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Web & Frontend

The most popular blog posts about web & frontend on Hacker News. 499 posts.

2025
185

Just use a button

One of the weirdest “debates” I seem to perpetually have with framework-enthusiastic developers is whether or not a <div> is “just as good” as a <button>. Spoiler: it’s not. Let’s dig in. The problem Among the React crowd, and also among people who seem to enjoy HTMX, I see a lot this… <div onclick="showSignIn()">…

193

A masochist's guide to web development

I have recently worked on making a web application out of my latest Rubik’s cube optimal solver . This involved building a rather complex C code base (with multithreading, SIMD, callback functions and whatnot) to WebAssembly via Emscripten , and writing a minimal amount of JavaScript and HTML for the frontend.

198

The case against conversational interfaces

Conversational interfaces are a bit of a meme. Every couple of years a shiny new AI development emerges and people in tech go "This is it! The next computing paradigm is here! We'll only use natural language going forward!". But then nothing actually changes and we continue using computers the way w

204

Springs and bounces in native CSS

The “linear()” timing function is a game-changer; it allows us to model physics-based motion right in vanilla CSS! That said, there are some limitations and quirks to be aware of. I’ve been experimenting with this API for a while now, and in this post, I’ll share all of the tips and tricks I’ve learned for using it…

206

Web search on the Anthropic API

Claude can now search the web through the API, giving users access to real-time information with citations for building up-to-date AI applications. Unknown block type "latestUpdates", specify a component for it in the `components.

207

RFC 9839 and Bad Unicode

Unicode is good. If you’re designing a data structure or protocol that has text fields, they should contain Unicode characters encoded in UTF-8. There’s another question, though: “ Which Unicode characters?” The answer is “Not all of them, please exclude some.”