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When working becomes work
I have been a professional frontend developer for about 15 years now, and I always went the extra mile. I spend on average 5 hours a week of unpaid time to catch up with web platform features, reading about new stuff, trying out a lot, experimenting, and writing about it.
I was, and I am passionate about frontend development, but since some months, work is mostly work for me. It feels strange, because frontend development was always also my hobby, now is the first time that I do it because it's my job.
I still go the extra mile in my job and make sure the stuff I build is accessible, fast, and user-friendly, but I won't spend much time on learning on my free time. The passion to experiment and write will come back, it just needs time.
Take care!Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Understanding the cost of not being accessible
https://karlgroves.com/understanding-the-cost-of-not-being-accessible/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Keys To An Accessibility Mindset
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2023/02/keys-accessibility-mindset/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 An update on Robust Client-Side JavaScript
https://molily.de/update-on-robust-javascript/
»My hope is that the JavaScript community convenes in a respectful and productive way, takes criticism seriously, and makes radical technical and social changes.«Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Vague, But Exciting...
The Story of the World Wide Web
By Jay Hoffmann
https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/book/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 The Guide To Responsive Design In 2023 and Beyond
https://ishadeed.com/article/responsive-design/Also posted on: Mastodon
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Interop 2023
The focus areas for Interop 2023 are out and there is some great stuff in there.
My highlights are:
- :user-valid / :user-invalid
- @property CSS at-rule
- Subgrid
- Color Spaces and Functions
More about Interop 2023
- https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop/blob/main/20
- https://webkit.org/blog/13706/interop-2023/
- https://web.dev/interop-2023/
Also posted on: Mastodon
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✏️ Eleven years
Eleven years ago, I published my first article on justmarkup.com, and it's still alive.
https://justmarkup.com/notes/2023-01-31-eleven-years/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Technical writing resources
https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2023/01/28/technical-writing-resources/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Use the dialog element (reasonably)
https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2023/01/26/use-the-dialog-element.htmlAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Optimize Time to First Byte
If TTFB is slow, you have a very hard time to get good results for LCP and others.
https://web.dev/optimize-ttfb/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 SSSVG – Interactive SVG Reference
https://fffuel.co/sssvg/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Is your money being used to fund climate chaos?
https://bank.greenAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 A beginner’s guide to link and text #accessibility
https://blog.pope.tech/2023/01/01/link-and-text-accessibility/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Why we need new stories on #climate
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/12/rebecca-solnit-climate-crisis-popular-imagination-why-we-need-new-storiesAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Priority Hints and optimizing LCP
https://imkev.dev/fetchpriority-opportunityAlso posted on: Mastodon
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The #climate game
Can you reach net zero by 2050?
https://ig.ft.com/climate-game/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 On Building Successful Engineering Teams
https://drublic.de/blog/building-engineering-teamsAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 HTML with Superpowers
An Introduction to Web Components by @davatron5000@mastodon.social
https://htmlwithsuperpowers.netlify.appAlso posted on: Mastodon
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Share buttons
Recently, various people are looking again into ways to make a 'Share to Mastodon' button, which turns out to be difficult in terms of user experience.
As there is no single share domain like you have with closed social media sites, the share button needs to ask the user for their instance name in order to create a share link.
This made my think. Do we really need to include share buttons on all our sites? I say no, and therefore removed the share button from my site.
The browsers should offer a built-in share button. We already have the Web Share API, and Mastodon (at least the instance mastodon.social) already registered itself as a Web Share API.
So, if I add this page as a PWA on Android, I can use the native share functionality to share to this page. I hope browsers will offer this also on desktop browsers.
For example, Chromium already has a share button in their browser, they can add a 'add site' feature, where I can enter a URL. The browser would check if 'share_target' is defined in the web manifest, and add this page to the share options.
This way I would only need to add Mastodon once there and can easily share every page I visit to Mastodon. Make it happen, browser makers.
The other benefit of removing share buttons from individual sites, would be fewer bytes to serve to users. I assume the majority of users never use these individual share buttons anyway, still all have to download the bytes needed to show these buttons. Even if it's just a simple URL, if there are billions of requests, this also sums up, not to speaking about all the bloated share button JavaScript pages have integrated.Also posted on: Mastodon
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Did some cleanup on my site justmarkup.com
- Removed links to twitter
- Added links to Mastodon
- Removed share buttonAlso posted on: Mastodon
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The redesign @lynnandtonic@front-end.social did is once again a masterpiece.
https://lynnandtonic.com
See also the archive for previous redesigns: https://lynnandtonic.com/archive/ – all so good!Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Looking back at the past year (and a half) of accessibility work.
