📮 New blog post: An organizer’s retrospective on the 11ty Conference

https://www.zachleat.com/web/11ty-conf-retro/

A small look at what goes into organizing an inaugural online conference, including a detailed budget rundown.

#11tyConf

Unfortunately @baldur is exactly right — and this goes for darling frameworks, devtools, and SaaS too: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/112428431536118693

The rise and fall of Gatsby.js is concrete evidence that millions in funding has no guarantee of long-term stability — especially for larger software shops (enterprise, education) with five or ten year project horizons. Once the runway is exhausted, that’s usually it and these shops are now forced to scope large-scale rewrites.

(This is not including the incredible amount of paid time that went into organizing the conference donated by @cloudcannon)

Planning on doing a full #11tyConf Organizer retrospective blog post, but in the interest of transparency here’s a peek at the conference budget (funded primarily by our Open Collective, prices in USD):

Expenses: $7574.20
Revenue: $4653.79 (Free event, but via sponsors and merch)
Profit: -$2920.41

Edit: Fixed a spreadsheet error 😬

A few #11tyConf thank yous before I sign off:

Diane at https://whitecoatcaptioning.com/ (the hardest working folks in the biz)

The people at https://streamyard.com/ who have an incredible product on their hands and made organizing this thing possible.

Everyone at @cloudcannon — they made this conference a reality.

We did it!

#11tyConf has wrapped and I am so humbled by the response to this event. The incredible speakers, the incredible audience, the incredible organizers — y’all are amazing.

Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this community.

@henry INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE

I really appreciate you (and that callout at the end) 🏆

@matthewp just checking in—if we have an issue I’d rather just talk it out

they’re gathering.

#11tyConf

@sarajw For tomorrow—how do you say your name, phonetically? Sah-ra or Say-ra

@henry For tomorrow—how do you say your name, phonetically?

“Bug fixes and performance improvements” is the unseasoned chicken of release notes

Love to learn I’m in a tornado warning 16 minutes too late. Apple Weather had (and still has) no idea it even happened 🌪️🫠

if anyone has an invite code to the bluesky board of directors my DMs are open

I too would like to announce that I am not on the bluesky board of directors

“we have static sites at home!”

at home:

muffin + frosting = cupcake
cupcake - frosting = muffin
cupcake - muffin = frosting

JSX is template literals but instead of `` syntax you use <></>

As we enter the week of #11tyConf, I must channel the great organizers of conferences past with this Jamstack Conf mug. #iykyk

Going live with @mikeneu to talk #11tyConf, Mike’s Sneak Peek of the Week, and Web Development News: Web components in React, Next/image, Net Neutrality, and more!

https://www.twitch.tv/cloudcannoncms

Production API key expired. Builds failed but it had no production impact on visitors to the site.

Static sites are good for my mental health 😅

Reading this blog post from @dries (creator of Drupal) about the post-pivot definition of Jamstack.

https://dri.es/the-new-old-jamstack-and-mach-journey-towards-traditional-cms-concepts

Dries rightly notes that Jamstack 2.0 shares *more* in common with monolithic/traditional stacks.

For me—I read this as a huge indictment of the broadened definition—it’s not a healthy evolution of the term if we must sacrifice technical clarity and simplicity to do so.

#TheFutureOfJamstack

tried to use webpagetest.org this morning and received this whitescreen error page. hmm.

A huge thank you to @jarhar (of Google) for “driving the design and implementation of Custom Element support” in React v19 (currently in Beta).

Honestly never thought I’d see the day—a huge win for web standards and web components.

https://react.dev/blog/2024/04/25/react-19#support-for-custom-elements

inside me is two woffs that I desperately wish was one variable woff

inside every software author there are two wolves: 🐺 v0.99 🐺 v99.0

#11tyConf

Finished packing about 90 @eleventy Merch Bundle bags 🥵🥵🥵

On track to get all of the @eleventy Merch Bundles sent out on Monday! #11tyConf

Update: all clear! Operations have resumed

the spreadsheet just told me about tornados.

