Enhance! Conf!

Two weeks from now there will be an event in London. You should go to it. It’s called EnhanceConf:

EnhanceConf is a one day, single track conference covering the state of the art in progressive enhancement. We will look at the tools and techniques that allow you to extend the reach of your website/application without incurring additional costs.

As you can probably guess, this is right up my alley. Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away from it. I’ve been asked to be Master of Ceremonies for the day, which is a great honour. Luckily I have some experience in that department from three years of hosting Responsive Day Out. In fact, EnhanceConf is going to run very much in the mold of Responsive Day Out, as organiser Simon explained in an interview with Aaron.

But the reason to attend is of course the content. Check out that line-up! Now that is going to be a knowledge-packed day: design, development, accessibility, performance …these are a few of my favourite things. Nat Buckley, Jen Simmons, Phil Hawksworth, Anna Debenham, Aaron Gustafson …these are a few of my favourite people.

Tickets are still available. Use the discount code JEREMYK to get a whopping 15% off the ticket price.

There’s also a scholarship:

The scholarships are available to anyone not normally able to attend a conference.

I’m really looking forward to EnhanceConf. See you at RSA House on March 4th!

Embracing simplicity by Adam Silver

The full text of Adam’s excellent talk at EnhanceConf.

EnhanceConf - Stefan Tilkov - How to embrace the browser - YouTube

The videos from EnhanceConf are started to go up already. Stefan’s talk really struck me—all the talks were great but this one had the most unexpected insight for me. It really clarifies a lot of ideas that I’ve been trying to articulate, but which Stefan crystalises by taking the long-zoom view.

Build for the Web, Build on the Web, Build with the Web – Web Performance and Site Speed Consultant

If I was only able to give one bit of advice to any company: iterate quickly on a slow-moving platform.

Excellent advice from Harry (who first cast his pearls before the swine of LinkedIn but I talked him ‘round to posting this on his own site).

1. Opt into web platform features incrementally
2. Embrace progressive enhancement to build fast, reliable applications that adapt to your customers’ context
3. Write code that leans into the browser, not away from it

I’m not against front-end frameworks, and, believe me, I’m not naive enough to believe that the only thing a front-end framework provides is soft navigations, but if you’re going to use one, I shouldn’t be able to smell it.

If Not React, Then What? - Infrequently Noted

Put the kettle on; it’s another epic data-driven screed from Alex. The footnotes on this would be a regular post on any other blog (and yes, even the footnotes have footnotes).

This is a spot-on description of the difference between back-end development and front-end development:

Code that runs on the server can be fully costed. Performance and availability of server-side systems are under the control of the provisioning organisation, and latency can be actively managed by developers and DevOps engineers.

Code that runs on the client, by contrast, is running on The Devil’s Computer. Nothing about the experienced latency, client resources, or even available APIs are under the developer’s control.

Client-side web development is perhaps best conceived of as influence-oriented programming. Once code has left the datacenter, all a web developer can do is send thoughts and prayers.

As a result, an unreasonably effective strategy is to send less code. In practice, this means favouring HTML and CSS over JavaScript, as they degrade gracefully and feature higher compression ratios. Declarative forms generate more functional UI per byte sent. These improvements in resilience and reductions in costs are beneficial in compounding ways over a site’s lifetime.

Reckoning: Part 1 — The Landscape - Infrequently Noted

I want to be a part of a frontend culture that accepts and promotes our responsibilities to others, rather than wallowing in self-centred “DX” puffery. In the hierarchy of priorities, users must come first.

Alex doesn’t pull his punches in this four-part truth-telling:

1. The Landscape
2. Object Lesson
3. Caprock
4. The Way Out

The React anti-pattern of hugely bloated single-page apps has to stop. And we can stop it.

Success or failure is in your hands, literally. Others in the equation may have authority, but you have power.

Begin to use that power to make noise. Refuse to go along with plans to build YAJSD (Yet Another JavaScript Disaster). Engineering leaders look to their senior engineers for trusted guidance about what technologies to adopt. When someone inevitably proposes the React rewrite, do not be silent. Do not let the bullshit arguments and nonsense justifications pass unchallenged. Make it clear to engineering leadership that this stuff is expensive and is absolutely not “standard”.