Ben makes the very good point that template literals allow you to do a lot of useful stuff that previously would’ve required a library:
Template Literals afford a lot of power with no library overhead. I will definitely continue to use them when complexity of handlebars or similar is overkill.
Chris made a similar observation a little while back. Throw in a little script like lit-html and now you’ve got DOM-diffing too. You might not need insert-current-framework-name after all.
Kinda cool that these mini-libraries exist that do useful things for us, so when situations arise that we want a feature that a big library has, but don’t want to use the whole big library, we got smaller options.
If we were to follow Jiro’s and his apprentices’ journeys and imagine web development the same way then would we ask of our junior developers to spend the first year of their career only on HTML. No CSS. No JavaScript. No frameworks. Only HTML. Only once HTML has been mastered do we move onto CSS. And only once that has been mastered do we move onto JavaScript.
I can’t recommend React to any project or customer anymore.
Using almost any other modern alternative, you will save time, money and nerves, even if you haven’t used them before.
Don’t stick to technology just because you know it.
Practice Progressive Enhancement.
Build first and foremost with forgiving technologies, declarative technologies, and forward and backward compatible coding techniques.
All content should be readable without scripting.
If it’s worth building on the web, it’s worth building it robustly, and building it to last.
And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).
I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.
I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.
If you like the prospect of an old man ranting at clouds, this is for you.
Try writing your HTML in HTML, your CSS in CSS, and your JavaScript in JavaScript.
Naming custom elements, naming attributes, the single responsibility principle, and communicating across components.
HTML web components for augmenting date inputs.
Trying to understand a different mindset to mine.
It’s not just about finding the issues—it’s about finding the issues at the right time.