Tornados have interrupted @eleventy Merch Bundle packing operations! 🌪️🫣

the @eleventy merch bundle shirts are done! #11tyConf

@sarajw you had mentioned that you preferred not between 5PM and 9PM CEST for 11ty Conference—just want to make sure—is 10PM okay? is that too late?

(Please don’t find this person and bother them, I am therapeutically complaining here 😅)

Had someone open two identical issues on GitHub. When I closed *one* of them as a duplicate, they replied “Thanks for nothing, Zach”

#OpenSource

I would like to speak softly without carrying a big stick

I’m participating in #JSNakedDay today! You won’t find nary a `<script>` on zachleat.com.

Read all about it: https://www.zachleat.com/web/js-naked-day/

For me, it’s hard not to see the larger problem (and not limited to Vercel).

Hosting providers are prioritizing dynamic features because dynamic things make more money!

@jlengstorf said it first: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tf2erRqdwqc on #TheFutureOfJamstack

Notably, Vercel has a financial incentive to *not* implement support for a bunch of features in static export in Next.js.

Either static export is a viable feature for portable Next.js projects or Next.js is not a portable framework.

Next.js static export not supporting `next/image` is *wild*.

“Since Next.js supports this static export, it can be deployed and hosted on any web server that can serve HTML/CSS/JS static assets.”

But not images!!

https://nextjs.org/docs/pages/building-your-application/deploying/static-exports#unsupported-features

This is a prime example of customers losing from an unhealthy relationship between framework and hosting provider.

The number of times I have audibly gasped this morning learning about inefficiencies in Next.js’ <Image> component has made me realize that I’m a little out of shape.

started to get a little chunky at 40k but it’s still going 🫣 #11ty

The light/dark mode switcher on https://2024.xoxofest.com/ is a mini-game!

Incredible work @xoxo, @andybaio (et al?) 🙌

@sarajw https://front-end.social/@sarajw/112297316722597457 😬

@pauleveritt I had a few local commits that weren’t pushed, you were right 😅

I did add a test to make sure collections (API or tag-driven) were accessible via eleventyDataSchema though! https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/blob/10715662280922a50a86372732445c3f57afb108/test/EleventyTest.js#L1205

@sarajw I think these two options are budget friendly:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFRPGSW/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002OO18NS/

Happy to include that cost with your honorarium reimbursement too!

Going live with @mikeneu to talk Web Dev Tabs of the Week and continuing with our SSG from Scratch series! Join us!

https://www.twitch.tv/cloudcannoncms

my new analytics product “google analytics analytics” will tell you if stakeholders are using the google analytics data you’re collecting.

you simply add my small script to your site and it will prevent google analytics from collecting data. then we wait to see if anyone complains

tech “meritocracy” doesn’t reward fast, good, or cheap—it rewards profit

2024: jia tan
2014: obama’s tan suit
tan(2004): -0.34936947076

coincidence??

@BryceWrayTX is this positive? seems positive

If some folks on here could send @BryceWrayTX a positive message today I’m sure they would really appreciate it.

I hope the state of Nebraska buys something nice with the $1 USD I owed on my state tax returns this year

The inaugural JS Naked Day is now April 24, 2024 thanks to @macdonst and @McNeely!

Blog post: https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-04-12-introducing-js-naked-day

Home base: https://js-naked-day.org/

Going live with @mikeneu in 5 minutes on the Static Sites Fan Club stream!

1️⃣ Web Development Tabs of the Week
2️⃣ Mike’s Sneak Peek of the Week
3️⃣ Building an SSG from Scratch (Eleventy as three Node.js packages in a trench coat)

https://www.twitch.tv/cloudcannoncms

@henry Just checking if you’re in or not for 11ty conf? I see you got the swag bag but not the google form filled out yet—just wanted to make sure!

