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Why Johnny Won't Upgrade
Software distribution has over the years gone through an enormous revolution in efficiency. Originally, software was developed on things called ‘plug boards’, a matrix of sockets that allowed quick (or so they thought) re-configuration of computing hardware to adapt it to different problems. This was soon followed by…
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Open-Source Virtual Background
With many of us around the globe under shelter in place due to COVID-19 video calls have become a lot more common. In particular, ZOOM has controversially become very popular. Arguably Zoom’s most interesting feature is the “ Virtual Background ” support which allows users to replace the background behind them in…
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Creating a Pencil Effect in SVG
Dragons Abound produces maps in SVG, which is a vector graphics format. Vector graphics have a lot of features (such as lossless zoom) tha...
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Stealing secrets from developers using WebSockets
This is a story of a convoluted, not-very-useful method for extracting codez from unwitting JavaScript developers working on top secret…
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The Original Cookie specification from 1997 was GDPR compliant (2019)
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The Al Jaffee / Mad Magazine Fold-In Effect in CSS
After 65 years at Mad Magazine, comic artist Al Jaffee announced his retirement. Jaffee was best known for his Mad Fold-Ins, where folding the page would reveal a hidden message in the artwork. Plenty of examples can be found on the web. The problem is, they all show the before and after statically, side by
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Rediscovering the Small Web
Most websites today are built like commercial products by professionals and marketers, optimised to draw the largest audience, generate engagement and 'convert'. But there is also a smaller, less-visible web designed by regular people to simply to share their interests and hobbies with the world. A web that is…
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Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files
Or, the JAM stack.
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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
I've decided to stop using dark mode across all of my devices, because research suggests that going to the dark side ain't all that.
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React is becoming a black box
The VP of Engineering at Cognition, the applied AI lab behind Devin. Building the future of software engineering with AI.
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Building a patient monitoring system with Go and Vue in 3 days
We helped frontline to fight against covid-19 by creating a Realtime Patient Monitoring system. In this blog post you can find out how we did it using go and vuejs
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How Stripe Designs Websites (2017)
Developer and writer.
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Openstreetmap is having a moment
The Billion Dollar Dataset Next Door
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Stop donating your customers' data to Google Analytics
In 2020, with better alternatives available, using Google Analytics (GA) to track your web usage is n...
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Ignore AMP
In 2018, my recommendation was to avoid AMP, to use AMP for the most relevant pages, or to use AMP only. In 2020 my recommendation is to ignore it, because AMP largely appears meaningless now. <cite>Upgrade Your HTML II</cite> gives an opinionated idea why.
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Is WebP really better than JPEG?
If you have used tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, you probably have run into a suggestion to use “next-gen image formats”, namely Google’s WebP image format. Google claims that their WebP…
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Unauthorized access to cameras in Safari on macOS and iOS
A vulnerability in Safari allowed hackers to access the iPhone and Macbook cameras. (CVE-2020-3852, CVE-2020-3864, CVE-2020-3865, CVE-2020-3885, CVE-2020-3887 & CVE-2020-9784)
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I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action
Yesterday or so a new initiative I Love MDN was unveiled. People can show their appreciation for the MDN staff and volunteers by leaving a comment.
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The Era of the Trident Engine
About the rise and fall of Microsoft's take on the web.
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The UX of Lego Interface Panels
LEGO interface panels are beautiful, iconic, and great for learning interface design basics. I bought 52 of them from BrickLink to explore the design, layout and organisation of complex interfaces.
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Google Is Not God of the Web
Almost exactly two years ago, I warned that Google was on track to replace God of us all. Last month, The Verge's Dieter Bohn reported ...
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Userscripts Are Fun and Are Still Very Much Relevant
Sharing my thoughts on userscripts, a phenomenon the swept the internet back in the 00s.
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Lesser-known Web APIs
API is the acronym for Application Programming Interface which defines interactions between multiple software architecture layers. Programmers carry out…
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Why Did Mozilla Remove XUL Add-Ons?
TL;DR: Firefox used to have a great extension mechanism based on the XUL and XPCOM. This mechanism served us well for a long time. However, it came at an ever-growing cost in terms of maintenance for both Firefox developers and add-on developers. On one side, this growing cost progressively killed any effort to make…