What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at.
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For quite some time, the venerable gzip algorithm has been the go-to solution for reducing the size of page assets. A new kid on the block has been gaining support in modern browsers, and its name is Brotli. In this article, Jeremy Wagner will get hands-on with Brotli by writing a Node.js-powered HTTP server that implements this new algorithm, and will compare its performance to gzip.
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Through this case study on redesigning the Building Social website, Marko Dugonijć will share some simple yet often overlooked front-end techniques that defer the use of JavaScript as much as possible, while providing some neat JavaScript enhancements, too. By being creative and using the basic tools at your disposal, you can improve performance and accessibility, as well as simplify code maintenance. By getting content on the screen as soon as possible, you will improve the user experience, and in doing so, you will earn a few extra karma points along the way. Everybody wins!
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REST stands for “representational state transfer,” For the last few years, whenever somebody wants to start building an HTTP API, they pretty much exclusively use REST as the go-to architectural style, over alternative approaches such as XML-RPC, SOAP and JSON-RPC. In this article, Phil Sturgeon discusses two approaches in the context of building HTTP APIs. RPC and REST can both be used via other transportation protocols, such as AMQP, but that is another topic entirely.
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Have you tried creating a website with some Dropbox-powered hosting tools? In today’s article, Cosima Mielke has collected nine tools for you that hook up to your Dropbox to streamline the process of creating and hosting static websites. However, before you settle on a Dropbox-powered platform, always balance the pros and cons to make sure it is the right choice for your project. As for prototyping, the following tools are a great way to make your workflow more efficient so you can spend more time on the details that really matter.
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The benefits of using a “content security policy” are many. Most importantly, it will stop your users from suffering any unsolicited scripts or content or XSS vulnerabilities on your website. In this article, Nicolas Hoffmann will introduce you to this technology, and he’ll explain why awareness is the most important advantage of CSP for website maintainers.
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Traditionally, scaling was mostly relevant for server-side systems. As more and more users would use your application, you needed to make sure that you could add more servers to your cluster, that your database could be split across multiple servers, and so on. Due to rich web applications, scaling has become an important topic on the frontend. The frontend of a complex app needs to be able to handle a large number of users, developers and parts. In this article, Max Stoiber shares everything you need to now about React Boilerplate to get started.
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Improving every tiny thing by 1% dramatically improves performance. This applies to what Marko Dugonjić did in the SGS project and its intricate navigation. By focusing on the finer details, improving each detail by a tiny bit, he significantly reduced the complexity of the navigation and improved loading times, while keeping the navigation appealing and engaging for users. No web project is ever truly complete; there are always a few more things on the to-do list. That’s perfectly fine, as long as you keep on testing, refining and providing the best experience for users.
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This week’s reading list consists of a lot of little, smart details that you can use on websites. From tweaking the user’s reading experience during page load to pure JavaScript functions and verifying the integrity of external assets. And finally, we see some articles on thinking differently about established working habits — be it working on AI without data or the virtue of not shipping a feature.
Please note that I’ll be on vacation for the next four weeks, so please don’t expect any new Web Development Reading List before October, 7th. Enjoy September, your work, your life!
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Every time the browser has to recalculate the positions and geometries of elements in the document, a reflow happens. This happens when new DOM elements are added to the page, images load or dimensions of elements change. There are many solutions for avoiding the jump effect on page load, and implementing all of these techniques would take some time, but it is totally worth it — until scroll anchoring is supported in more browsers. In this article, Michael Scharnagl will share techniques to minimize this content shifting.
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