Google went down today. Downtime at this scale doesn’t happen often, but when it rains, it pours. Google going down doesn’t only affect Google products, it also affect products connected to Google. App that require authentication with your Google account weren’t available, unless you were already logged in.
Coïncidentally, I came across a compelling article about local-first software. From a SaaS point of view, before the internet all we had local-first.
Today I read “Web Apps Are Not A Thing, Please Stop” by Robin Rendle, who says we should stop treating websites different from web apps.
I agree that web apps need to play by the same rules as website. However, I draw a different line: between building for the web and building on the web.
Last week, the W3C decided they were not going to use WordPress for their next website.
The decision making process behind this is happening in the open, on w3c.studio24.net. Accessibility was the driving force for the final choice between three contending CMS’s (WordPress, Craft, and Statamic), but they did a lot of research before.
#the-web #jamstack / css-tricks.com
Two weeks ago I shared my thoughts and doubts about the JAMstack. Today I came across an article by Mike Riethmuller, who seems to have a lot more JAMstack experience under his belt than me. Most of the article resonated with me:
Despite my enthusiasm, I’m often disheartened by the steep complexity curve I typically encounter about halfway through a JAMstack project. Normally the first few weeks are incredibly liberating. It’s easy to get started, there is good visible progress, everything feels lean and fast. Over time, as more features are added, the build steps become more complex, multiple APIs are added, and suddenly everything feels slow. In other words, the development experience begins to suffer.
[…]
The end result is we’ve outsourced the database, fragmented the content management experience and stitched together a bundle of compromises. That’s a stark contrast from the initial ease of setting up and deploying a JAMstack site.
Mike continues with a thoughtful analysis of the current state of the JAMstack, and intrudoces the idea of a “JAMstack Plus”, essentially bringing the best parts of JAMstack and monoliths together.
I don’t think JAMstack should defined by pushing all the complexity into the front-end build process or by compromising on developer and user experience. Instead, I think JAMstack should focus on providing lean, configurable static front-ends.
That said, lean and configurable static front-ends are kind of a niche requirement in my world. While the JAMstack is a great tool in this space, I do believe it’s in a hype phase.
Read the “The Rising Complexity of JAMstack Sites and How to Manage Them” on CSS-Tricks.
I very much enjoy building sites with static site generators like Hugo or Next.js. Static site generators provide a great developer experience, perform great out of the box, and simplifying DevOps makes me a happy camper.
In my experience, the JAMstack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) is great until is isn’t. When the day comes that I need to add something dynamic–and that day always comes–I start scratching my head.
#programming #the-web / www.w3.org
During his lightning talk at Full Stack EU, Bram Van Damme mentioned the rule of least power.
The rule of least power was described in an essay by Tim Berners-Lee back in 2006.
When designing computer systems, one is often faced with a choice between using a more or less powerful language for publishing information, for expressing constraints, or for solving some problem. This finding explores tradeoffs relating the choice of language to reusability of information. The “Rule of Least Power” suggests choosing the least powerful language suitable for a given purpose.
This is a useful principle to follow for the web because less powerful languages fail better.
Forgot a closing tag in HTML? There’s a fair chance the browser will just fix it for you.
Did you write an invalid or unsupported CSS rule? The browser will ignore the statement and parse the rest as intended.
Got a syntax error in your JavaScript app? Prepare to watch the world burn.
Read the full essay on w3.org.
How much should we invest in JavaScript as developers? I’ve asked myself that question over and over again. Around last year I came to a conclusion: I strongly believe JavaScript is a requirement for excellent user experiences. Not good experiences, excellent experiences.
#the-web #static-sites #webmentions #this-website
I first noticed webmentions in the wild on Hidde de Vries’ blog about two years ago. Last week it finally happened, I added webmention support to my blog too! Well, partial support at least. I’m now receiving and displaying webmentions. Sending them out is a project for another day.
Some time last year, we released the latest iteration of the Spatie.be website.
There’s a succinct description of what we’re about, followed by a peculiar little block, dubbed “Latest insights from the team”.
Unlike other agencies, we don’t have a company blog. We encourage everyone to write on their own blog and put their latest articles in the spotlight.
Everyone keeps ownership of their content.
There’s nothing fancy backing this feature, blog entries are synced via RSS. If you’re interested in implementing something similar in PHP, our source code is available on GitHub.
When you visit a website, your browser connects to a server via TCP. With TCP, the first roundtrip can be up to 14 KB large.
In other words, the first 14 KB sent to the client will always be the quickest to render in the browser. The rest of the response is streamed afterwards.
This website’s homepage is about 9.7 KB at the time of writing. Articles are roughly 4-10 KB, depending on their lengths. All CSS is inlined, so besides fonts and images everything is loaded withing the first roundtrip, making page loads fast and snappy.
Not all sites can be contained within 14 KB — most probably can’t. But keep the number in mind, and try to optimize the first 14 KB instead.