Posts tagged “javascript”
I push back on Alex Russell's "Market for Lemons" post blaming JS frameworks and their advocates for poor mobile web performance. Developers aren't stupid or deceived: React dominates because of rational economics. Frameworks save developer time, enable hiring, and compound via ecosystems. Better frameworks, not fewer frameworks, is the answer.
The web stack is too vast and ever-changing for anyone to fully master. Instead of stressing about that, understand how standardization, packaging, and abstraction constantly reshape what developers actually need to know, pick your battles wisely, and embrace the fact that you'll never be bored.
Yes, front-end development is absurdly complicated right now. But developers aren't adding complexity for fun - user expectations have exploded while timelines haven't. Today's frameworks are doing what jQuery did: showing browsers what developers need. It'll consolidate eventually. The mess is just evolution, and evolution is worth it.
Nolan Lawson's piece on progressive enhancement is great, but conflates two different use cases: web apps and multi-page sites. For apps, offline-first beats JavaScript-free. For content sites, progressive rendering is essential since half-loaded pages are nearly guaranteed. Graceful degradation means something completely different depending which you're building.
Built a cleaner, readable version of the Trinidad Express website after their redesign turned it into a font-tiny, ad-cluttered mess. Check out Re-Expressed.com.
I built a Google Maps app to find your nearest San Francisco fire station after needing the info for renter's insurance. Took five hours, never actually bought the insurance. But hey, I learned the Maps API, practiced JavaScript, and helped the city. Worth it.
I prefer RURL over TinyURL for shortening URLs because it's, well, shorter. I made a bookmarklet so I can quickly get a RURL for any page I'm on. Just drag the link to your bookmarks bar.
GWT's cross-browser compilation idea is sound and inevitable, but its layout manager approach is dead wrong. Someone will eventually build a proper high-level language that compiles to universal HTML and CSS, and it needs to stay interface-first. Google's halfway there, which is as good as nowhere.
Safari on Windows is odd -- likely motivated by an easy port and a desire to boost market share. iPhone web apps are interesting but raise security questions. The new Apple.com is slick but busy, and every clueless CEO will soon be demanding their site look the same.
The BBC used a gross photo to illustrate plans to ban drinking on trains. I'm all for the ban. Also, Bacardi won't be happy. I may need a new category just for complaining about other outlets' photo choices.
Back in 2003 I wrote a university project arguing the web was broken and proposing fixes. Two years later, everyone's building my ideas without me. So I'm finally implementing Web2 myself, publicly, before someone patents the whole thing.
Worked until 10pm, brain is mush. The Daily Show is genius, wondering if Teen Titans is worth watching, want to mess with Ajax, and pop-up ads targeting Firefox users can go to hell.
A simple tool to convert between MySQL date format (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) and UNIX timestamps in either seconds or milliseconds since January 1st, 1970.
Blame Steve, it was all his idea. Jamie and Carly have also jumped on the bandwagon. If the feed borks after a while just press refresh and it'll start again :-) (There is also a no-frills version if you have a tiny monitor. If you're quite sad, you may wish to use popup stalkervision which updates faster but needs a faster connection)
Curl is a new web language co-founded by Tim Berners-Lee that replaces the HTML/JavaScript mess with one clean, powerful solution. It needs a plugin now, but so did Flash once. If IE bundles it, this could be huge.
