Writing inline demos

There are some issues with Demo embedding, like the embeds not working offline. They also come with their own branding, which will clash with the pattern you’re trying to illustrate.

Cupper offers another option: a special demo shortcode that allows you to write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript directly into the markdown file. The outputted demo is encapsulated using Shadow DOM, so you don’t have to worry about broken styles and global JS.

Here’s the example code for an inline demo of a toggle button:

{{<demo>}}
<button aria-pressed="false">Toggle Me</button>
<style>
button {
    background: DarkCyan;
    color: white;
    border: 0;
    font-size: 1.5rem;
    padding: 0.5em 1em;
    border-right: 5px solid #000;
    border-bottom: 5px solid #000;
}

[aria-pressed="true"] {
  border: 0;
  border-top: 5px solid #000;
  border-left: 5px solid #000;
}
</style>
<script>
var toggle = demo.querySelector('[aria-pressed]');

toggle.addEventListener('click', (e) => {  
  let pressed = e.target.getAttribute('aria-pressed') === 'true';
  e.target.setAttribute('aria-pressed', !pressed);
});
</script>
{{</demo>}}

Note the demo.querySelector on line 21. Cupper automatically provides demo, representing the root node of the demo. It’s like the document keyword but for a demo’s subtree.

Here’s a live demo of the demo:

Styling the container

Sometimes your component will be expected to appear in a context where the parent element has a background color and possibly other styles. You can add style to your demo block’s container element using the style attribute. It works just like standard inline styling.

{{<demo style="background-color: pink; padding: 1rem;">}}
<!-- demo code here -->
{{</demo>}}

“Launch”

The “Launch” button takes the demo code and pushes it to a new browser tab. This serves two purposes:

• It provides a fallback for browsers that do not support Shadow DOM encapsulation (a warning message will replace the inline demo).
• It creates an isolated test case for the demo, allowing you to run browser extensions and bookmarklets on the the demo code and just the demo code.

Captioned demos

It’s possible to give your demo a caption using an accessible <figure> and <figcaption> structure. All you need to do is supply a caption attribute. For example:

{{<demo caption="A basic button element">}}
<!-- demo code here -->
{{</demo>}}

Along with the standard figure shortcodes (described in Including images), demo figures are numbered automatically according to their order in the page. You can use markdown syntax in the caption text value.