Link archive: December 5th, 2018

While we Blink, we lose the Web

Losing [browser] engines is like losing languages. People may wish that everyone spoke the same language, they may claim it leads to easier understanding, but what people fail to consider is that this leads to losing all the culture and way of thought that that language produced. If you are a Web developer smiling and happy that Microsoft might be adopting Chrome, and this will make your work easier because it will be one less browser to test, don’t be! You’re trading convenience for diversity.

Risking a Homogeneous Web - TimKadlec.com

When’s the last time you can remember that a framework was given preferential treatment like AMP has been given? You could argue that it’s a format, like RSS, but no one has ever tried to convince developers to build their entire site in RSS.

I’m with Tim on his nervousness about Google’s ever-increasing power in the world of web standards.

Monocultures don’t benefit anyone.

Why You Should Never, Ever Use Quora – Waxy.org

Never mind their recent data breach—the reason to avoid Quora is that it’s a data roach motel.

All of Quora’s efforts to lock up its community’s contributions make it incredibly difficult to preserve when that they go away, which they someday will. If you choose to contribute to Quora, they’re actively fighting to limit future access to your own work.

Going Offline First (Video Series)

A five-part video series from Ire on how she built the “save for offline” functionality on her site.

The first one is about getting a set set up on Ghost so you can probably safely skip that one and go straight to the second video to get down to the nitty-gritty of the Cache API and service workers.