web-platform-tests dashboard

Frameworks without the framework: why didn’t we think of this sooner? • Svelte

Interesting ideas around front-end frameworks:

The common view is that frameworks make it easier to manage the complexity of your code: the framework abstracts away all the fussy implementation details with techniques like virtual DOM diffing. But that’s not really true. At best, frameworks move the complexity around, away from code that you had to write and into code you didn’t.

Instead, the reason that ideas like React are so wildly and deservedly successful is that they make it easier to manage the complexity of your concepts. Frameworks are primarily a tool for structuring your thoughts, not your code.

The proposed alternative here is to transpile from the idiom of the framework into vanilla JavaScript as part of the build process, which should result in better performance and interoperability.

Taking Chrome DevTools outside of the browser. — Kenneth Auchenberg

Kenneth has isolated Chrome’s dev tools into its own app. This is a big step towards this goal:

Why are DevTools still bundled with the browsers? What if clicking “inspect element” simply started an external DevTools app?

With DevTools separated from one specific browser, a natural next step would be making the DevTools app work with other browsers.

Thinking about the HTML and XML

Some musings from Norman Walsh. I have to say, I’m still not entirely sure why the HTML/XML Task Force exists. The “use cases” described here are vague and handwavey.

Things you forgot (or never knew) because of React - Josh Collinsworth blog

I don’t think most people using React on a regular basis realize quite how much it’s fallen behind.

Following on from Josh’s earlier post where he said “React isn’t great at anything except being popular”, here are the details.

Every decision React’s made since its inception circa 2013 is another layer of tech debt—one that its newer contemporaries aren’t constrained by.

This is particularly damning:

No other modern frontend framework is as stubbornly incompatible with the platform as React is.

The good news:

React is a bit like a git branch that’s fallen well behind main. You might not realize it, if React is the star your galaxy orbits around, but…well, frontend has moved on. The ecosystem has taken those ideas and run with them to make things that are even better.

Surfin’ Safari - Blog Archive » The HTML5 Parsing Algorithm

The latest Webkit nightly includes the HTML5 parsing algorithm. Now it's a race between Firefox, Safari and Chrome to see which will be first (non-beta) browser to ship with the new parser.