How to Make Websites That Will Require Lots of Your Time and Energy - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- Install Stuff Indiscriminately From npm
- Pick a Framework Before You Know You Need One
- Always, Always Require a Compilation Step
The quiet, pervasive devaluation of frontend - Josh Collinsworth blog
It’s like CSS exists in some bizarre quantum state; somehow both too complex to use, yet too simple to take seriously, all at once.
In many ways, CSS has greater impact than any other language on a user’s experience, which often directly influences success. Why, then, is its role so belittled?
Writing CSS seems to be regarded much like taking notes in a meeting, complete with the implicit sexism and devaluation of the note taker’s importance in the room.
Related links
CSS Intelligence: Speculating On The Future Of A Smarter Language — Smashing Magazine
This is a really thoughtful look at the evolution of CSS and the ever-present need to balance power with learnability.
JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) - Jono Alderson
Semantic HTML? Optional. Server-side rendering? Rebuilt from scratch. Accessibility? Maybe, if there’s time. Performance? Who cares, when you can save costs by putting loading burdens onto the user’s device, instead of your server?
So gradually, the web became something you had to compile before you could publish. Not because users needed it. But because developers wanted it to feel modern.
Everything’s optimised for developers – and hostile to everyone else.
This isn’t accidental. It’s cultural. We’ve created an industry where complexity is celebrated. Where cleverness is rewarded. Where engineering sophistication is valued more than clarity, usability, or commercial effectiveness.
Why Silicon Valley CTOs Are Secretly Moving Away from React | by Coders Stop | in JavaScript in Plain English - Freedium
“We’ve stripped React out of our highest-traffic user flows and replaced it with vanilla JavaScript using small, focused libraries for specific needs,” said the CTO of a streaming service. “Our page load times dropped by 60% and our conversion rates improved by 14%.”
Matthias Ott – Painting With the Web – beyond tellerrand Düsseldorf 20025 - YouTube
A great talk by Matthias on what you can do with web standards today!
Related posts
Command and control
HTML’s new `command` attribute on the `button` element could be a game-changer.
Progressively enhancing maps
How I switched to high-resolution maps on The Session without degrading performance.
Making the website for Research By The Sea
Having fun with view transitions and scroll-driven animations.
Train coding
Generating a static copy of The Session from the comfort of European trains.
CSS Day 2024
A genuinely inspiring event.