trot
Working on this project is great but ten minutes into it and I already miss the resilience of the web. I miss how you have to really fuck things up to make a browser yell at you or implode.
Link tags: browsers
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6 CSS Snippets Every Front-End Developer Should Know In 2025 · 19 January 2025
- Springy easing with
linear()- Typed custom properties
- View transitions for page navigation
- Transition animation for
dialogandpopover- Transition animation for
details- Animated adaptive gradient text
Build for the Web, Build on the Web, Build with the Web – Web Performance and Site Speed Consultant
If I was only able to give one bit of advice to any company: iterate quickly on a slow-moving platform.
Excellent advice from Harry (who first cast his pearls before the swine of LinkedIn but I talked him ‘round to posting this on his own site).
- Opt into web platform features incrementally
- Embrace progressive enhancement to build fast, reliable applications that adapt to your customers’ context
- Write code that leans into the browser, not away from it
I’m not against front-end frameworks, and, believe me, I’m not naive enough to believe that the only thing a front-end framework provides is soft navigations, but if you’re going to use one, I shouldn’t be able to smell it.
Justified Text: Better Than Expected? – Cloud Four
Some interesting experiments in web typography here.
Your App Should Have Been A Website (And Probably Your Game Too) - Rogue Engine
Remember when every company rushed to make an app? Airlines, restaurants, even your local coffee shop. Back then, it made some sense. Browsers weren’t as powerful, and apps had unique features like notifications and offline access. But fast-forward to today, and browsers can do all that. Yet businesses still push native apps as if it’s 2010, and we’re left downloading apps for things that should just work on the web.
This is all factually correct, but alas as Cory Doctorow points out, you can’t install an ad-blocker in a native app. To you and me, that’s a bug. To short-sighted businesses, it’s a feature.
(When I say “ad-blocker”, I mean “tracking-blocker”.)
Don’t Fuck With Scroll
- Violates User Expectations
- Causes Motion Sickness
- Reduces Accessibility for Disabled Users
- Inconsistent Performance Across Devices
- Impairs Usability for Power Users
- Increases Page Load Times
- Breaks Native Browser Features
- Makes Scroll Position Unclear
- Adds Maintenance Overhead
- Disrespects the User’s Control
Lived experience
I hold this truth to be self-evident: the larger the abstraction layer a web developer uses on top of web standards, the shorter the shelf life of their codebase becomes, and the more they will feel the churn.
New CSS that can actually be used in 2024 | Thomasorus
Logical properties, container queries, :has, :is, :where, min(), max(), clamp(), nesting, cascade layers, subgrid, and more.
Help us choose the final syntax for Masonry in CSS | WebKit
I really like the way that the thinking here is tied back to Bert Bos’s original design principles for CSS.
This is a deep dive into the future of CSS layout—make a cup of tea and settle in for some good nerdiness!
An Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers - Webventures
In an earlier era, startups could build on the web and, if one browser didn’t provide the features they needed, they could just recommend that their users try a better one. But that’s not possible on iOS.
I’m extremly concerned about the newest bug in iOS 18:
Whaa? That’s just shockingly dreadful!
What RSS Needs
I love my feed reader:
Feed readers are an example of user agents: they act on behalf of you when they interact with publishers, representing your interests and preserving your privacy and security. The most well-known user agents these days are Web browsers, but in many ways feed readers do it better – they don’t give nearly as much control to sites about presentation and they don’t allow privacy-invasive technologies like cookies or JavaScript.
Also:
Feed support should be built into browsers, and the user experience should be excellent.
Agreed!
However, convincing the browser vendors that this is in their interest is going to be challenging – especially when some of them have vested interests in keeping users on the non-feed Web.
A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web
This is disgusting, if unsurprising: Google aren’t going to deprecate third-party cookies after all.
Make no mistake, Chrome is not a user agent. It is an agent for the behavioural advertising industry.
Ladybird
We are building a brand-new browser from scratch, backed by a non-profit.
Not just a new browser, but a new browser engine.
Update: Turns out this project is being made by asshats. Ignore and avoid.
New Web Development. Or, why Copilots and chatbots are particularly bad for modern web dev – Baldur Bjarnason
The paradigm shift that web development is entering hinges on the fact that while React was a key enabler of the Single-Page-App and Component era of the web, in practice it normally tends to result in extremely poor products. Built-in browser APIs are now much more capable than they were when React was first invented.
WP2 - The requirement for browsers operating on iOS devices to use Apple’s WebKit browser engine [PDF]
The Competition & Markets Authority brings receipts:
The requirement that all browsers on the iOS operating system use a specific version of the WebKit browser engine controlled by Apple, means that there is no competition between browser engines on the platform. Browser vendors cannot switch to an alternative browser engine or make changes to the version of WebKit used on iOS. Similarly, consumers are unable to switch to a browser based on an alternative browser engine. We consider that the lack of competitive pressure is likely to reduce Apple’s incentives to improve WebKit.
An origin trial for a new HTML <permission> element | Blog | Chrome for Developers
This looks interesting. On the hand, it’s yet another proprietary creation by one browser vendor (boo!), but on the other hand it’s a declarative API with no JavaScript required (yay!).
Even if this particular feature doesn’t work out, I hope that this is the start of a trend for declarative access to browser features.
MSEdgeExplainers/WebInstall/explainer_same_domain.md at main · MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers
This proposal is exactly what I was asking for!
C’mon browsers, let’s make this happen!
With great power, comes great creativity: thoughts from CSS Day 2024 · Paul Robert Lloyd
Here’s Paul’s take on this year’s CSS Day. He’s not an easy man to please, but the event managed to impress even him.
As CSS Day celebrates its milestone anniversary, I was reminded how lucky we are to have events that bring together two constituent parties of the web: implementors and authors (with Sara Soueidan’s talk about the relationship between CSS and accessibility reminding us of the users we ultimately build for). My only complaint is that there are not more events like this; single track, tight subject focus (and amazing catering).
Fine-tuning Text Inputs
Garrett talks through some handy HTML attributes: spellcheck, autofocus, autocapitalize, autocomplete, and autocorrect:
While they feel like small details, when we set these attributes on inputs, we streamline things for visitors while also guiding the browser on when it should just get out of the way.