By @fossheim@tech.lgbt
https://fossheim.io/writing/posts/looking-back-at-the-past-year-and-a-half-of-accessibility-work/Also posted on: Mastodon
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Back to stupid
Arriving in Berlin after New Year's Eve.
All streets are filled with trash from Fireworks. So much trash.
People again go to work ill, infecting others.
Companies forcing people to come to the office.
Covid is still here, but the positive effects from the start are vanishing.
Why is it so hard for people not being stupid.
Also posted on: Mastodon
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git commit -m "change copyright note to 2023"
Happy New Year!
https://twitter.com/justmarkup/status/682888667338260480Also posted on: Mastodon
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🎄
Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 CSS :has()
https://12daysofweb.dev/2022/css-has-selector/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Create Low-Carbon Images
https://climateaction.tech/actions/create-low-carbon-images/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Explicit defaulting with inherit, initial, unset, and revert
https://www.matuzo.at/blog/2022/100daysof-day63/
#cssAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Network effect
https://bastianallgeier.com/notes/network-effect
> Decentralisation, Federation, The Indie Web: There were many groups silently working on solving the broken architecture of our digital social networks and communication channels – long, long before the "web 3" dudes tried to reframe it as their genius new idea.Also posted on: Mastodon
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Posting an idea, browser engine edition.
Yesterday I posted about the idea to have only one browser engine (https://bits.justmarkup.com/1671529425166/), which I also synched to Mastodon.
What followed were various replies, although mostly valuable, they immediately triggered my 'I'm stupid, all is stupid mood'. I tried to defend the idea for a while until I gave up, ignored the replies, and logged out of Mastodon. Sometimes I am not in the mood to argue on the internet, I need to learn to avoid posting controversial ideas in this mood, to avoid ruining my day – Lesson learned.
Coming back to the idea. Most replies assumed I want Blink (Chromium) to be the only browser engine, although I never said that. I don't want that, I want fair competition amongst browsers, I want to avoid a browser monopoly. I want a browser engine everybody can use, a browser engine financed by commercial browser companies. Browsers should compete on user experience, developer experience, not about how fast the browser is or what web platform features it supports.
Maybe it's a very stupid idea, but without stupid ideas, a lot of things would have never changed.
Man on the moon was also considered a stupid idea once: In 1957, Lee De Forest, the man who pioneered radio and invented the vacuum tube, said, A man-made moon voyage will never occur regardless of all future scientific advances.
There was one very valuable feedback, which made me sad and a bit angry. Chrome and Edge regularly ship serious accessibility bugs, making websites unusable for screen reader users. I learned that many screen reader users therefore have multiple browsers installed, because they learned that after every update it can happen that a browser introduces an accessibility bug, and to still be able to use the web, they need a fallback browser. This is unacceptable, browsers need to prioritize this issue and ensure this won't happen in the future.
Take care!
Also posted on: Mastodon
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💡 Maybe having only one browser engine will be the best after all.
For years, I keep saying that it's important to have different browser engines. Mainly because having a browser monopoly is terrible.
Thinking again about this a lot recently, I now believe, one browser engine for all browsers may be better for all.
How could this work? Every browser using the engine would have to invest amount X (based on the average of last year's daily users). The money would be used for two things.
First, an independent board of browser experts would be formed. They would make the decisions about what to work on next from the backlog, what should ship next… They can also let the average web developers vote on bugs, features, for example.
Secondly, the money would be used to pay people to develop and test. Browser could either assign their own engineers, or pay an external company like Igalia to do the work.
The browser engine also needs to work on every major OS (Windows, Apple, Linux, Android).
On top, browsers could also decide to work on their own features, but they would not automatically make it in the main browser engine, they would be like an extension. Every other browser company could add this extension for their own browser, but it will only be fully integrated in the main browser, once the board agreed on it.
This should avoid the monopoly issue, as there would most probably never be only on company controlling it all. It could still happen, but we currently have at least three billion/trillion companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google), and it's not very likely two of them give up on having their own browser.
In the end, this would mean that browsers would have to compete on user experience, privacy, developer experience. On the other hand, they would all work together to fix bugs, and implement new features.
For web developers, this would hopefully reduce the browser bugs they have to work around. They may be able to directly influence what bugs should be fixed, what browsers should be implemented next. They wouldn't need to buy devices to test a browser, every browser would be available on every device.
Pretty sure I miss a lot here, but I think this could work. A benefit for end users, developers, browser companies – the web.
Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 CSS Style Queries
https://ishadeed.com/article/css-container-style-queries/
Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 99 Good News Stories from 2022
https://futurecrunch.com/goodnews2022/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 #Accessibility starts with an organisation’s culture
https://dwpdigital.blog.gov.uk/2022/12/15/accessibility-starts-with-an-organisations-culture/
Do not consider something finished until you are sure it is accessible. Accessibility is not a choice, it is law. It is always a priority, and if you neglect it, you will create more work for yourself later.Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Command Bars
https://chriscoyier.net/2022/12/18/command-bars/
I use command bars a lot in DevTools, VS Code, GitHub... and agree with Chris that it would be great to have them in more web apps.Also posted on: Mastodon
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Interesting to see browsers now implement CSS features (nesting, media query ranges), focusing solely on developer experience.
Also posted on: Mastodon
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✏️ Waiting for the magic fix
At the moment, at least in Germany, the politicians are waiting for a magic technology to end the climate crisis instead of acting now. It's like waiting to win at the lottery instead of reconstructing your finances.
Or, compare this to *fixing* accessibility. Yes, we could wait for a magic fix, a magic' npm install accessibility' which will automatically fix all accessibility issues. Technically, this is not totally unrealistic, giving enough time, money, and engineers. It may be able to make most sites accessible, from a technical point of view.
Web accessibility is not only technical, it's about humans, about ensuring people can use your site – enjoy using your site. It takes education among the whole company, thinking about accessibility in the whole process – copy writing, designing, managing, developing, testing…
A technical solution will never provide this, never!
Don't wait for the magic fix, educate people, act now!Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 One day we'll have a fully customisable select
by https://front-end.social/@hdv
https://www.htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2022/13/Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 New Viewport Units
https://12daysofweb.dev/2022/new-viewport-units/Also posted on: Mastodon
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At this point, I can only hope Google will make accessibility a criteria for SEO.
They did the same for performance with Core Web Vitals, and can do the same for accessibility with their lighthouse tests (axe).
This automatic tests will never tell you if a website is really accessible, you need manual testing for this, but they at least tell you about very obvious issues (missing alt, missing label, color contrast...) you need to fix.
Also posted on: Mastodon
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📚 Book Review – Engineering Management for the Rest of Us
https://justmarkup.com/notes/2022-12-06-engineering-management-for-the-rest-of-us/Also posted on: Mastodon
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AI writing code
It's 2022, we have various AI-powered tools available, which can write code for us based on written instructions.
Does this mean we will soon not be needed anymore?
No, unless, all you do, is writing code examples.
Writing actual code is, at least for me, a very small part of my job as a frontend developer, and I would even argue one of the least important.
It's far more important to communicate well, make decisions, be able to adapt. Computers are not good at this, humans are.
AI generated code can help us with the boring parts of coding, in the end, it's still us who finish it.
Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 How we’re making Firefox accessible and delightful for everyone
- Text recognition on macOS
- Making the web faster for screen readers
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-accessibility-text-recognition-screen-readers/Also posted on: Mastodon
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Mark all as read
After being on sick leave for a week, I returned to 100s of emails, unread chat messages in Slack and Teams, an endless list of unread articles in my RSS reader, and much more stuff I am supposed to look into.
It's just too much, so I did something I never did before – marked all this as read, announced in the public channels that they should resend me anything important, and moved on.
Feels wrong, feels good.Also posted on: Mastodon
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📎 What Happened To Text Inputs?
https://briefs.video/videos/what-happened-to-text-inputs/
This video is the story of how inputs became onputs then became something even less logical and more bad.
by @heydon@front-end.socialAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Which Mastodon servers are the accounts you follow on?
https://jeffy.info/2022/11/19/following-mastodon-servers.htmlAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Web Component News - Fall 2022 by https://mastodon.social/@davatron5000
https://daverupert.com/2022/11/web-component-news-fall-2022/Also posted on: Mastodon
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😃 You can now read my social posts on my page in binary code.
https://bits.justmarkup.com/?binary=true
Add ?binary=true as a URL parameter or use the button (yes, a real button) on the page.
#FunWithDevelopingAlso posted on: Mastodon
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You can now also find me via justmarkup@justmarkup.com on Mastodon. 🔎
All thanks to the beauty of Webfinger.
How to: https://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2022/11/05/mastodon-own-donain-without-hosting-server.html
Link via: https://mastodon.social/@rikschenninkAlso posted on: Mastodon
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📎 Day 40: Unlayered styles by https://mastodon.social/@matuzo
Interesting, I somehow assumed layers have higher priority than unlayered styles. Need tot look more into Cascade layers to better understand them.Also posted on: Mastodon
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FART (Flash of inAccurate coloR Theme)
It's now official, the acronym FART (term coined by Chris Coyier) is officially a term of art in computer science. Via https://chriscoyier.net/2022/11/13/its-official-💨/r
FART also is an (unofficial) acronym for: Find and Replace Text (software), Fire Alarm Response Team, ...Also posted on: Mastodon
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Hello from bits.justmarkup.com
Also posted on: Mastodon