isolani - Web Standards: Web App Mistakes: Condemned to repeat

Some great thoughts from Mike Davies about the strengths of the web, prompted by some of the more extreme comments made by James Pearce at Full Frontal last week.

I should point out that James was being deliberately provocative in order to foment thought and discussion and, judging from this blog post, he succeeded.

The Web’s independence from the hardware and software platform people use is a feature. It’s better than cross-platform frameworks which are constantly criticised for not producing exact native-feeling apps on the multitude of platforms they run on. The Web is above that pettiness.

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Abject Praise - Infrequently Noted

Alex takes issue with my post giving kudos to Apple for concentrating on bugfixes in the latest version of Safari, and he brings receipts. He makes a very compelling case, backed up with data.

But when it comes to Chrome’s shipping of the half-baked prompt API, I’m not sure he gets just how badly it has soured the developer community’s feelings towards Google. This isn’t something to be countered with data; it’s much more visceral than that. Alex says:

So if Jeremy has a problem with specific features, I hope he’ll come to us with a critique of their qualities, rather than their optics.

In this case though, the optics are really, really, really bad.

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WebKit Features for Safari 26.5 | WebKit

Fixed an issue on iOS and iPadOS where datalist suggestions were presented directly over the associated input, obscuring it.

Phew!

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No-stack web development – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)

A stack is also technical debt, non-transferable knowledge, accelerated obsolescence, and vendor lock-in. That means fragility and overall unnecessary complication. Popular stacks inevitably turn into cargo cults that build in spite of the web, not for it.

The web platform does not require build toolchains. Always default to, and regress to, the fundamentals of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Those core standards are the web stack.

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Web of State of the Browser Day Out

A lovely post from Remy about State Of The Browser and Web Day Out.

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The Artisanal Web | Another Rodeo

I feel very seen here. This describes how I built The Session:

There are still people building the web by hand, very much like we did it in the early days. They know all about what’s possible using modern tooling, yet they choose to expend their time and attention to the craft of doing it by hand. They care about the craft, and they care about what they’re making. They believe in their unique skill and vision over engagement strategies and analytics and content algorithms. They don’t need a platform, or they’ll build their own.

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