Instead of an omnibus mega-post, this investigation into JavaScript-first frontend culture and how it broke US public services has been released in four parts. Other posts in the series: Reckoning: Part 2 — Object Lesson Reckoning: Part 3 — Caprock Reckoning: Part 4 — The Way Out When you live in the shadow of a...

The W3C Technical Architecture Group1 is out with a blog post and an updated Finding regarding Google's recent announcement that it will not be imminently removing third-party cookies. The current TAG members are competent technologists who have a long history of nuanced advice that looks past the shouting to get at...

There are only two-and-a-half reasons to build a browser, and they couldn't be more different in intent and outcome, even when they look superficially similar. Learning to tell the difference is helpful for browser project managers and engineers, but also working web developers who struggle to develop theories of...

Update: OWA is out with an open letter appealing to Apple to do better. If you care about the future of the web, I encourage you to sign it, particularly if you live in the EU or build products for the common market. After weeks of confusion and chaos, Apple's plan to kneecap the web has crept into view, menacing a...

The global device and network situation continues to evolve, and this series is an effort to provide an an up-to-date understanding for working web developers. So what's changed since last year? And how much HTML, CSS, and (particularly) JavaScript can a new project afford? ContentsThe Budget,...

The tech news is chockablock1 with antitrust rumblings and slow-motion happenings. Eagle-eyed press coverage, regulatory reports, and legal discovery have comprehensively documented the shady dealings of Apple and Google's app stores. Pressure for change has built to an unsustainable level. Something's gotta give....

If you're a web developer not living under a rock, you probably saw last week's big Safari 16.4 reveal. There's much to cheer, but we need to talk about why this mega-release is happening now, and what it means for the future. ContentsWebKit's Roaring TwentiesGood Things Come In SixesWhat Changed?Headcount Is...

For most of the past decade, I have spent a considerable fraction of my professional life consulting with teams building on the web. It is not going well. Not only are new services being built to a self-defeatingly low UX and performance standard, existing experiences are pervasively re-developed on unspeakably...

TL;DR: To serve users at the 75th percentile (P75) of devices and networks, we can now afford ~150KiB of HTML/CSS/fonts and ~300-350KiB of JavaScript (gzipped). This is a slight improvement on last year's budgets, thanks to device and network improvements. Meanwhile, sites continue to send more script than is...

Gentle reader, I made a terrible mistake. Yes, that's right: I read the comments on a MacRumors article. At my age, one knows better. And yet. As penance for this error, and for being short with Miguel, I must deconstruct the ways Apple has undermined browser engine diversity. Contrary to claims of Apple partisans,...

Since 2015 I have been lucky to collaborate with more than a hundred teams building PWAs and consult on some of the world's largest sites. Engineers and managers on these teams universally want to deliver great experiences and have many questions about how to approach common challenges. Thankfully, much of what once...

If you work on a browser, you will often hear remarks like, Why don't you just put [popular framework] in the browser? This is a good question — or at least it illuminates how browser teams think about tradeoffs. Spoiler: it's gnarly. Before we get into it, let's make the subtext of the proposal explicit: Libraries...