Christian Heilmann

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Archive for February, 2025

Building a “shoutout” component in plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript

Wednesday, February 26th, 2025

Every Wednesday I host WeAreDevelopers Live on YouTube. Afterwards we cut out short videos to post on social media. What we needed was an obvious “shoutout moment” in the recording to indicate an interesting quote or when we moved on to the next topic – much like a clapper in classic movies to sync audio and video. To this end, I wrote some functionality to show a “cool” and “next” overlay that will make it easier in post production to find the interesting spots. Here’s what that looks like:

The shoutout component in action

You can try the functionality out yourself by checking this codepen, focusing on the browser part and pressing either the `[` or `]` key.
You can also watch the following video to get this article as a step-by-step explanation:

And there is a detailed explanation of the code on the WeAreDevelopers Magazine.

I just love how easy these things are nowadays in HTML, CSS and plain JavaScript.

How to trim a video in MacOS using Finder!

Thursday, February 20th, 2025

Context menus are a treasure trove of features you miss otherwise. Did you know for example that you can trim videos in MacOS Finder?

All you need to do is open the context menu on any video file, go to “Quick Actions” and select “Trim”:

MacOS finder with a selected video file and the context menu open and the Quick Actions selected and Trim available.

You then get a trimming interface that allows to drag the start, end and move the selection around.

A video with the trimming interface visible

You can then choose to save the video as a copy or replace the original one. If the video is an MP4 there is no re-encoding and the saving is immediately done.

Interface to select to save the video as a copy or replace the current one.

If you are already previewing the video by pressing space, you can also get to the trim interface using the button.

Trim button in the preview