@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

bendelarre

@bendelarre@mastodon.social

Wrangler of web app technology. Maker of things both physical and digital.

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peterreeves, to accessibility
@peterreeves@mstdn.social avatar

It's always so frustrating when all the web accessibility content only talks about text heavy websites and forms. Like yes, I get it, I should have alt text on images. But there's so little information about how to build accessible web apps. What do I do if 80% of my page is a WebGL canvas and the other 20% is all buttons/sliders? How do I structure this if there is basically no "regular text" on the entire page?

#a11y #Accessibility #WebDev

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@aardrian @peterreeves hopefully one day virtual accessibility nodes become a thing, though looks like spec work is barely started: https://wicg.github.io/aom/spec/virtual-accessibility-nodes.html

In the meantime there's some good notes here https://pauljadam.com/demos/canvas.html

There is also an approach where you represent the canvas interactable content with svg or html but be visually hidden such that there is an accessibility surface for tools to use which represents the canvas. It's tricky though and requires much work to get good results.

chriscoyier, to random
@chriscoyier@front-end.social avatar

jQuery plugins depended on jQuery, and when jQuery went out of favor, they ended up in the junkyard.

There is all sorts of componentry built exclusively on React, limiting it to React-based sites. As React goes out of favor, they will end up in the junkyard. (Same with any framework-specific extension.)

But with Web Components... it seems like the story will end differently. If they are built without dependencies, they might just live as long as the web does.

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@cferdinandi @chriscoyier

If I can't tell from outside if a component uses lit or not, does it matter?

The diff for me between framework and lib is I have to know that a framework is in use in order to initialize it + hand control over to it. WCs solved that.

Components should be judged on the weight they carry & their interface, not on whether they are dependency free. Sure a lib could lose support, but, if it works on standards, is framework free, it'll continue to work, so does it matter?

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@cferdinandi @chriscoyier code doesn't magically change.

If lit stops getting support, it'll work for years to come, the web platform very rarely removes things or changes behavior. Plus since it's not a framework I'm not tied to it when it's used in a dep, I can even run multiple different versions of it!

But yes all dependencies are risks, so too is the component you're depending on. I'd rather trust a well tested lib used by many, than a complex component that's rolled it's own reactivity.

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@cferdinandi @chriscoyier haha, you have no idea. I've worked on code bases that are 30+ years old!

I completely get trying to minimize dependencies and I preach this myself. They are risks as I said, but so too is rolling everything from scratch every time.

You have to balance these things, and yes, don't bring in massive chains of dependencies, that'd be a major redflag for any component.

But isolated, small, well behaved libraries will save you many headaches and improve perf overall.

owa, to random
@owa@mastodon.social avatar

Apple essentially demanding that browser vendors relocate their iOS browser development teams to the EU.

The next episode of malicious compliance:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/17/apple_browser_eu/

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@owa @meduz right another great example of this is any complex app that has high memory usage. The simulators don't have the same rules for memory limits.

You absolutely need to be able to test and develop on real devices!

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

Great thread from @pluralistic on AI art. Finally someone has coherently expressed how I feel about the field and the moral and technical nuances related to it!

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112435369749859354

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

Today was my last day at Adobe. I depart for startup pastures new which I'll elaborate on later...

But today I availed myself of the e-waste drop off at the Adobe office. I have never seen anyone so excited about a 16 year old Android G1 device!

It was like the cable goblins of some mythical dragon cave came out to paw over the relics brought forth by the cave diggers of tech ancient past.

They even printed labels for the RCA cable I brought them and mounted it on the wall. No kidding!

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@tomayac thanks Thomas! Exciting times ahead and much to do!

But also wow, I've never felt so old as when I realized a whole generation of folks have never seen a mini USB cable. I had to explain what it was to the guy at the drop-off today.

Would you believe they are 24 years old already!??

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

Prime example of engineers not actually living in the real world:

Whoever runs #googlemaps needs to get out and drive the countryside lanes in the UK. While they are 'national' speed limited at 60mph these are NOT 60mph roads. More like 20mph.

The Google maps routing algorithm doesn't take this into account at all so will happily route you down a single lane dirt track thinking it'll save you a few minutes and ends up costing you 20 instead.

Moral of the story: use your product at the edges.

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@tanepiper yup it's actively dangerous at times.

It once sent us in our tiny Eurovan camper down a logging road in the middle of nowhere California to get to a campsite. We only realized after 2hrs when the road disappeared. It tried to make 3 non existent turns and at one point the 'road' consisted of two carefully balanced logs over a stream!

As it got dark and we picked our way at 5mph along this track I was grateful we had offroad tires on our van and a large supply of gin if we got stuck!

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Ah, fuck. It’s “post lies without a fucking punchline and pretend it’s funny, only for this shit to be rediscovered as misinformation a few months down the line” day

A pox on every house that participates.

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@baldur think of it like the Great ML Poisoning day and it's not so bad!

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

Just finished reading Makers by @pluralistic and was surprised by how much it made me miss participating in the maker scene the last few years!

This quote also perfectly summed up my last 5 years of big corp life:

"I want to just DO SOMETHING instead of ask someone else to start a process to investigate the possibility of someday possibly maybe doing something."

Looking forward to reading the rest of the catalog I picked up in the Humble Bundle book sale!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cory-doctorow-novel-collection-tor-books-books 21hrs left!

