Seva Zaikov - Single Page Application Is Not a Silver Bullet

Building a robust frontend using progressive enhancement - Service Manual - GOV.UK

Oh, how I wish that every team building for the web would use this sensible approach!

The Web’s Next Transition | Epic Web Dev by Kent C. Dodds

The primary benefit of Progressive Enhancement is not that “your app works without JavaScript” (though that’s a nice side-benefit) but rather that the mental model is drastically simpler.

I think that’s the primary benefit to developers. The primary benefit to users is that what you build will faster and more resilient.

Anyway, this is a really good deep dive into different architectural choices for building on the web. Although I was surprised by this assertion in the first paragraph:

The most popular architecture employed by web developers today is the Single Page App (SPA)

Citation needed. Single Page Apps do indeed dominate the discussion, but I don’t think that necessarily matches the day-to-day reality.

The balance has shifted away from SPAs | Read the Tea Leaves

I’ve got the same hunch as Nolan:

There’s a feeling in the air. A zeitgeist. SPAs are no longer the cool kids they once were 10 years ago.

And I think he’s right to frame the appeal of single page apps in terms of control (even if that control comes at the expense of performance and first-load user experience).

In Defence of the Single Page Application | William Kennedy

This is very convincing.

WICG/shared-element-transitions

I’m very excited about this proposal for animating transitions between web pages!

I’m less excited about doing it for single page apps, but I get why it’s the simplest place to start.

This builds on Jake’s earlier proposal which I always thought was excellent and much needed. I’m not the only one. Chris agrees.