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I’ve started to notice that there is a very particular brand of tech influencer that almost exclusively conflates the technical merit of a thing with its money-making ability.

But the most efficient technical solution may not be the solution that makes the most money.

e.g. Fast builds are lost revenue for companies that charge for build time (aka the Jamstack paradox)

…and now I can’t unsee it.

Just to clear a few things up for people:

1. My kids are not babies, so I didn’t take any candy from a baby! This was not an easy task—in fact I am very cool for doing this because they are old enough to both count and write so they could be keeping inventory logs of the candy.

2. Candy is unhealthy, actually! Their dentist didn’t sanction the heist but I definitely got a vibe that this needed to happen

3. I wanted a snack

We pulled off a heist that stole 47 pieces of old halloween candy from my kids.

Here's how we did it 🧵

cc @sachagreif

Is it possible to get @eleventy removed from the State of JavaScript survey?

I’d rather not participate.

Apparently the “forgot my homework” dreams have evolved into “speaking at an international conference but forgot to travel to the conference” dreams 😭

being in tech sometimes feels like suffering through “what if 911 emergency phone services but as an iOS app” pitches from folks lauded as visionaries

refilled the kittens‘ water bowl in what can only be characterized as a strategically placed thirst trap

Since folks are asking:

The only way to administer the test and view results is via the smartphone app. The app requires Bluetooth permissions and asks for location, first/last name, date of birth, email, gender, and address. Test results are automatically reported back to the local/state/federal government.

I’ve attached screenshot receipts.

the free covid tests from the US government *require* a smartphone app, internet connection, and bluetooth access for use 🫠🦠😷

So many Google business model things happening right now—are they related?

Retiring Third-party Cookies:
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/third-party-cookie-phase-out/

Manifest v3 Limits Content Filtering:
https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/
https://support.ublock.org/hc/en-us/articles/11749958544275-Google-s-Manifest-V3-What-it-is-and-what-it-means-for-uBlock-Users-

YouTube Ad-Blocker Crackdown:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2023/11/03/the-youtube-ad-blocker-crackdown-is-ramping-up/

oh my god how tall can images render on this web site

minty fresh selectors

when folks say “I’m more productive because I don’t have to think about naming things,” they’re talking about HTML and CSS—not JavaScript and TypeScript

I wonder why that is (I don’t wonder why that is)

no, *you’re* updating 8 year old code to be web components on saturday afternoon

Need mental clarity on a thing? Write a blog post about it 😅😓💦

I guess GitHub requires JavaScript now? 🤔 I spy an empty <react-app> 😬

I’d consider this naming party to be solved moving forward as more and more folks use the term HTML Web Components 🏆

https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/111211208759538433

From @adactio.com: https://adactio.com/journal/20618

With credit to @jimniels too: https://mastodon.social/@jimniels/111211792061381617

I didn’t realize web components had their own emoji—nice 🚾

RCS on iOS before Custom Elements in React? I win the pool

`text-wrap: balance` is very useful and I would humbly request that it have more browser support please—thank you.

https://caniuse.com/css-text-wrap-balance

Just a few short words on a social media post changed my whole perspective on a thing—huh.

I’m reminded of this particular moment in 2018 when @jaffathecake quickly convinced me of the unique value of HTML web components:

https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/status/1050745168884842498

Free project idea: automated script to test the completeness of a web ring. Do all member sites in the ring include the web ring links?

as @jgamble noted, the use of "Never" in the first poll option was not quite good enough—I’ve edited the options which means y’all get to vote again 😅

How safe/risky do y’all think it is to assume WebP as a baseline for content images? (instead of JPEG/PNG)

Feel free to look here before you vote: https://caniuse.com/webp

Web components.

the space jam web site is not just timeless—it is immortal

and as much as it wishes for the sweet kiss of downtime, downtime eludes it

many a wp-admin request have been met with nothing more than an unceremonious 404—and countless more will fail behind them

Wishing the best for friends laid off today. Remember that layoffs are nothing more than evidence of inept leadership.

