An excellent example of an HTML web component from Eric:
Extend HTML to do things automatically!
He layers on the functionality and styling, considering potential gotchas at every stage. This is resilient web design in action.
A very, very deep dive into like-for-like comparison of JavaScript frameworks. The takeaway:
Nuxt demonstrates that established “big three” frameworks can achieve next-gen performance when properly configured. Vue’s architecture allows competitive mobile web performance while maintaining a mature ecosystem. React and Angular show no path to similar results.
And the real takeaway:
Mobile is the web. These measurements matter because mobile web is the primary internet for billions of people. If your app is accessible via URL, people will use it on phones with cellular connections. Optimizing for desktop and hoping mobile is good enough is backwards. The web is mobile. Build for that reality.
React exists as a profound perversion of the web platform. React has failed upwards to widespread adoption because it provides a “developer experience” that bypasses the hard parts. Like learning HTML, or CSS, or JavaScript. Even learning React itself is discouraged; that’s for adults, you should use meta-frameworks. React devs are burdened with multi-megabyte monstrosities before they’ve written a single line of code. You cannot fix “too much JavaScript” with more JavaScript and yet React devs are trained to
npm installuntil their problems become their users’ problems.
So instead of asking yourself, “How can I write code that does what I want?” Consider asking yourself, “Can I write code that ties together things the browser already does to accomplish what I want (or close enough to it)?”
It’s wild what you can do with CSS these days!
Here’s a handy little tool for generating CSS with :has() selectors in order to do quantity queries.
There’s quite a crossover between resilience and longevity:
- Understand the requirements
- Keep scope small and fixed
- Reduce dependencies
- Produce static output
- Increase Quality Assurance
Grrr… it turns out that browsers exhibit some very frustrating behaviour when it comes to the video element. Rob has the details…
When I set about writing this article, I intended it to be a strong argument for progressive rendering. But after digging into it, my feelings are less certain.
Framework monoculture is a psychology problem as much as a tech problem. When one approach becomes “how things are done,” we unconsciously defend it even when standards would give us a healthier, more interoperable ecosystem. Psychologists call this reflex System Justification.
The explains a lot about React-driven front-end development!
When a single toolset becomes the default, we don’t just prefer it, we build narratives that justify it. And that’s when a tool quietly becomes a gate or even a destructive force.
I’m not the only one who’s amazed by how much you can do with just a little CSS these days.
This is a nifty initiative:
This site lets you rank the proposals you care about, giving us data we can use when reviewing which proposals should be taken on for 2026.
For the record, here’s my top ten:
- Cross-document view transitions
- Speculation Rules API
img sizes="auto" loading="lazy"- Customizable/stylable
select- Invoker commands
- Interoperable rendering of HTML
fieldset/legend- Web Share API
- CSS scroll-driven animations
- CSS
accent-colorproperty- CSS
hanging-punctuationproperty
Here’s a comprehensive round-up of new CSS that you can use right now—you can expect to see some of this in action at Web Day Out!
React is no longer winning by technical merit. Today it is winning by default. That default is now slowing innovation across the frontend ecosystem.
Every one of these five proposals is worth a vote.
Mind you, Rich’s cynicism is understandable.
There’s really good browser support for display-mode media queries and this article does a really good job of running through some of the use cases for your progressive web app.
Put the kettle on. This is a long one!
Matt takes a trip down memory lane and looks at all the frontend tools, technologies, and techniques that have come and gone over the years.
But this isn’t about nostalgia (although it does make you appreciate how far we’ve come). He’s looking at whether anything from the past is worth keeping today.
Studying past best practices and legacy systems is crucial for understanding the evolution of technology and making informed decisions today.
There’s only one technique that makes the cut:
After discussing countless legacy approaches and techniques best left in the past, you’ve finally arrived at a truly timeless and Incredibly important methodology.
I like the idea of adding this to personal websites:
Mastodon shows an “Alt” button in the bottom right of images that have associated alt text. This button, when clicked, shows the alt text the author has written for the image.
- Building HTML pages is easy
- Pure HTML is evergreen
- Bloated web pages are too slow
- I can host it anywhere, often for free
- Accessibility and SEO benefits are automatic
- It won’t need security patches
- There are no build steps
SPAs were a clever solution to a temporary limitation. But that limitation no longer exists.
Use modern server rendering. Use actual pages. Animate with CSS. Preload with intent. Ship less JavaScript.