Link tags: web_development

Web Development History

Richard MacManus has started a blog all about the history of web development—this is going straight to my RSS reader!

Most internet history books, websites, podcasts, etc, are from a business perspective. What’s missing, I believe, is an internet history with a technical point of view: which products were developed, the technologies used, how the web has changed over time, developmental trends, and so on.

Simply put, I want to describe how the web actually works and how that has evolved over the past 25-30 years.

Jeremy Keith on your content, failing well, and the Indie Web Movement - YouTube

I had a chat with some people from Name.com while I was in Denver for An Event Apart. Here’s a few minutes of me rambling on about web development and the indie web.

upfront conversation with Amber Wilson - #upfront

Amber shares her story of becoming a web developer and a public speaker. She is an inspiration to me!

Material Conference 2017: Psychology and the Web - Amber Wilson - YouTube

Here’s Amber’s great talk from the great Material conference last month in Iceland.

Amber Wilson worked in the field of Psychology for many years and is now a budding Web developer at a design agency in Brighton. New to Web development, she is continually eager to improve her skills.

(The silhouettes of Jessica, me, and Joschi in the front row make it look like Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

prettydiff/wisdom: Building better developers by specifying criteria of success

I frequently see web developers struggling to become better, but without a path or any indication of clear direction. This repository is an attempt to sharing my experiences, and any contributions, that can help provide such a direction.

It’s broken down into four parts:

• 10 Domains of Web Development
• • Accessibility
• • Architecture
• • Data
• • Events and Interaction
• • Internationalization / Localization
• • Presentation
• • Security
• • Semantics
• • Transmission
• • Understandability / Content
• Interviewing for Web Developers
• Productivity for Web Developers
• Web Training Hierarchy
• 1. Level 1 - Writing Code
• 1. Level 2 - Accessibility and Security
• 1. Level 3 - Architecture
• 1. Level 4 - Innovation

I don’t necessarily agree with everything here (and I really don’t like the “rockstar” labelling), but that’s okay:

Anything written here is open to debate and challenges are encouraged.

Interneting Is Hard | Web Development Tutorials For Complete Beginners

A nice straightforward introduction to web development for anyone starting from scratch.

An Event Apart News: Ten Years, Ten Speakers: Part II

Ten of us reminisce about where we were and what we were doing a decade ago.

Ten years ago I was writing on my blog. Lots of other people were writing on their blogs back then too. That would soon change, though. Twitter and Facebook were picking up steam and soon they’d be luring bloggers away with enticing and seductive short-form convenience. I’ve stubbornly continued writing on my own site. I fully intend to keep on writing there for the next ten years too.

Dave Goes Build - daverupert.com

I think I’ve gotten tired of Google telling me “This is how you have to build websites now.” Or Apple coming down from the mountain once a year saying “Here are the two new products you will buy this year.”

No Really, For Everyone | Benjamin Listwon

A heartfelt call to web developers to consider the needs of the many and varied people trying to use what we build.

None of this is about Javascript. None of this is about CSS transforms or WebGL. None of this is about technology at all.

It is about making products that serve all users equally. It is about putting ourselves in others’ shoes. It is about trying to imagine the frustration and difficulty of using our products when the conditions aren’t what we’re used to. It is about being human.

An Event Apart News: The Contributions of Others: A Session with Jeremy Keith

Eric asked me some questions and I was only too happy to give some answers.

I, Website | CSS-Tricks

Chris’s homage to I, Pencil.

I, Website, am a complex combination of miracles.

Don’t Forget The Web

Here’s the video of the talk I gave at Facebook’s Mobile @Scale event where I was the token web guy. The talk is pretty short but there’s some fun Q&A afterwards.

openHTML

This seems like a decent endeavour:

A collaborative research project aimed at designing better tools and practices for learning web development.

Designing with Progressive Enhancement — sixtwothree.org

The full text of Jason’s great talk at this year’s CSS Summit. It’s a great read, clearing up many of the misunderstandings around progressive enhancement and showing some practical examples of progressive enhancement working at each level of the web’s technology stack

Thriving in Unpredictability - TimKadlec.com

This is the way to approach building for the web:

I want to make as few of those assumptions as possible. Because every assumption I make introduces fragility. Every assumption introduces another way that my site can break.

It’s progressive enhancement, but like Stuart, Tim is no longer planning to use that term.

as days pass by — Availability

Stuart writes up his thoughts on progressive enhancement following the great discussions at Edge Conf:

So I’m not going to be talking about progressive enhancement any more. I’m going to be talking about availability. About reach. About my web apps being for everyone even when the universe tries to stop it.

Dev.Opera — Making websites that work well on Opera Mini

Using Progressive Enhancement makes your site better for all users and enables the 275 million users of Opera Mini worldwide.

The JavaScript-Dependency Backlash: Myth-Busting Progressive Enhancement

Progressive Enhancement remains the best option for solving web development issues such as wide-ranging browser support, maintenance and future-proofing your application.

It’s a Website | treevis

Apps:

Apps must run on specific platforms for specific devices. The app space, while large, isn’t universal.

Websites:

Websites can be viewed by anyone with a web browser.

And that doesn’t mean foregoing modern features:

A web browser must only understand HTML. Further, newer HTML (like HTML 5) is still supported because the browser is built to ignore HTML it doesn’t understand. As a result, my site can run on the oldest browsers all the way to the newest ones. Got Lynx? No problem. You’ll still be able to find matches nearby. Got the latest smartphone and plentiful data? It’ll work there, too, and take advantage of its features.

This is why progressive enhancement is so powerful.

My site will take advantage of newer technologies like geolocation and local storage. However, the service will not be dependent on them.

Zen and the Art of Wearable Markup

Jeffrey muses on progressive enhancement and future-friendliness.