So far in 2024:

1299 commits to Next.js
846 commits to Astro
313 commits to Nuxt
254 commits to Remix
13 commits to Gatsby

*non-bot commits to fully funded frameworks.

…and the toggle on my site’s footer is always there to turn off the current page’s CSS (opt-in 🙃)

https://www.zachleat.com/

It’s #CSSNakedDay!

I love this trend—it highlights the importance of a foundation of good HTML.

We need a similar one for JavaScript! #JSNakedDay should be April 10 😅

I wonder if y’all can help me out—I’m trying to collect a list of web development communities (not related to any one specific tool or framework), can you reply with your favorites?

(if you don’t have a favorite I will also accept communities you’re familiar with 😅)

@skinnylatte you’ve gotten an email from me with an 11ty Conference speaker invitation (just a nudge!)

@adactio you’ve gotten an email from me with an 11ty Conference speaker invitation (just a nudge!)

ABC:

Always
Be
forgetting how much mental energy it takes to organize a Conference

we don’t measure LoC, we measure in piles

yes, witnessing the miracle of childbirth is incredible but have you ever deleted a whole pile of legacy code

you pay for the health insurance for your teeth separately—practically speaking your teeth are out of network from your body

Going live with @mikeneu to discuss:

* Front-end Tabs of the Week
* Web Components Roundup
* More work on the self-hosted RSS Reader
* Channeling a few open source regrets into a new educational project on-stream

https://www.twitch.tv/cloudcannoncms

An incredible interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan on Big Tech monopolies dropping more revelations about Apple’s super rocky editorial oversight of Jon Stewart’s Apple TV+ show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

My takeaway from the #xz backdoor is that I will now treat any and all “is this still being maintained”-esque messages in open source repositories with the hostility merited a nation-state supply-chain attack on open source as a concept.

you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than google analytics

tech companies donate their april fools’ day joke budget to open source maintainers challenge 2024

A TC39 proposal for Signals (with a polyfill)—Rob Eisenberg

https://eisenbergeffect.medium.com/a-tc39-proposal-for-signals-f0bedd37a335

@hexagoncircle hey sorry I am out to breakfast with the family and I moved back our chat a bit—does that still work?

“Silicon Valley” evokes vibes that are:

(HT @beep @eric)

“Tecno Spark 8C, a low-spec phone that can hit 40 FPS in Battle Royale PUBG but lags below 1 FPS on social media”

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/modern-web-bloat-means-some-entry-level-phones-cant-run-simple-web-pages-and-load-times-are-high-for-pcs-some-sites-run-worse-than-pubg

The conference selection committee slump is when you feel guilty that you can’t pick all of the amazing talk submissions 😭 (there are so many good ones).

We could easily do three days of #11tyConf

oh no I forgot an oxford comma

Going live with @mikeneu on the #StaticSiteFanClub to talk Web Components, Front-end WebDev News and more!

Join us: https://www.twitch.tv/cloudcannoncms

Finally we have a CLI to definitively answer whether something is a web site or a web app: https://github.com/Y2Z/monolith

See if you can tell which is which (bonus points if you can guess which HTML file is 9.6MB and which is 703KB)

A large contingent of webdevs seem to think that fast means “best-case fast.”

“Our web sites are fast on expensive hardware and from reliable fiber networks.”

Worst-case fast is a much more meaningful, impressive, and inclusive claim to make! Fast on low-end hardware. Fast on slow networks.

Fast on the World Wide Web—not just from a WeWork in Silicon Valley.

🔗 Runtime compatibility across different JavaScript runtimes: https://runtime-compat.unjs.io/

We love a good compatibility table but I also want to see the proprietary non-standard additions of each platform documented too. This is the other side of vendor lock-in.

you mean to tell me that lululemon and cocomelon aren’t made by the same company

Live now with @glitchdotcom and @jenn to talk all things @eleventy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiYSbOKZ_H4

“This doesn’t look good” indeed.

https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/112117301801565699