Hey friends,

Spring has sprung, and so have my sinuses! 👃🌼

Thinking Too Hard

This week I got to use Alpine.js for a content site build... and I like it!

I'm not in a rush to replace everything with it, but for the limited 'sprinkle' pattern where there's just some limited and light interactivity, it's a SOLID choice.

One of my favorite features is it's concept of DOM scoping: when you tell Alpine that an element is interactive, it carries it's scope DOWN the DOM tree, but not up — it's not global. That means each dropdown in a menu only has to worry about it's current local state. Rather than an array of indexes to manage you can have each section manage itself. It also does away with having to query for an element because you attach it DIRECTLY TO the element.

Good stuff!

Interesting Web Bits

• This demo interface reminds me of the old, weird WinAmp interfaces of the early 2000's.
• This week I learned about the Peter Principle, an originally satirical yet ironically accurate principle that states: in a hierarchy people rise to the point where they're no longer competent in the new role, meaning eventually all roles are filled with incompetent employees... 😬
• Charles Cornell reviews Tim Follin's absolutely incredible soundtracks for the 1990's games Pictionary, Soltice, and Treasure Master. You can listen to the full soundtracks on Matt Montag's chiptune app (just scroll down to find the titles by name). 🎵
• Do you like puzzles? LOGIC puzzles? Well, there's several everyday over at Zebra Puzzles
• I feel this title confusion that Elly Loel talks about for front-end development. The bare title can mean a LOT of things now, but I appreciate Viget's approach of the front-of-the-front end developers as "UI Developers" with an overlap with "Platform Developers" that head towards systems. #team-plui
• Rob Eisenberg and Daniel Ehrenberg submitted a remarkably readable TC39 proposal to add signals to JavaScript.
• Sometimes the problem is not what you expect, like when the WiFi only works while it's raining 🛜🌧️
• Benjamin Dicken shows us how to turn images into contour lines