In React, we don't update the DOM directly, we tell React what we want the DOM to look like, and React tackles the rest. But how exactly does it do this? In this tutorial, we'll unpack exactly when and why React re-renders, and how we can use this information to optimize the performance of our React apps.
I first heard about the dinosaur 🦕 VS shark 🦈 analogy when I read this excellent article about relational databases:
We should look for ways to make reading, publishing, and community services all play nicely together. I'm calling this model "the unbundled web," and I think RSS should be the primary method of interop.
Firefox can now do offline and privacy-preserving translation of eight languages with more on the way. Powered by open-source and machine-learning.
Today, Let's Encrypt announced that they are enabling an extension to DNS CAA records known as ACME-CAA ( RFC 8657 ). This came as a surprise to me, but a very pleasant one, since I wrote the ACME-CAA specification back in 2016 with Let's Encrypt in mind, and it was finally published as RFC 8657 back in 2019. To my…
After 25 years of working for, on and with the web, I am looking at the current state of it and I don’t like it. There is still a lot of beautiful, creative and amazing work out there, but on the whole, we lost an amazing opportunity. In its place we have a consumption machine that creates bubbles and assumes new…
Even if you already know a bit (or a lot) of SwiftUI, Stanford’s course is incredible, amazing, wonderful, AND FREE!
It's been a while since I introduced a new syntax to the css-doodle project to solve my own problems. While I'm not sure it would be useful elsewhere, I need to make some notes before I forget the details.
Does it ever feel like the internet is getting worse? That’s been my impression for the last decade. The internet feels now like it consists of ten big sites, plus fifty auxiliary sites that come up whenever you search for something outside of the everyday ten. It feels like it’s harder to find amateur opinions on…
The orange site is currently discussing an article about Server-Sent Events, especially as compared with WebSockets (and the emerging WebTransport). Both the article and discussion are well-informed, but I think they miss out on one aspect that has fairly deep implications.
Just about everybody who has ever used a service on the web has experienced the following account creation follow:
Although Tailwind does have some benefits, ultimately it’s just one more thing to learn.
While I wasn’t paying attention, PHP got quite good
Daydreaming a post-HTML Utopia
Understand the core problems state management libraries need to solve. And how the proliferation of modern libraries address them in new ways.
Looking back, and forward
I'm on a bit of a mission this year to bring back the spirit of the old web. The creativity and flair of the late 90s and early 2000s. So I've recreated some of that old web magic, in modern HTML, CSS and JS.
But these browsers have one great feature: They give a very good indication whether a page is worth reading. If these browsers don't display anything, or the display looks shitty, there usually is not much content, either (In a few cases I looked up the page with something more advanced (e.g., Arena), and I was always…
From jQuery widgets to the first frameworks, component-centric view layers like React, and today's full-stack frameworks: a look back at each era of JavaScript development and what it taught us.
Password requirements are weird. It seems impossible to set a new password in many websites. Why?
A cursory review of all the non-metasearch, indexing search engines I have been able to find.
Meta page describing Gwern.net, the self-documenting website’s implementation and experiments for better ‘semantic zoom’ of hypertext; technical decisions using Markdown and static hosting.
Some folks claim that Apple's mandated inadequacy for browsers and their engines is somehow beneficial to the cause of ensuring a diverse pool of web engines. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but to understand why, we need to understand how browsers are funded. With that understanding, we can see that not only…
Most of the complexity and nuance of the Web is stuffed into browser engines. Even though they’re a huge burden to develop and maintain, the world is lucky enough to have three major ones, and they’re all Open Source.
Even with a lot of help from a good text editor, writing HTML can be a drag. Nice documents end up as tag-swamps with little bits of content perched atop hills of tabs. Editing them becomes a test of patience and we get sick at the thought of having to look at our once-loved text. It doesn't have to be like this!…
