SPAs were a clever solution to a temporary limitation. But that limitation no longer exists.
Use modern server rendering. Use actual pages. Animate with CSS. Preload with intent. Ship less JavaScript.
Hannah runs through the details of making a grid-aware website:
The design adjusts between “low”, “moderate”, and “high” based on the quantity of fossil fuels on your local energy grid.
I like this idea, but I really think it needs to be on by default, rather than being opt-in.
And I’m really intrigued by the idea of a grid-aware browser!
This is a really thoughtful look at the evolution of CSS and the ever-present need to balance power with learnability.
Grrr…
Chrome, Edge and Firefox updates usually reach 95% of users within three months. But Safari updates are tied to a new release of the underlying operating system, so they take around 19 months to reach the same usage, and some updates may even need a new device.
This is so shameful. And glad as I am to see new features landing in Safari, as long as they hobble updates like this it’s all just pissing in the wind.
An excellent appraisal of the importance of the rule of least power.
The joy came flooding back to me! It turns out browser APIs are really good now.
It seems like the misguided perception of needing to use complex tools and frameworks to build a website comes from a thinking that web browsers are inherently limited. When, in fact, browsers have evolved to a tremendous degree
Nice to see Clearleft’s browser support policy get a shoutout from Rachel during her Google IO talk.
Why single-page apps are just not worth it:
Here’s the problem: your team almost certainly doesn’t have what it takes to out-engineer the browser. The browser will continuously improve the experience of plain HTML, at no cost to you, using a rendering engine that is orders of magnitude more efficient than JavaScript.
Meanwhile, the browser marches on, improving the UX of every website that uses basic HTML semantics. For instance: browsers often don’t repaint full pages anymore.
A great talk by Matthias on what you can do with web standards today!
This is an interesting proposal for a declarative way of triggering permission dialogs, although it seems to overlap with the work being done on invokers (command and commandfor).
What really disgusts me is to see Google referring to this element as though it’s a done deal. It’s not. It’s a proposal …a proposal that Apple rejects and Mozilla rejects.
Words matter. Call your proposal a proposal, Google.
Update: They fixed it!
I should be using the lh and rlh units more enough—they’re supported across the board!
Everything you ever wanted to know about text-wrap: pretty in CSS.
- Basic functionality should work on any device that can access the web.
- Extras and flourishes are treated as progressive enhancements for modern devices.
- The UI can look different and even clunky on older devices and browsers, as long as it doesn’t break rule #1.
I really like the idea of unifying some layout values in CSS. If you’ve got any feedback, please chip in!
And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).
I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.
I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.
This describes how I like to work too.
Rich suggests another reason why the UX of websites on mobile is so shit these days:
The path to installing a native app is well trodden. We search the App Store (or ironically follow a link from a website), hit ‘Get’ and the app is downloaded to our phone’s home screen, ready to use any time with a simple tap.
A PWA can also live on your home screen, nicely indistinguishable from a native app. But the journey to getting a PWA – or indeed any web app – onto your home screen remains convoluted to say the least. This is the lack of equivalence I’m driving at. I wonder if the mobile web experience would suck as badly if web apps could be installed just as easily as native apps?
A handy one-pager for front-end web developers:
Here are ways to keep track of what you can use, of what’s new in web browsers, and ways you can influence the development of the platform by making your voice heard.
Working on this project is great but ten minutes into it and I already miss the resilience of the web. I miss how you have to really fuck things up to make a browser yell at you or implode.