The Language of Modular Design · An A List Apart Article

An end to typographic widows on the web | Clagnut by Richard Rutter

Rich explains what text-wrap:balance does …and what it doesn’t.

Now THAT’S What I Call Service Worker! – A List Apart

This is terrific! Jeremy shows how you can implement a fairly straightforward service worker for performance gains, but then really kicks it up a notch with a recipe for turning a regular website into a speedy single page app without framework bloat.

Request with Intent: Caching Strategies in the Age of PWAs – A List Apart

Aaron outlines some sensible strategies for serving up images, including using the Cache API from your service worker script.

Responsible JavaScript: Part III – A List Apart

This chimes nicely with my recent post on third-party scripts. Here, Jeremy treats third-party JavaScript at technical debt and outlines some solutions to staying on top of it.

Convenience always has a price, and the web is wracked by our collective preference for it. JavaScript, in particular, is employed in a way that suggests a rapidly increasing tendency to outsource whatever it is that We (the first party) don’t want to do. At times, this is a necessary decision; it makes perfect financial and operational sense in many situations.

But make no mistake, third-party JavaScript is never cheap. It’s a devil’s bargain where vendors seduce you with solutions to your problem, yet conveniently fail to remind you that you have little to no control over the side effects that solution introduces.

Responsible JavaScript: Part I · An A List Apart Article

As I pick apart yet another bundle not unlike a tangled ball of Christmas tree lights, it’s become clear that the web is drunk on JavaScript. We reach for it for almost everything, even when the occasion doesn’t call for it. Sometimes I wonder how vicious the hangover will be.

I love everything about this article and I can’t wait for part two.

What we tend to forget is that the environment websites and web apps occupy is one and the same. Both are subject to the same environmental pressures that the large gradient of networks and devices impose. Those constraints don’t suddenly vanish when we decide to call what we build “apps”, nor do our users’ phones gain magical new powers when we do so.

Needless to say, I endorse this message:

Whether you think of your site as an “app” or not, adding a service worker to it is perhaps one of the most responsible uses of JavaScript that exists today.