I think filing bugs on browsers is one of the most useful things a web developer can do. When faced with a cross-browser compatibility problem, a lot of us are conditioned to just search for some quick workaround, or to keep cycling through alternatives until something works. And this is definitely what I did earlier […]

A common mistake I see in web components is this: This setupLogic() can be just about anything – subscribing to a store, setting up event listeners, etc. The teardownLogic() is designed to undo those things – unsubscribe from a store, remove event listeners, etc. The problem is that constructor is called once, when the component […]

Compared to previous years, my reading velocity has taken a bit of a nosedive. Blame videogames, maybe: I’ve put more hours into Civilization 6 than I care to admit, and I’m currently battling Moblins and Bokoblins in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I’ve also been trying to re-learn the guitar. I basically stopped playing for […]

Web components are kind of having a moment right now. And as part of that, shadow DOM is having a bit of a moment too. Or it would, except that much of the conversation seems to be about why you shouldn’t use shadow DOM. For example, “HTML web components” are based on the idea that […]

In my last post, we went on a guided tour of building a JavaScript framework from scratch. This wasn’t just an intellectual exercise, though – I actually had a reason for wanting to build my own framework. For a few years now, I’ve been maintaining emoji-picker-element, which is designed as a fast, simple, and lightweight […]

In my day job, I work on a JavaScript framework (LWC). And although I’ve been working on it for almost three years, I still feel like a dilettante. When I read about what’s going on in the larger framework world, I often feel overwhelmed by all the things I don’t know. One of the best […]

Here’s a deep-in-the-weeds thing about web components that I ran into recently. Let’s say you have a humble component: And let’s say that this component throws an error in its connectedCallback: Why would it do that? I dunno, maybe it needs to validate its props or something. Or maybe it’s just having a bad day. […]

Dave Rupert recently made a bit of a stir with his post “If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them?”. I’ve been working with web components for a few years now, so I thought I’d weigh in on this. At the risk of giving the most senior-engineer-y “It depends” answer ever: […]

A few months ago, I gave a talk on CSS performance at performance.now in Amsterdam. The recording is available online: (You can also read the slides.) This is one of my favorite talks I’ve ever given. It was the product of months (honestly, years) of research, prompted by a couple questions: What is the fastest […]

Five years ago, I started a journey to build a better Mastodon client – one focused on performance and simplicity. And I did! Pinafore is the main Mastodon client I’ve used myself since I first released it. After five years, though, my relationship with social media has changed, and it’s time for me to put […]