I felt silly for preemptively locking the @eleventy issue about switching to tabs and now I’m very glad that I did—the opinion-havers have arrived with opinions 🫠

wearable AI embedded in a belt buckle

github actions are wild https://github.com/marketplace/actions/support-requests

for real though are support requests just bug reports that don’t have a test case

oh my god https://github.com/marketplace/actions/please-star-first

Added a little search to my web site, as a treat https://zachleat.com/search/

* via https://pagefind.app/
* enhances from a DuckDuckGo <form>
* unnecessarily lazy loaded via <is-land> 😅

Confession: in my Web Components journey I’ve used Shadow DOM on a few components and it made sense to do so and it worked well (no regrets).

Remember that these different styles of component are tools in the toolbox.

Shadow DOM isn’t a silver bullet (or even a good default choice) but when you understand the tradeoffs you’re making and weigh those against the purpose and use case of the component, it sometimes makes sense to use it!

(And if you’re new to Web Components, don’t start here)

via https://adactio.com/journal/20618

1. HTML web components
2. Element extensions (from @davatron5000)

HTML web components from @adactio

https://adactio.com/journal/20618

(Adding more entries to the naming party started here https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/111211208759538433)

This one lives on my web site now too: https://www.zachleat.com/web/site-mounting/

an ad-blocker but instead of ads it blocks mass-plagiarized AI-generated content

It’s been almost a year since I left Twitter, seems like it’s a good time to do an anonymous poll (if you have multiple accounts, scope your answer to your personal Twitter account only please):

some abstractions are for-profit weaponized complexity

One of the underrated benefits of mastodon is that when you manage multiple accounts (on distinct instances) you don’t need to hit a button to switch accounts—you can just go to a different URL.

may we muster the mental toughness and grit necessary to serendipitously record something incredible on our phone without shouting “I got that on video!!” afterwards

my drafts folder is popping off this morning with posts that will never see the light of day 😅

Was introduced to KDL (from @zkat) by @ollicle and I like it!

Looks like it solves some of the readability problems of TOML and might be a nice successor that finally loosens the unfortunate grip that YAML has on everything 👀

https://kdl.dev/

okay yes the original wordle was built with web components but what if wordle had been a standalone web component

my linkedin friend demographics are way too tilted toward VC, startup culture, and AI—I would appreciate more friends over there to help balance it out: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachleat/

everyone needs to buy my startup’s expensive dishes and they only work in the newest dishwashers

if you buy 40 dishwashers you only have to put one dish in each and it’s more efficient

if we smash all the dishes, we can fit more in there

top javascript developer techniques for loading the dishwasher:

re: https://social.lol/@bw/111293266036805485

npm isn’t the problem—it’s the larger JavaScript community’s attitude about long-term maintainability and moving fast while breaking things.

Here’s a successful 5-year experiment I ran using @eleventy (and npm): https://www.11ty.dev/blog/stability/

I somehow missed this a few months back, but it looks like @astro’s VC-monetization has begun as they dip into a very crowded cloud database field.

https://m.webtoo.ls/@astro/110990933184968823

Wishing them success! I’d wager there is a lot riding on this move.

Just enabled the elastisearch feature on my @mastohost instance and wow—it hadn’t clicked before but this is a feature that Twitter never had.

I can search my stream**!

(**for folks that have opted in to search)

minimum viable HTML for a modern web site:

<title>so modern</title>

you know I’m gonna boost a zero-dep web component

the https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.12.4/jquery.min.js is not coming from inside the house!

this… is not a me-problem 😅

I think GitHub wants me to Confirm my account recovery settings

@setstudio @andy device pixel ratios further complicate this story 😅

The Ideal Viewport Doesn’t Exist

https://viewports.fyi/

Loved the visual example of 3 distinct viewports on a single iOS device: Safari, in-app browser (boo!), and the long-press quick preview.

By our friends at @setstudio (@andy et al!)

I suppose I’m on Team Build
…but not a big build

So maybe Team Little Build
…but I wouldn’t get rid of the build totally—it’s useful!

Team Gossamer-thin Build?

Shipped a few quick updates to <browser-window> today:

🪟 Option for Windows-style icons (thank you @lucienimmink!)
🖼️ Option to specify your own icon using `<img slot="icon">` (idea from @rem)

https://zachleat.github.io/browser-window/demo.html

Thanks y’all!

