Juan Diego Rodríguez — Smashing Magazine

Web Development Is Getting Too Complex, And It May Be Our Fault

Front-end development seemed simpler in the early 2000s, didn’t it? The standard website consisted mostly of static pages made of HTML and CSS seasoned with a pinch of JavaScript and jQuery. I mean, who doesn’t miss the cross-browser compatibility days, right?

Chris Coyier — CSS-Tricks

The Great Divide

Let’s say there is a divide happening in front-end development. I feel it, but it’s not just in my bones. Based on an awful lot of written developer sentiment, interviews Dave Rupert and I have done on ShopTalk, and in-person discussion, it’s, as they say… a thing.

Nolan Lawson — Read the Tea Leaves

My talk on CSS runtime performance

My main goal was to shine a light on all the heroic work that browser vendors have done over the years to make CSS so performant. Much of this stuff is intricate and arcane (like Bloom filters), but I hoped that with some simple diagrams and animations, I could bring this work to life.

Nikita Prokopov — Tonsky.me

JavaScript Bloat in 2024

I was a bit out of touch with modern front-end development. I also remembered articles about web bloat, how the average web page size was approaching several megabytes!

So all this time I was living under impression that, for example, if the average web page size is 3 MB, then JavaScript bundle should be around 1 MB. Surely content should still take the majority, no?

Kaylee Douglas — KFOR

Oklahoma Politics: Representative wants to ban ‘furries’ from Oklahoma schools

A newly filed bill would ban students in Oklahoma from pretending to be an animal during the school day.

Erin Christy — 2 News Oklahoma

Okla. lawmaker backpedals on bills’ controversial language one day after filing

Humphrey admitted the furries bill was more designed to make people aware of furries, rather than it being a problem in schools.

Another non-existent problem based on hearsay taking up time in the state’s political system instead of the real pressing issues getting the attention they deserve.

This state seems to enjoy making a fool of itself on a national scale.

We’ve been fooled into accepting mediocrity.

Parking Reform Network

Parking Lot Map

The Parking Reform Network educates the public about the impact of parking policy on climate change, equity, housing, and traffic. In partnership with allied organizations, we accelerate the adoption of critical parking reforms through research, coalition-building, and direct advocacy.

Witold Rybczynski — The American Scholar

Give Us Something to Look At

Take away ornament, and what are you left with? When we get close to a building today, we are confronted by gaskets, caulking, nuts and bolts—the minutiae of building construction. Or worse: exit signs, ventilation grills, and fire-hose cabinets. There is an architectural consequence to this.

So where does that leave us?

Mirza Akdeniz — Vimeo

Roger Scruton — Why Beauty Matters (2009)

Philosopher Roger Scruton presents a provocative essay on the importance of beauty in the arts and in our lives.

Alex Russell — Infrequently Noted

The Market for Lemons

For most of the past decade, I have spent a considerable fraction of my professional life consulting with teams building on the web. It is not going well.

Alex Russell — Infrequently Noted

The Performance Inequality Gap, 2023

To serve users at the 75th percentile (P75) of devices and networks, we can now afford ~150KiB of HTML/CSS/fonts and ~300-350KiB of JavaScript (gzipped). This is a slight improvement on last year’s budgets, thanks to device and network improvements. Meanwhile, sites continue to send more script than is reasonable for 80+% of the world’s users, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. This is an ethical crisis for frontend.

Kilian Valkhof — HTMLHell

You don’t need JavaScript for that

Because HTML and CSS features are handled by the browser they can be more performant, more native, more adaptable to user preferences and in general, more accessible. That doesn’t mean it will always be (especially when it comes to accessibility) but when the browser does the heavy lifting for you, your end users will generally have a better experience.

It’s totally a disaster right now, but don’t worry; there’s hope we’ll get it right this time!

I liked the aesthetic of the advertisement for the iPhone 12 Pro that Apple did years ago. I wanted to remake it in HTML as much as I could, so I used this project to build a list of links to my social network profiles.

📷 Continue reading “My new old camera”

I liked the aesthetic of the advertisement for the iPhone 12 Pro that Apple did years ago. I wanted to remake it in HTML as much as I could, so I used this project to build a list of links to my social network profiles.

📱 Continue reading “My fun side project”

I didn’t want to remain ignorant, but learning even the smallest new piece of information seems to carry a huge cost to a vast array of elements in my life. Could I find a way to feel comfort in understanding more?

📖 Continue reading “Knowledge shouldn’t be a burden”

From my youth I have worked to lessen my consideration of my own value, thinking it a virtue to self-deprecate. I thought I was being a better person by hating myself. Eventually, I wondered if my self-perception could be incorrect. Could I be poisoning my life with such a crushing view of my value?

🫥 Continue reading “Being invisible”

I used to play a lot of video games. These days I settle for some games from my Apple Arcade subscription, but I used to have many mobile consoles, several home consoles, and a gaming PC. I played many titles across a variety of platforms, filling out a list of memorable games that left a permanent impact on my life. In a recent conversation with my coworkers I started listing my favorite games and learned that the games that I have felt the most important in my life were ones that generated a feeling of hopelessness. I certainly enjoy a variety of gaming genres and story types, but the ones I can recall with fondness are the ones that made me feel the most miserable.

🕹️ Continue reading “Hopelessness in video games”