...Radium Grid: A React Grid System Injected with the Power of Radium
June 20, 2016After spending my formative frontend years implementing layouts with the CSS grid systems from both Bootstrap and Foundation, I developed a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both. Later, grid systems like Jeet solved many of the pain points of the old grids: no more fixed-column...Why we chose MobX over Redux for Spectacle Editor
June 2, 2016For Spectacle Editor, our current collaboration with Plot.ly, we decided to use MobX to handle application state instead of Redux. Redux is an amazing framework, and here at Formidable we continue to use it on new and existing client projects with great results. In part, the decision to use MobX was...Announcing Spectacle Editor, a Work In Progress
May 24, 2016Spectacle Editor is a collaboration between Plotly and Formidable. The end result will be the first open source presentation tool with deep Plotly integration. Building on top of everyone’s favorite React slide show framework, Spectacle, we’re inviting the community to witness and participate in...Being Formidable
March 21, 2016Inside Formidable, we encourage collaboration and bold, well-researched ideas. Some ideas stick with you longer than others, and continue to inform you work, either directly or indirectly. Here are some that keep the creative fire burning for members of our team. The idea that creating things...React Inline Styles and the Future of CSS
February 29, 2016Writing and maintaining CSS for large applications (and large teams) can be challenging. Teams often have trouble with brittle selectors, naming collisions, specificity, and pile-ups of dead code. After seeing these issues first-hand on large projects, we built Radium: a JavaScript library for...Victory.js
February 15, 2016I’m not a designer. I’m a JavaScript developer. When I write CSS it takes me longer than it should, and often ends with someone more talented indulgently explaining how I could have avoided making such a mess of things. So, while I can literally do the thing, I can't claim to have design...Unit Testing React Native with Mocha and Enzyme
February 8, 2016Working in React Native has been an amazing experience. Coming from React, the workflow has been nearly frictionless. There has, however, been one question lingering: How the hell am I going to test this? Specifically, what is the best way to unit test my component logic? Testing JavaScript that...
