John Polacek

Chicago Web Developer

Engineering manager and frontend lead at Howl

My product recommendations at shop.howl.me

Shipping open source on Github

Follow me at @johnpolacek

Introducing Hot Sauce

Hot Sauce, the fresh hot recipe for building better web apps

Introduction Hot Sauce, the fresh hot recipe for building better web apps with Remix, Tailwind UI, Firebase, Stripe, Netlify, Sendgrid, and more

I Bought a Giant Cast Iron Skillet

Giant Cast Iron Skillet as big as a stovetop

I'm new to cooking with cast iron, but excited to try. I bought a giant cast-iron skillet and cooked with it over the open flame several times over the summer.

TweenPages

GreenSock plus Next.js

My new project TweenPages brings the power of the Greensock Animation Platform to deliver complex, performant animations to Next.js page transitions. This was a fun problem to solve and even more fun demo to build.

Next.js Project Starters

Next.js Project Starters

As a big fan of Next.js, I have created some starters to quickly get new projects up and running with the “React Framework for Production”. I’ve made a little home for them at nextjs-project-starters.vercel.app

Building a Cool Front End Thing Generator

Animated Gradient Background Generator Website

On a side project that I've been working on awhile back, I added an animated gradient background. It turned out pretty cool, so I was inspired to create an Animated Gradient Background Generator and then decided to take it a step further...

Happy Bolivian Independence Day

Flag of Bolivia

This past Friday was Bolivian Independence Day. Some of the developers I’m fortunate enough to work with are from Bolivia. They all had the day off and at our standup the day before I asked if there was a dish I could prepare to celebrate them here with my family in Chicagoland.