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.
- Basic functionality should work on any device that can access the web.
- Extras and flourishes are treated as progressive enhancements for modern devices.
- The UI can look different and even clunky on older devices and browsers, as long as it doesn’t break rule #1.
Put the kettle on; it’s another epic data-driven screed from Alex. The footnotes on this would be a regular post on any other blog (and yes, even the footnotes have footnotes).
This is a spot-on description of the difference between back-end development and front-end development:
Code that runs on the server can be fully costed. Performance and availability of server-side systems are under the control of the provisioning organisation, and latency can be actively managed by developers and DevOps engineers.
Code that runs on the client, by contrast, is running on The Devil’s Computer. Nothing about the experienced latency, client resources, or even available APIs are under the developer’s control.
Client-side web development is perhaps best conceived of as influence-oriented programming. Once code has left the datacenter, all a web developer can do is send thoughts and prayers.
As a result, an unreasonably effective strategy is to send less code. In practice, this means favouring HTML and CSS over JavaScript, as they degrade gracefully and feature higher compression ratios. Declarative forms generate more functional UI per byte sent. These improvements in resilience and reductions in costs are beneficial in compounding ways over a site’s lifetime.
I want to be a part of a frontend culture that accepts and promotes our responsibilities to others, rather than wallowing in self-centred “DX” puffery. In the hierarchy of priorities, users must come first.
Alex doesn’t pull his punches in this four-part truth-telling:
The React anti-pattern of hugely bloated single-page apps has to stop. And we can stop it.
Success or failure is in your hands, literally. Others in the equation may have authority, but you have power.
Begin to use that power to make noise. Refuse to go along with plans to build YAJSD (Yet Another JavaScript Disaster). Engineering leaders look to their senior engineers for trusted guidance about what technologies to adopt. When someone inevitably proposes the React rewrite, do not be silent. Do not let the bullshit arguments and nonsense justifications pass unchallenged. Make it clear to engineering leadership that this stuff is expensive and is absolutely not “standard”.
We’re all tired of: write some code, come back to it in six months, try to make it do more, and find the whole project is broken until you upgrade everything.
Progressive enhancement allows you to do the opposite: write some code, come back to it in six months, and it’s doing more than the day you wrote it!
It’s a shame that the newest Safari release is overshadowed by Apple’s shenanigans and subsequent U-turn because there’s some great stuff in there.
I really like what they’re doing with web apps added to the dock:
Safari adds support for the
shortcutsmanifest member on macOS Sonoma. This gives you a mechanism in the manifest file for defining custom menu commands that will appear in the File menu and the Dock context menu.
How I switched to high-resolution maps on The Session without degrading performance.
Having fun with view transitions and scroll-driven animations.
Don’t replace. Augment.
Apple’s policy of locking browser updates to operating system updates is bad for the web and bad for the planet.
Kiss your service workers goodbye on iOS.