This is kind of brilliant:
Maybe what’s needed for websites and web apps is a kind of Prepper Web Dev?
I’m so happy that Ember is moving to a server-side rendering model. Not only that, but as Tom points out here, it’s crucial that the server-side rendering is the default and the client-side functionality than becomes an enhancement.
Many believe we should leave the term “progressive enhancement” behind and start anew, but why not educate developers, clients and stakeholders and change many of the misconceptions surrounding it? Changing the name won’t change anything unless we address the real fundamental problems we have when describing the underlying concepts.
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.
Put the kettle on; it’s another epic data-driven screed from Alex. The footnotes on this would be a regular post on any other blog (and yes, even the footnotes have footnotes).
This is a spot-on description of the difference between back-end development and front-end development:
Code that runs on the server can be fully costed. Performance and availability of server-side systems are under the control of the provisioning organisation, and latency can be actively managed by developers and DevOps engineers.
Code that runs on the client, by contrast, is running on The Devil’s Computer. Nothing about the experienced latency, client resources, or even available APIs are under the developer’s control.
Client-side web development is perhaps best conceived of as influence-oriented programming. Once code has left the datacenter, all a web developer can do is send thoughts and prayers.
As a result, an unreasonably effective strategy is to send less code. In practice, this means favouring HTML and CSS over JavaScript, as they degrade gracefully and feature higher compression ratios. Declarative forms generate more functional UI per byte sent. These improvements in resilience and reductions in costs are beneficial in compounding ways over a site’s lifetime.
Oh, how I wish that every team building for the web would use this sensible approach!
Here’s how I interpret the top-level guidance in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
Treat every browser feature like an experimental feature.
A defensive enhancement to avoid losing everything you just typed into a textarea.
Hey! Been tryin’ to meet you.
Gotta keep ‘em separated.