#22: Action Web Components, Browser Wars, and the Birth of the Internet
Focusing more on fun summer activities than the latest state of web specs? Me too! =) But that doesn't mean we don't have stuff to talk about!
Friday, August 16, 2024
Hello world! 👋 This newsletter's coming at you courtesy of Buttondown. As I mentioned in the previous issue, I've switched from using ConvertKit over to Buttondown because they really seem to be doing an excellent job of providing a tool specifically for writers. (Yay for Markdown!)
Look, we can embed code snippets right here!
const message = "Isn't that cool?"
I'm sure that'll come in handy!
Anyhoo, it's the 🐶 dog days of 🌞 summer here in the northern hemisphere, and I must admit I've been paying more attention to local calendars promoting fun outdoor activities than I have the latest state of web specs…but that doesn't mean we don't have stuff to talk about!
So let's get right to it, shall we? 👇
🔗 Action Web Components Which Span the Server-Client Divide ➦
Over at The Spicy Web, I published an article about an HTML-first, full-stack UI pattern I've grown to love, with roots spanning all the way back to the Ajax revolution of the 2000s. It features a demo repo built on top of Astro and Alpine.js (and Pico CSS)…but as the examples show, you can use literally any backend or frontend technology. The techinique itself is strictly vanilla, and for folks already familar with libraries like Hotwired Turbo, you will feel right at home.
Read all about it and check out the demo!
🔗 Browser Wars, State of JS, and the Birth of the Internet on Just a Spec ➦
It's been a while since I posted here about the Just a Spec podcast I've been producing along with my friend Ayush Newatia, so ICYMI, we've talked about a number of notable topics recently:
- Pendulum Swings & 2023’s State of JS – Yes, the results are in, and we talk about them…but more broadly, our feelings about the state of web frameworks in our industry and the much-ballyhooed pendulum swing back to server-side rendering and HTML-first techniques (though the rate of change is perhaps not what we might wish for).
- The Browser Wars & an Uneasy Peace – Remember Netscape Navigator? Remember Mosaic?? In this episode, we look back at the history of the web browser—touching on such memorable moments as the
<blink>&<marquee>tags, DHTML with the launch of JavaScript, and the arrival of responsive design for mobile as well as desktop—while attempting to learn from history so that we’re not doomed to repeat it. - And Lo, There Was ARPANET (Baby Internet!) – How did the Internet first begin? Why was it developed at the Advanced Research Projects Agency? Where was it initially launched at the end of the 1960s? Is it pronounced r-OO-ter or r-OW-ter?? These and other hard-hitting questions are answered as we take a deep dive into the birth of humanity’s global computer network…with a dash of 90s nostalgia thrown in for good measure.
Rooting for Firefox, The Little Browser That Could
Some thoughts before you go…
It's been hard to be a die-hard fan of Firefox for some time now. Its marketshare lags dramatically behind Chrome and Safari, leadership doesn't really seem to know what to do with it as a business, and web developers often seem to treat Gecko compatibility as an afterthought (even WebKit isn't always considered as the main competitor to Blink)—though with efforts like Interop, this has gotten a bit more under control.
Still, it's a precarious time…and unfortunately even darker clouds are on the horizon as I just covered over at The Internet Review:
The overwhelming amount of income flowing into the organization comes from a deal to keep Google as the default search engine in Firefox. Bloomberg reported it accounting for a whopping 83% of Mozilla’s income in 2021, even while Firefox’s global market share cratered.
This vital income stream is now at risk, since the United States Department of Justice won its case against Google and proved they have a monopoly in online search.
I really hope Mozilla can get its act together. We need choice in the browser market, and we need competition among browser engines. A monoculture would be disastrous for the future health of the Web. Browsers which are only developed at the whim of Big Tech platform vendors (Apple, Microsoft, and Google) will always be in danger of skewing towards Big Tech priorities.
Firefox, on the other hand, is the only independent browser purely dedicated to serving the Web user community. It must remain viable. And we must do everything in our power to ensure it continues to succeed.
That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed this week's edition of That HTML Blog. (I sure had a lot of fun writing it in Buttondown. ☺️) See you again next week.
–Jared
That HTML Blog
Made with ❤️ in Portland, Oregon