I really enjoyed this chat with Marc:
I recently sat down with Jeremy Keith for a spontaneous conversation that quickly turned into a deep dive into something we both care a lot about: events, community, and why we keep putting ourselves through the joy and pain of running conferences.
A great interview with Ted Chiang:
Predicting the most likely next word is different from having correct information about the world, which is why LLMs are not a reliable way to get the answers to questions, and I don’t think there is good evidence to suggest that they will become reliable. Over the past couple of years, there have been some papers published suggesting that training LLMs on more data and throwing more processing power at the problem provides diminishing returns in terms of performance. They can get better at reproducing patterns found online, but they don’t become capable of actual reasoning; it seems that the problem is fundamental to their architecture. And you can bolt tools onto the side of an LLM, like giving it a calculator it can use when you ask it a math problem, or giving it access to a search engine when you want up-to-date information, but putting reliable tools under the control of an unreliable program is not enough to make the controlling program reliable. I think we will need a different approach if we want a truly reliable question answerer.
SPAs were a clever solution to a temporary limitation. But that limitation no longer exists.
Use modern server rendering. Use actual pages. Animate with CSS. Preload with intent. Ship less JavaScript.
A fantastic explanation of the building blocks of SVG, illustrated—as always—with Josh’s interactive examples.
In which I answer questions about blogging.
I’ve put a copy of this on my own site too.
And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).
I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.
I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.
If you like the prospect of an old man ranting at clouds, this is for you.
- Springy easing with
linear()- Typed custom properties
- View transitions for page navigation
- Transition animation for
dialogandpopover- Transition animation for
details- Animated adaptive gradient text
Here’s a nice interview with Rich all about how things work at Clearleft.
Finally! View transitions for multi-page apps (AKA websites) will be landing in Chrome soon—here’s hoping other browsers follow suit. Mozilla are up for it. Apple are, as usual, silent on their intentions.
Nice to see a blog post of mine referenced to show that this is a highly-requested feature. Blogging gets results, folks!
As a self-initiated learner, being able to view source brought to mind the experience of a slow walk through someone else’s map.
This ability to “observe” software makes HTML special to work with.
I somehow missed this when it came out in January but Amber just pointed me to it—an interview with Chris about HTML web components, available for your huffduffing pleasure.
A terrific interview with Deb Chachra. Her new book, How Infrastructure Works sounds excellent!
If you, like me, feel that view transitions—especially on multi-page apps—would be a good thing for browsers to prioritise for interoperability, give this issue a thumbs-up.
Engineers who care about the open culture of the web should recognize that the threats to that culture come not only from Digital Enclosure by large, private companies of the most important pieces of the web.
They should also recognize the risks of Technical Enclosure, and the non-technical value of the #ViewSource affordance in perpetuating the open culture of web development.
Some lovely scroll-driven animations illustrate this great little microsite.
There’s something very pleasy about the chunky design that harkens back to the Zeldmanesque early web.
This is a terrrific presentation by Chris, going through some practical implementations of modern CSS: logical properties, viewport units, grid, subgrid, container queries, cascade layers, new colour spaces, and view transitions.
This is a very handy tip if you’re adding view transitions to your website!
Some great ideas for view transitionts in here! Also:
If you look at any of the examples on a browser that does not support them, the pages still function just fine. The transitions are an extra that’s layered on top if and when your browser supports them. Another concrete example of progressive enhancement in practice.