Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

Stickers!

If Not React, Then What?

Frameworkism is now the dominant creed of today's frontend discourse, and it's bullshit. We owe it to ourselves and to our users to reject dogma and embrace engineering as a discipline that strives to serve users first and foremost.

Platform Strategy and Its Discontents

Reckoning: Part 4 — The Way Out

JavaScript overindulgence remains an affirmative choice, no matter how hard industry 'thought leaders' gaslight us. Better is possible, but we must want it enough to put users ahead of our own interests.

Reckoning: Part 3 — Caprock

I have worked with dozens of teams surprised to have found themselves in the JavaScript ditch. They all feel ashamed because they've been led to believe they're the first; that the technology is working fine for other folks. It isn't.

Reckoning: Part 2 — Object Lesson

SNAP benefits sites for more than 20% of Americans are unusably slow. All of them would be significantly faster if states abandoned client-side-rendering, and along with it, the legacy JavaScript frameworks (React, Angular, etc.) built to enable the SPA model.

Reckoning: Part 1 — The Landscape

It would be tragic if public sector services adopted the JavaScript-heavy stacks that frontend influencers have popularised. Right?

Misfire

Why Browsers Get Built

There are only two-and-a-half reasons to build a browser, and they couldn't be more different in intent and outcome, even when they look superficially similar.

Home Screen Advantage

Cupertino's attempt to scuttle Progressive Web Apps under cover of chaos is exactly what it appears to be: a shocking attempt to keep the web from ever emerging as a true threat to the App Store and blame regulators for Apple's own malicious choices. By hook or by crook, Apple's going to maintain its home screen advantage.

The Performance Inequality Gap, 2024

How much HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can we afford? More than in years past, but much less than frontend developers are burdening users with.

Why Are Tech Reporters Sleeping On The Biggest App Store Story?

Under regulatory pressure, mobile OSes are opening up and adding features that will allow PWAs to disrupt app stores ... Yet with shockingly few exceptions, coverage accepts that the solution to crummy, extractive native app stores will be other native app stores. ... The press fails to mention the web as a sustitute for native apps, and fail to inform readers of its disruptive potential. Why?

Older Posts : 2023