Link tags: frontend

Can I include a tag to a tag? Based on HTML Spec WHATWG

A neat little tool when you need a reminder about what elements can go in other elements.

What do I need to read to be a great at CSS? – Baldur Bjarnason

I like this approach to reading widely and staying up to date enough.

The Button Cheat Sheet

Do you need a button for your next project but you’re not sure about the right markup? Don’t worry, The Button Cheat Sheet™️ has got you covered.

Spoiler alert: it’s the button element.

HTML with Superpowers - daverupert.com

A great talk from Dave on web components:

I think if you were using Web Components before 2020 you were an early adopter and you probably have some scars to show for it. But in 2021, now that all modern browsers support Web Components, I think they’re worth investigating. They have one superpower that no other JavaScript framework offers called the Shadow DOM which is both powerful but frustrating. But another superpower — the power I’m most excited about — is that you can use them standalone without any frameworks, build tools, or package managers.

The talk makes a callback to my talk Building from a few years back. I like that. It feels like a long thoughtful converstation.

Software developers have stopped caring about reliability

My web browser has been perfectly competent at submitting HTML forms for the past 28 years, but for some stupid reason some asshole developer decided to reimplement all of the form semantics in JavaScript, and now I can’t pay my electricity bill without opening up the dev tools. Imagine what it’s like to not know how to do that. Imagine if you were blind.

Folks, this is not okay. Our industry is characterized by institutional recklessness and a callous lack of empathy for our users.

Getting Started with PWAs [Workshop]

The slides from Aaron’s workshop at today’s PWA Summit. I really like the idea of checking navigator.connection.downlink and navigator.connection.saveData inside a service worker to serve different or fewer assets!

Have Single-Page Apps Ruined the Web? | Transitional Apps with Rich Harris, NYTimes - YouTube

This is a terrific and nuanced talk that packs a lot into less than twenty minutes.

I heartily concur with Rich’s assessment that most websites aren’t apps or documents but something in between. It’s a continuum. And I really like Rich’s proposed approach: transitional web apps.

(The secret sauce in transitional web apps is progressive enhancement.)

Build a Better Mobile Input

This is such a handy tool for building forms! Choose different combinations of type, inputmode, and autocomplete attributes on input elements and see how that will be conveyed to users on iOS and Android devices.

A History of Design Systems on the Web - The History of the Web

It’s great to see former Clearlefties like Nat, Paul and Anna rightly getting namechecked in this history of designing for the web in a systemic way. It’s a tradition that continues to this day with projects like Utopia.

Tiny Helpers

A very comprehensive collection of standalone little tools for web design and development—tools that do one thing.

Responsible JavaScript, A Book Apart

TAKE MY MONEY!!!

If we want people to fully experience the sites we have worked so hard to craft, then we must be judicious in our use of JavaScript. In thoughtful detail, Jeremy Wagner shows how JavaScript can be used to progressively enhance server-side functionality, while improving speed and access for more visitors. By centering user needs every step of the way—from toolchains to metrics to testing—we can all contribute to a more inclusive, accessible, and resilient web.

🧠 ct.css – Let’s take a look inside your `head`

I love a good bookmarklet, and Harry has made a very good bookmarklet indeed.

Drag ct.css to your browser bar and then press it whenever you’re on a site you want to check for optimising what’s in the head element.

The Future of CSS: Cascade Layers (CSS @layer) – Bram.us

This is a really in-depth explanation from Bramus of the upcoming @layer rules in CSS, from the brilliant minds of Miriam, fantasai and Tab.

Basically, you’ll be able to scope styles, and you get to define the context for that scoping. So all those CSS-in-JS folks who don’t appreciate the cascade will have a mechanism to get encapsulated styles.

I can see this being very handy for big complex codebases with lots of people on the team.

New principle: Do not design around third-party tools unless it actually breaks the Web · Issue #335 · w3ctag/design-principles

There’s a really interesting discussion here, kicked off by Lea, about balancing long-term standards with short-term pragmatism. Specifically, it’s about naming things.

Naming things is hard. Naming things in standards, doubly so.

In Quest of Search

On the surface this is about the pros and cons of minting a new HTML search element to replace div role="search" but there’s a deeper point which is that, while ARIA exists to the plug the gaps in HTML, the long-term goal is to have no gaps.

ARIA is not meant to replace HTML. If anything, the need to use ARIA as ‘polyfill’ for HTML semantics could be considered as a sign and a constant reminder of the fact that HTML falls short on some semantics that benefit users of assistive technologies.

Basic Pattern Repository

A nice little collection of very simple—and very lightweight—SVGs to use as background patterns.

Designing Beautiful Shadows in CSS

This is a great tutorial—I just love the interactive parts that really help make things click.

Responsible JavaScript

I cannot wait for this book (apart) by Jeremy Wagner to arrive—it’s gonna be sooooo good!

Increasing the amount of JavaScript we ship results in poor user experiences, and the iron law of our work is that users must come first. Our preferences and comfort as developers are secondary.

That’s a mission to take to heart while we figure out how we can use JavaScript more responsibly in an industry that relies on it more than ever — and I think that Responsible JavaScript — a carefully written book that the talented people at A Book Apart have worked with me to publish — can help you along the way.

Chrome is the new Safari. And so are Edge and Firefox. – Hello my name is Niels Leenheer

You may not realise that all browsers on iOS are required to use the same rendering engine as Safari. On other platforms, this is not the case.

A terrific in-depth look at the frustrating state of the web on iOS.

So it’s not just one browser that falls behind. It’s all browsers on iOS. The whole web on iOS falls behind. And iOS has become so important that the entire web platform is being held back as a result.

And this damning assessment is mercifully free of conspiracy theories.

The Safari and Chrome team both want to make the web safer and work hard to improve the web. But they do have different views on what the web should be.

Google is focussing on improving the web by making it more capable.

Safari seems to focus on improving the web as it currently is.

Read the whole thing—it’s excellent!

There can only be one proper solution: Apple needs to open up their App Store to browsers with other rendering engines. Scrap rule 2.5.6 and allow other browsers on iOS and let them genuinely compete. Even though Apple has been forced to compromise on some App Store rules, I have little hope for this to happen.

Why We Create Progressive Web Apps: A Conversation with Jeremy Keith

This is a really nice write-up by Sydney of the chat we had on her podcast.