Proxima Vara by Mark Simonson
Oh, nice! A version of the classic Proxima Nova that’s a variable font that allows you to vary weight, width, and slant.
Link tags: weight
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Reef
This micro libarary does DOM diffing in native JavaScript:
Reef is an anti-framework.
It does a lot less than the big guys like React and Vue. It doesn’t have a Virtual DOM. It doesn’t require you to learn a custom templating syntax. It doesn’t provide a bunch of custom methods.
Reef does just one thing: render UI.
Looking at coronavirus.data.gov.uk - Matthew Somerville
I worry that more and more nowadays, people jump to JavaScript frameworks because that is what they know or have been taught, even though they are entirely inappropriate for a wide array of things and can often produce poor results.
Last week I wrote about the great work that Matthew did and now he’s written up his process:
The important thing is to have a resilient base layer of HTML and CSS, and then to enhance that with JavaScript.
Why 543 KB keep me up at night - Manuel Matuzović
How and when did I get to the point where I would consider a page weight of 4 MB on a large page and 500 KB on a small page normal?
This isn’t just a well-earned rant from Manuel. I mean, it *is that, but it’s also packed with practical performance advice.
Web bloat
Pages are often designed so that they’re hard or impossible to read if some dependency fails to load. On a slow connection, it’s quite common for at least one depedency to fail.
Fire up Reader Mode and read this excellent article informed by data from using a typically slow connection in rural USA today. Two findings are:
- A large fraction of the web is unusable on a bad connection. Even on a good (0% packetloss, no ping spike) dialup connection, some sites won’t load.
- Some sites will use a lot of data!
Less Data Doesn’t Mean a Lesser Experience| TimKadlec.com
If you treat data as a constraint in your design and development process, you’ll likely be able to brainstorm a large number of different ways to keep data usage to a minimum while still providing an excellent experience. Doing less doesn’t mean it has to feel broken.
The Crushing Weight of the Facepile—zachleat.com
Using IntersectionObserver to lazy load images—very handy for webmention avatars.
Performance Budgets That Stick - TimKadlec.com
I like Tim’s definition here:
A performance budget is a clearly defined limit on one or more performance metrics that the team agrees not to exceed, and that is used to guide design and development.
And I agree about the four attributes required for a performance budget to succeed. It must be:
- Concrete
- Meaningful
- Integrated
- Enforceable
The point is not to let the performance budget try to stand on its own, somewhere hidden in company documentation collecting dust. You need to be proactive about making the budget become a part of your everyday work.
New kilogram standard: how the SI unit of mass is being redefined - Vox
A fascinating look at standards in the real world. In this case, it’s the kilogram, which is shedding its French Revolutionary roots in favour of the Planck constant.
Our messy human measurements have transcended their messy humanness; they have been melded with an eternal truth.
Mention of The Master Of The Kilogram reminded me of The Keeper Of Time.
AddyOsmani.com - Start Performance Budgeting
Great ideas from Addy on where to start with creating a performance budget that can act as a red line you don’t want to cross.
If it’s worth getting fast, it’s worth staying fast.
Unit deconverter - make your units less useful!
Take a perfectly useful standardised measurement of length, weight, speed or time, and convert to something far less useful (but much more fun).
Web Bloat Score Calculator
Here’s an interesting metric for measuring performance: take the overall page weight of a URL and divide it by the file size of the screenshot of that URL.
Better Google Web Fonts
A single page showing all the weights available from Google fonts at a glance.
Page Weight Matters | Chris Zacharias
An excellent tale of performance optimisation …complete with a coda on looking behind the numbers when it comes to analytics data.
Lightweight Computing – Stuntbox
The class of device formerly known as mobile.
Font-weight is still broken in all but one browser | Clagnut § Browsers · Typography · CSS techniques
A superb bit of browser research by Richard. "There’s more to the lives of many typefaces than just Bold and Regular, but almost no browsers follow the proper CSS 1 way of specifying Light, Semibold, Black and other weights. There is a workaround,…
flickr.simple.php
A super-simple lightweight PHP class by Kellan for calling the Flickr API and receiving back an array of results.