Writing
Posts, links, and the occasional book review.
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Book Review -
When should you be using Web Workers? — DasSur.ma
∞ PermalinkSurma argues, compellingly, for why web workers need to take a more prominent role in JS-based applications. It's not just about the raw performance benefits, but the inclusivity that good performance brings.
Unless a globally launched framework labels itself as exclusively targeting the users of the Wealthy Western Web, its has a responsibility to help developers target every phone on The Widening Performance Gap™️ spectrum.
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Characteristics of a Strong Performance Culture
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Reducing motion with the picture element
∞ PermalinkI always associated prefers-reduced-motion with CSS, but of course the picture element accepts media queries!
A quick post from Brad showing how you can use the
pictureelement to serve up a static image instead of an animated gif when the "reduce motion" preference is enabled.Examples like this are why I love how the whole suite of responsive images standards (
srcset,sizesandpicture) turned out. I know some weren't as pleased with the final product, but there's so much darn flexibility (ahem) here to enable us to account for scenarios, like this, that only really emerged after those standards were created. -
Why we focus on frontend performance - Technology in government
∞ PermalinkFor government, GOV.UK is often the only place a user can get information. If the website were to perform badly, we become a single point of failure.
Great rundown of why performance is so important to GOV.UK and how the context of their visitors can vary dramatically, even within the same city.
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New Network Fallacies
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AddyOsmani.com - Native image lazy-loading for the web!
∞ PermalinkIn this post, we'll look at the new loading attribute which brings native <img> and <iframe> lazy-loading to the web!
Exciting to finally see this ship! Folks have been asking for a standards-based way to support lazy-loading images for years.
Gives me hope that maybe, someday, we'll have element queries.
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Adactio: Journal—Dev perception
∞ PermalinkWhen we’re evaluating technologies for appropriateness, I hope that we will do so through the lens of what’s best for users, not what we feel compelled to use based on a gnawing sense of irrelevancy driven by the perceived popularity of newer technologies.
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Who has the fastest website in F1? - JakeArchibald.com
∞ PermalinkI always like seeing how other folks handle performance audits. Here, Jake walks through 10 F1 sites, auditing them primarily with WebpageTest and a smattering of Chrome Dev Tools.
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Learning to Learn | CSS-Tricks
∞ PermalinkAcademic background or not, technical education doesn’t stop once you get a job. On the contrary: nothing in tech stays in one place, and the single most valuable skill you can possess to remain employable over time is learning how to learn.
Some great advice here from Sarah on learning.
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Making Sense of Chrome Lite Pages
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Performance Budgets That Stick
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AddyOsmani.com - JavaScript Loading Priorities in Chrome
∞ PermalinkHandy little reference from Addy Osmani showing how Chrome handles JavaScript scheduling.
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Preloading Fonts and the Puzzle of Priorities - Andy Davies
∞ PermalinkI’ve being using preload with clients over the last few years but I have never been completely satisfied with the results. I’ve also seen some things I hadn’t quite expected in page load waterfalls so decided to dig deeper.
Excellent work digging deeper into preload by Mr. Davies.
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Book Review And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
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Book Review The Business of Expertise
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SpeedCurve | JavaScript Dominates Browser CPU
∞ PermalinkTen years ago the network was the main bottleneck. Today, the main bottleneck is JavaScript.
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What Hooks Mean for Vue | CSS-Tricks
∞ PermalinkA very approachable explanation from Sarah about what Hooks are and the problems they solve for Vue.
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Book Review Mismatch
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Limiting JavaScript?