Monthly Digest November 2019

Hello everybody! 👋

Greetings from dotJS in Paris! It's my last conference this year, and I'm looking forward to jumping soon into vacation-mode to finish the year with some time off to rest and maybe work on some side-projects (I may do some e11ty streaming, but psst...).

Let's have a look at what content was interesting in November!

If you're a Developer who occasionally "tries to design things", but the result never looks "good enough", Refactoring UI is a wonderful resource to improve your designs by providing you tiny tips and tricks to make things "just look good". It's a comprehensive resource, and I think it's fascinating that it started, like many things, on Twitter quite a while ago.

You may remember the times when writing Frontend applications included only a CDN-referenced jQuery file and a custom JS bundle. The best practice was to load files from public CDNs – the more sites reference the same resource, the higher the chance that users have a cache version in their browser already.

This caching behavior changed with Chrome 77... Chrome now partitions the HTTP cache – there is no shared cache between sites anymore. And Chrome is not alone; Safari treats global resources differently depending on the website requesting them as well. Together, both browsers have 80% market share, and with this, it's time to say goodbye to this best practice. 👋

I came across many excellent accessibility resources this month. Let's keep it short and sweet:

• aria-label doesn't translate well in browsers
• whocanuse.com is a helpful resource bringing awareness into colors, and how they can affect the user experience
• Single-Page-Applications come with many accessibility pitfalls
• disabled buttons aren't great

HTTP Archive recently released the Web Almanac 2019. The Almanac includes articles diving into the gathered web data of 2019 covering topics like fonts, web performance, and much more.

I sat down and read the whole thing (it took quite some time 🙈). If you don't have enough time to read it all – I wrote down the stats and facts I found interesting.

backdrop-filter lets you apply visual effects to the area behind an element

I was waiting for a simple way to create a "frosty glass"-effect (a blurry and semi-transparent background) in CSS for years. While watching the Chrome Dev Summit session with Una and Adam, I learned about the backdrop-filter CSS property and also found out that the support is not too bad these days. 🎉

backreferences in JavaScript regular expressions

Regular expressions fascinate me – this month I learned about backreferences for capture groups in JavaScript regular expressions. I love that there are always new things to discover in the Regex-World!

Tim Kadlec is one of my favorite speakers out there, and that is for one reason – his talks always include a very creative opening, and they always include a good storyline. I love that!

"When JavaScript Bytes" is no exception – it comes with a good intro, paired with a good storyline and lots of web performance stats and tricks!

Claire Lew publishes a lot of content about leadership that profoundly resonates with me. I came across "7 leadership lessons over 2.5 years", which included this month's favorite quote:

"Treat others the way you want to be treated" [...] is a poor definition of empathy.

If you want to learn more about leadership – I highly recommend checking out her writing.

Kölsch is a Danish house DJ. I love his sound. His track "Der Alte" appeared in my Spotify, and it is one of these songs that makes me stop and listen (and maybe even dance a little) over and over again.

And that's it for November, friends! 🎉 👋

Have a great December and wonderful holidays!

If you have any feedback about this newsletter, please let me know. :)