Oh my—the desktop viewport navigation UX on https://www.cloudflare.com/ is confusing.

I thought I had navigated to a new page and then I was upset that it didn’t give me a history entry to go back—but it was just a full window popup with almost no affordance that the content was still underneath 🫣

“[Vercel’s] vendor lock-in is good actually” is not a take I expected to read in the year 2023, but yet here we are. 🧐

Doing some research for @cloudcannon Image optimization and had an idea for a very cool `<picture>` performance improvement for @eleventy Image 👀

Stay tuned!!

https://www.epicweb.dev/why-i-wont-use-nextjs from @kentcdodds details some of the very big problems that have been echoing for years through Vercel, Next.js, and React.

Here’s what he listed:

1. Not using The Platform
2. Vendor locked to Vercel
3. Next.js is eating React 🫡
4. Uses experimental features in stable releases
5. Overrides global fetch
6. Complexity in RSC
7. Instability

A good addition to https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/

yes 2FA is great for security but also 2FA can save you from running an accidental `npm publish` command too (speaking for a friend, who allegedly was saved by this, just now)

look all I’m saying is that it’s healthy to make your demos in a way that causes the infrastructure and ops teams to sweat just a little bit

@stubbornella

re: https://twitter.com/stubbornella/status/1716893390418419895

Reading the replies there, it would (imo) be a great disservice if these results were used to drive platform investment decisions. You need to talk to people that LOVE web components to decide what and how to improve them—not people that don’t like them.

it’s very difficult to accidentally delete the production database when there is no production database

Today in pseudo Lighthouse graphics:

Performance: 20s
Overall score: 96/100!

Now wait a second here (or maybe 20 of them)… 🧐

Could it be better? Probably. But it’s 100% pretty okay now!

This code might be useful to someone!

Here’s the Eleventy global data file used on 11ty.dev to show the lifetime npm downloads for the package in the footer.

https://github.com/11ty/11ty-website/blob/main/src/_data/npm.js

Features:
1. Works around the 18 month data limitation in the npm API.
2. Only the current year is refetched and updated. Previous years are cached forever (assuming your cache folder sticks around).

Yet another Project Big Deal ESM @eleventy update:

`eleventyConfig.addPlugin` will also be async friendly in 3.0.

#11tyESM

a little light reading this evening

@bobmonsour I wonder if you might be interested in providing an API on https://11tybundle.dev/ (just a JSON file that has titles and URLs) that could be consumed by 11ty.dev for community resources? Happy to give proper attribution to your excellent resource too, maybe a heading that says “Community Resources via 11tybundle.dev”?

I’m working on a CMS docs page for 11ty.dev and I’d love to include the resources on https://11tybundle.dev/categories/cms/

Feel free to say no! 😅

The reign of web components continues with a <ppp-price> to show Parity Purchasing Power prices as a demo of @cloudcannon’s Geolocation feature:

https://www.zachleat.com/web/ppp-price/

This protomaps implementation is what we want Incremental Font Transfer to be!

https://protomaps.com/

One (optionally variable) web font file deployable to static storage, partially loaded as needed.

Learn more: https://www.w3.org/TR/IFT/

🗣️ via @scy at https://chaos.social/@scy/111280657236094121

apparently it’s dumbledore but I honestly don’t think that’s any nicer

apparently dingledoor is not a character in harry potter, my bad

I take great pride in maintaining that this error message works nicely with every major release of Eleventy and doesn’t dump a weird stack trace for folks running old Node.

Just to be clear, this adds ESM support to all JavaScript files in @eleventy:

• Configuration Files
• JavaScript Data Files (Global, Directory, or Template)
• `.11ty.js` (and `.11ty.mjs`) Template Files
• and importantly we will not require you to upgrade your projects to ESM either. Eleventy 3.0 will continue to support CommonJS Eleventy projects.

@eleventy Big Deal ESM update:

All 1048 tests passing ✅ (and on Windows too)

#11tyESM

I don’t think folks really understand that we are in a CSS Renaissance right now.

@eleventy 0 failures!

…now, testing on Windows 😅

Just curious—are folks in my sphere using GraphQL?

@eleventy 2 failures left 🤬😅🤪🤔