Another great video from Jen as part of her Layout Land series. This time she addresses the question of the overwhelming technology landscape for developers and where they should invest their time.
She references my most recent talk, where I’ve been drawing a distinction between “materials” (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and “tools” (everything else).
Here’s the video of the talk I gave at Design4Drupal last week in Boston. There’s a good half an hour of questions at the end.
Here’s a really quick (ten minute) talk about the offline user experience that I gave at the Delta V conference recently. I’m quite happy with how it turned out—there’s something to be said for having a short and snappy time slot.
There’s a common misconception that making a Progressive Web App means creating a Single Page App with an app-shell architecture. But the truth is that literally any website can benefit from the performance boost that results from the combination of HTTPS + Service Worker + Web App Manifest.
No matter where I go on the Internet, I feel like I am trapped in the “feed,” held down by algorithms that are like axes trying to make bespoke shirts out of silk. And no one illustrates it better than Facebook and Twitter, two more services that should know better, but they don’t. Fake news, unintelligent information and radically dumb statements are getting more attention than what matters. The likes, retweets, re-posts are nothing more than steroids for noise. Even when you are sarcastic in your retweets or re-shares, the system has the understanding of a one-year-old monkey baby: it is a vote on popularity.
This fun little film gives me all the feels for Battlezone …but then watching the excellent “making of” video really made me appreciate the love and attention to detail that went into this.
A hand-wringing, finger-pointing litany of hindsight, published with 11 tracking scripts attached.
- Start With Hippie Good Intentions …
- … Then mix in capitalism on steroids.
- The arrival of Wall Streeters didn’t help …
- … And we paid a high price for keeping it free.
- Everything was designed to be really, really addictive.
- At first, it worked — almost too well.
- No one from Silicon Valley was held accountable …
- … Even as social networks became dangerous and toxic.
- … And even as they invaded our privacy.
- Then came 2016.
- Employees are starting to revolt.
- To fix it, we’ll need a new business model …
- … And some tough regulation.
- Maybe nothing will change.
- … Unless, at the very least, some new people are in charge.
A terrific talk by Adrian Holovaty. I really hope front-end developers talk its message to heart.
The word “leak” is right. Our sense of control over our own destinies is being challenged by these leaks. Giant internet platforms are poisoning the commons. They’ve automated it.
A great new seven-part series of short videos from Jen on writing resilient CSS—really understanding the error-handling model of CSS and how you can use that to use the latest and greatest features and still have your site work in non-supporting browsers.
A good hands-on introduction to service workers from Mariko.
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.
Here’s the talk I gave at Mozilla’s View Source event. I really enjoyed talking about the indie web, both from the big-picture view and the nitty gritty.
In these times of centralised services like Facebook, Twitter, and Medium, having your own website is downright disruptive. If you care about the longevity of your online presence, independent publishing is the way to go. But how can you get all the benefits of those third-party services while still owning your own data? By using the building blocks of the Indie Web, that’s how!
Boxman’s talk about complexity, reasoning, philosophy, and design is soooo good!
At the 14 minute mark I had to deal with an obstreperous member of the audience. He wasn’t heckling exactly …he just had a very bad experience with web components, and I think my talk was triggering for him.
A beautiful piece of writing from Virginia Heffernan on how to cope with navigating the overwhelming tsunami of the network.
The trick is to read technology instead of being captured by it—to maintain the whip hand.
I had the honour of being invited along to kick off the first leg of Mozilla’s Developer Roadshow in Singapore.
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.)
Here’s the video of the closing keynote I gave at the Frontend United conference in Athens.
There’s fifteen minutes of Q&A at the end where I waffle on in response to some thought-provoking ideas from the audience.
I wrote this song while my colleague Tim Berners-Lee was inventing something called “The World Wide Web” a few offices away. The song was published in 1993, when less that 100 websites existed.
The first image ever published on the web was of this band, Les Horribles Cernettes …LHC.
A great short talk by Tim. It’s about performance, but so much more too.
