WDRL — Edition 217: Easy Hard Web Development, Branding Details and Unidirectional Data Flows with Server-Sent Events

Celý článek

Hey,

Every profession is a wide field where many people find their very own, custom niches. So is design and web development today. I started building my first website with framesets and HTML4.0, images and a super limited set of CSS, and oh fancy, gifs and inline JavaScript (remember the onclick="" attribute?) about one and a half decades ago and learned the initial, absolutely necessary skills for that in four days.

But times are very different today, and when I see how capable the web has become, it’s reasonable to say that it can give people a hard time to start out in this field, and it can be reasonable for people to say that they want to focus on one specific part of web development only. Nowadays we have JavaScript developers who don’t know much HTML or CSS and we have developers who aren’t able to work on a modern JavaScript stack but are heroes in what they achieve with CSS. There are people specialising in Webfont loading, in web performance, in security, in privacy, or in usability.

Web development has grown up to be a solid profession — something that needs a vast amount of knowledge to be an expert in it, something that cannot be learned anymore in a few days. Instead, we’re now able to build applications in the web and do things I could never imagine the web to be capable of 16 years ago. If we look at how much effort it is to get into woodworking, for example, we realize that web development isn’t much different. Of course one can achieve some result in a few hours but producing something that lasts, is solid and looks great requires a lot of knowledge, experience, failures and patience. So does building a great web experience.

News

• In the upcoming Chrome version 65 the browser will block certificates from Symantec’s Legacy PKI and blocks the download-attribute if the target is a cross-origin reference to ensure its integrity and protect the safety of users.
• Google Chrome 64 is out and brings ResizeObserver, a way stronger popup blocker mechanism and window.alert does not change the focus anymore. It also changes the preload behavior of media files to metadata only, saving bandwidth.

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• Frank Chimero has published a new article in which he explains how normal it is to struggle with web developers’ constantly changing technologies. It is also a fun journey through starting out in a business to exploring the in-depth details of a craft. From knowing how to build a website in general to knowing how to best load a web font which can be a complete job for one developer nowadays.
• Tim Kadlec is questioning the two faces of Google AMP and says it can be either a Google search marketing tool or a tool for the open web to improve site performance but not both, as they’re trying to be.

UI/UX

• This case study of how the Lufthansa brand evolved its design language and logo over time, including the latest subtle but still very different branding change shows how much small details matter to improve a brand’s visual appearance.

Accessibility

• Marcy Sutton’s slidedeck “Automating peace of mind with Accessibility Testing & Continuous Integration” gives an idea and some hints on how we can test continuously the accessibility of websites.

JavaScript

• Dave Rupert shares a very simple, modern way to create a parallax effect by manipulating CSS Custom Properties via JavaScript.
• For unidirectional data flow we usually use WebSockets. But with HTTP/2 we can use Server-Sent Events as well as Martin Chaov explains in his exemplary article.

Work & Life

• Jon Gold on finding the exhaust ports, on how technology influences us.

Go beyond…

• Stephen Ilardi shares why personal tech is depressing and that it’s pshychologically way more than just the problem of envying other people on Instagram.

—Anselm