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Whenever I see a pundit claim you can’t make a good Progressive Web App implying that Apple’s middling support is doing us a favour somehow, I get the urge to go all-in on the Chrome-only Fugu APIs just to show what could have been done in an alternate universe where Mozilla hasn’t given up

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@baldur to be honest these days I advocate for doing the extra work to take advantage of new features in browsers which support them, and have fallbacks as appropriate for those which don't.

Without developer adoption features have a hard time getting traction in Safari discussions, so we have to use these things when they're available to us to drive things forward.

Nothing makes Safari team implement something faster than a popular app shipping a feature that is unavailable in Safari.

tojiro, to random
@tojiro@mastodon.social avatar

Just added a new "MSDF text rendering" WebGPU sample!

Actually did most of the work for this a while back, but React made it absurdly difficult to get some of the relative file paths needed to work correctly, so it never got finished. Huge thanks to @greggman for cleaning up and de-React-ifying the samples, which made it possible to finally land it!

https://webgpu.github.io/webgpu-samples/?sample=textRenderingMsdf

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@tojiro @greggman I love that you could wrangle the complexities of WebGPU but the thing that blocked you making progress was React!

The React complexity merchants have a lot to answer for...

jensimmons, to CSS
@jensimmons@front-end.social avatar

Dear people who make websites,

Now that Safari 17.4 is available, what other new web technology — HTML, CSS, JS, Web API, media support, etc — would you like to see supported in Safari next?

What’s most needed?
What will you use it for?
Or how will it help your team serve your users?
Tell me a story…

#css #html #javascript #web #webdevelopment

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@tomayac @jensimmons to add to this as user stories...

We (Adobe) need filesystem access for editing and saving files for a user on the local filesystem. Users don't want to have to upload/download to edit an image!

Web Share Target is also then invaluable for us to be able to let users directly share their work from within our apps.

Fullscreen API is also not just for video, it gives users more real estate for UI in complex apps.

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

Clearing up for a move...

How many kettle cords is a techie supposed to keep on hand in 2024 anyway? Asking for a friend...

jaffathecake, to random
@jaffathecake@mastodon.social avatar

🔊 Apple is removing web app features from Safari in the EU, rather than allowing other browsers to have those features on iOS.

Here's a new episode of OTMT with all the details, and what you can do about it:

https://offthemainthread.tech/episode/the-apple-pwa-ban/

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@jaffathecake @tbroyer given the terms of the DMA haven't changed I would hope that home screen apps will eventually be viable from non Safari browsers since they do still need to treat all browsers equally.

cammerman, to random
@cammerman@mstdn.social avatar

I bought a new vertical mouse this week, because my existing ones were dying, and I had come to the realization that they were too big for my small hands.

I got the new one and it fits my hand and I am happy. I'm reminded of the first one I got, which resolved pain and numbness I was having, overnight.

I have to say a deep and heartfelt thanks to @shanselman, for one day many years ago blogging about his vertical mouse. It changed my life in a small but significant way.

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@cammerman @shanselman 100% recommend a vertical mouse...

What fixed my entire RSI problem though was a vertical keyboard too! Very few options to choose from but totally worth it even if you do get funny looks in the office!

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

If you're an eng and you aren't right now raising awareness within your organization, to your product managers and executives about Apples policy to neuter PWA in the EU, you're doing your company a disservice.

We were very close to a reality where web apps could actually replace native apps, where our companies don't have to invest in both web and native development teams. That future is now looking less likely and that's bad for all of us.

https://adactio.com/journal/20888

https://open-web-advocacy.org/apple-attempts-killing-webapps/

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

For those saying "it's ok, nobody uses PWA"... PWA adoption is so low as these technologies have been held back for years on Apple devices that our execs / devs tend to use.

That bias leads to lower adoption at the point of development, I have had to fight internally to get our PM leadership to realize what the web platform is now capable of.

Apples latest move is a snub in the face of user choice and product development freedom.

It costs your company money in favor of making Apple bank!

bendelarre, to random
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

Ok so who's got a good framework for making life changing decisions?

I have a bunch of opportunities in my lap right now and I'm stuck, completely unable to make any decisions at all.

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@mdh hadn't heard of that but yeah makes sense. My father used to play the "no you can't do that" card on me to get me to see how I felt about having an option taken away.

But once you know that trick is being played the mental magic doesn't work anymore.

joelanman, to programming
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

Is Playwright a good choice for testing a web app?
#js #webdev

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@joelanman don't use Jest to unit test websites. It is out of date, and doesn't run a real browser, instead using a simulation of the dom (jsdom) that itself has bugs and doesn't behave the same as real browsers.

Vitest gives you the flexibility to run in either jsdom or browsers using it's experimental mode. This gives you more flexibility.

Any code that touches dom, timing (e.g. requestAnimationFrame) or any browser API should be tested in a browser.

MLE_online, to random
@MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

Back on my bike bullshit

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@MLE_online thinking of joining the Black Label Bicycle Club?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Label_Bike_Club

danilo, to random
@danilo@hachyderm.io avatar

Part of why tech workers at huge orgs like this need a union:

Being compelled to relocate to a forced birthing state is violent as hell

So much more to collective power than just getting paid

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/14/24037904/apple-san-diego-siri-ai-team-relocating

bendelarre,
@bendelarre@mastodon.social avatar

@danilo @tappenden hope I'm not being lumped in with Max here. Definitely do not share his views.

See: https://mastodon.social/@bendelarre/111756665890143324

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