Write Code That Runs in the Browser, or Write Code the Browser Runs - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

So instead of asking yourself, “How can I write code that does what I want?” Consider asking yourself, “Can I write code that ties together things the browser already does to accomplish what I want (or close enough to it)?”

Write Code That Runs in the Browser, or Write Code the Browser Runs - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Tagged with

Related links

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Some neat CSS from Tess that’s a great example of progressive enhancement; these book covers look good in all browsers, but they look even better in some.

Tagged with

Try text scaling support in Chrome Canary - Josh Tumath

There’s a new meta tag on the block. This time it’s for allowing system-level text sizing to apply to your website.

Tagged with

Tagged with

Web Backstories: Shadow DOM | Igalia

Eric Meyer and Brian Kardell chat with Jay Hoffmann and Jeremy Keith about Shadow DOM’s backstory and long origins

I enjoyed this chat, and it wasn’t just about Shadow DOM; it was about the history of chasing the dream of encapsulation on the web.

Tagged with

Escape Velocity: Break Free from Framework Gravity — Den Odell

React is no longer just a library. It’s a full ecosystem that defines how frontend developers are allowed to think.

Real talk!

Browsers now ship View Transitions, Container Queries, and smarter scheduling primitives. The platform keeps evolving at a fair pace, but most teams won’t touch these capabilities until React officially wraps them in a hook or they show up in Next.js docs.

Innovation keeps happening right across the ecosystem, but for many it only becomes “real” once React validates the approach. Which is fine, assuming you enjoy waiting for permission to use the platform you’re already building on.

Zing!

The critique isn’t that React is bad, but that treating any single framework as infrastructure creates blind spots in how we think and build. When React becomes the lens through which we see the web, we stop noticing what the platform itself can already do, and we stop reaching for native solutions because we’re waiting for the framework-approved version to show up first.

If your team’s evolution depends on a single framework’s roadmap, you are not steering your product; you are waiting for permission to move.

Tagged with

Related posts

Why use React?

Or, more precisely, why use React *in the browser*?

Jake Archibald is speaking at Web Day Out

The sixth speaker is revealed—only two more to go!

Harry Roberts is speaking at Web Day Out

This line-up just gets better and better! You’ll want to be in Brighton on March 12th, 2026.

Underlines and line height

How to make the distance of link underlines proportional to the line height of the text.

Style your underlines

Make your links beautiful and accessible.