October 2020 dev links
5 most annoying website features I face as a blind person every single day
These are the five most annoying inaccessible web elements I face as a blind screen reader user every day, and how to fix them.
Just how much faster is vanilla JS than frameworks?
The full results are really interesting, but here’s the quick overview of what he found:
- Preact initially renders the UI 3-4x faster than React.
- Vanilla JS initially renders the UI anywhere from 5-10x faster than Preact, and about 30x faster than React!
- Handling UI state changes with vanilla JS is also orders of magnitude faster than using Preact or React.
https://gomakethings.com/just-how-much-faster-is-vanilla-js-than-frameworks/
AVIF has landed
Back in ancient July I released a video that dug into how lossy and lossless image compression works and how to apply that knowledge to compress a set of different images for the web. Well, that’s already out of date because AVIF has arrived.
https://jakearchibald.com/2020/avif-has-landed/
Don’t trust default timeouts
Modern applications don’t crash; they hang. One of the main reasons for it is the assumption that the network is reliable. It isn’t.
https://robertovitillo.com/default-timeouts/
Understanding Daemons
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at daemons. We’ll understand exactly what they are, how they’re implemented, and the scope of their responsibility.
https://blog.digitalbunker.dev/2020/09/03/understanding-daemons-unix/
Debian project has plenty of money but not enough developers
Debian Project Leader (DPL) Jonathan Carter has described the key problems in the Debian community as not a lack of funds, but rather a shortage of volunteer developers.
https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/10/debian_project_address/
5 lessons I’ve learned working from home for 10 years
After a decade of remote work, I still love it.
Why FTP could soon dissapear from the internet
The beating heart of the early internet may have been FTP, or file transfer protocol. But after 50 years of mainstream use, its demise may be imminent.
https://tedium.co/2020/09/25/ftp-internet-history/
My favourite Git commit
I like Git commit messages. Used well, I think they’re one of the most powerful tools available to document a codebase over its lifetime. I’d like to illustrate that by showing you my favourite ever Git commit.
https://dhwthompson.com/2019/my-favourite-git-commit
The failed promise of Web Components
Web Components had so much potential to empower HTML to do more, and make web development more accessible to non-programmers and easier for programmers. Remember how exciting it was every time we got new shiny HTML elements that actually do stuff? Remember how exciting it was to be able to do sliders, color pickers, dialogs, disclosure widgets straight in the HTML, without having to include any widget libraries?
