Author Anselm Hannemann

September 13, 2019 — What happened in the web dev world in the past four weeks? In his final monthly reading list, Anselm summarized everything you need to know to stay on top of things. Read more…

August 16, 2019 — What happened in the web dev world in the past four weeks? In his monthly reading list, Anselm summarized everything you need to know to stay on top of things — from browser news to handy tips and thought-provoking ideas. Read more…

July 19, 2019 — For his monthly reading list, Anselm Hannemann summarized what has happened in the web development world in the past few weeks. From browser news and UI/UX to privacy, tooling, work and life. Read more…

June 14, 2019 — For his monthly reading list, Anselm Hannemann summarized what has happened in the web development world in the past few weeks. From browser news and UI/UX to privacy, tooling, work and life. Read more…

May 17, 2019 — This new edition of the Monthly Web Development Update takes a look at what moves the web and the people working on it. From browser updates and handy tools to how we do work. Read more…

April 12, 2019 — From browser news to UI/UX advice and handy tips, tricks, and tools, Anselm Hannemann summarized the latest resources to help you master your daily front-end and design challenges. Read more…

March 15, 2019 — Staying on top of what’s happening in the web community can be hard with so much going on. Anselm’s monthly reading list gives you an overview of the most important news and articles. Read more…

February 15, 2019 — Browser news, valuable lessons learned, best practices, inspiring coding experiments. In his monthly reading list, Anselm Hannemann summarized the most important things that happened in the web development world in the past few weeks. Read more…

January 18, 2019 — Anselm is back with a new edition of his Monthly Web Development Update. A reading list to help you rethink existing systems and habits and find the solution that really fits your product. Read more…

December 14, 2018 — For his last monthly update in 2018, Anselm summarized what has happened in the web development community in the past few weeks. Get ready for browser news, handy tools, lessons learned, and thought-provoking reads. Read more…

November 23, 2018 — Major updates, new tools, valuable lessons learned. In his monthly reading list, Anselm summarizes everything that’s new and important to know for web developers this November. Read more…

October 19, 2018 — What happened in the web dev world in the past four weeks? In his monthly reading list, Anselm summarized everything you need to know — from browser news to valuable techniques, tools, and lessons learned. Read more…

September 14, 2018 — The web is evolving at such a fast pace that it can be hard to stay on top of things. To give you an overview of what happened in the web dev world in the past few weeks, Anselm once again compiled his monthly update. Read more…

August 17, 2018 — What happened in the web industry in the past four weeks? To keep you up-to-date, Anselm summarizes the latest techniques, browser updates, and hot topics in one handy reading list. Read more…

July 13, 2018 — Staying up to date with the latest techniques, browser updates, and hot topics can be quite a challenge. Every month, Anselm summarizes what’s been going on in the web industry, so you can easily catch up on everything new and important. Read more…

June 15, 2018 — Anselm Hannemann summarized the most important things that happened in the web development world in the past four weeks so that you can easily catch up on everything that’s new. Read more…

May 18, 2018 — What has happened in the web community in the past four weeks? Anselm Hannemann summarized everything that’s new and important in one handy reading list. Read more…

April 13, 2018 — Anselm Hannemann summarized what has happened in the web community in the past four weeks. From browser news and useful tools to hot topics and the things we should talk about more often. Read more…

March 16, 2018 — As every month, Anselm Hannemann summarized what happened in the web development world in the last few weeks. A handy reading list full of browser news, performance tips, UX advice, and much more to help you stay on top of things. Read more…

February 16, 2018 — Staying on top of the newest techniques, browser updates, and hot topics can be hard. Anselm Hannemann summarized what happened in the web industry in the past few weeks, so you can easily catch up on everything new and important. Read more…

January 19, 2018 — Anselm Hannemann summarized what happened in the web development world in the past few weeks. A reading list full of browser news, handy guides, thoughtful reads, and more. Read more…

December 15, 2017 — What happened in the web community in the last few weeks? Anselm Hannemann summarizes everything that’s new and important so that you don’t miss out on anything. Read more…

November 18, 2017 — Editor’s Note: Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann summarizes what happened in the web community in the past few weeks in one handy list, so that you can catch up on everything new and important. Enjoy! Welcome back to our monthly reading list. Before we dive right into all the amazing content I stumbled upon — admittedly, this one is going to be quite a long update — I want to make a personal announcement. This week I launched a personal project called Colloq, a new conference and event service for users and organizers. If you’re going to events or are organizing one or if you’re interested in the recorded content of conferences, this could be for you. So if you like, go ahead and check it out. Read more…

October 13, 2017 — Editor’s Note: Welcome to this month’s web development update. Anselm has summarized the most important happenings in the web community that have taken place over the past few weeks in one handy list for you. Enjoy! As web developers, we’re working in a very diverse environment: We have countless options to specialize in, but it’s impossible to keep up with everything. This week I read an article from a developer who realized that even though he has been building stuff for the web for over seven years, sometimes he just doesn’t understand what’s going on: “I’m slamming my keyboard in frustration as another mysterious error appears in my build script,” he writes. Read more…

September 15, 2017 — Editor’s Note: Welcome to this month’s web development update. It’s actually the first one that we publish, and from now on, Anselm will summarize the most important things that happened over the past month in one handy list for you. So that you’re always up-to-date of what’s going on in the web community. Enjoy! Today, I’d like to begin this update with a question I’m asking myself quite often, and that was fueled by the things I read lately: Where do we see our responsibility, where do we see other people’s responsibilities? And how do companies fit in here? Read more…

August 18, 2017 — You might have noticed it already: in the past few weeks you might have missed Anselm’s Web Development Reading List issues here on SmashingMag. No worries, from now on, we’ll switch to collecting the most important news of each month in one handy, monthly summary for you. If you’d like to continue reading Anselm’s weekly reading list (and we encourage you to!), you can still do so via email, on wdrl.info or via RSS. — Editorial Team Hello again! I’ll continue publishing this resource and am grateful for everyone who supports my ongoing work. And to celebrate the last weekly edition, I found a lot of great articles for you: Biohacking news that sound like science fiction, advances in deep learning with JavaScript, and a lot more. Happy reading! Read more…

July 21, 2017 — New APIs offer great possibilities to build better web services. And some people push these new technologies to their limits. For example, we can use JavaScript to generate images that we then can use in Web Notifications. We can use the Storage API to find out if and how much data we can save on a user’s device and can adjust the behavior of our applications accordingly. Read more…

July 14, 2017 — Do you feel stressed from time to time? I do. Recently, I experimented with meditation and yoga, just to see if and how they work. There’s a lot of advice you can find online and they all claim to transform your life entirely. Read more…

July 7, 2017 — CSS is an amazing tool which we constantly use but we don’t seem to honor it appropriately. Whenever I see the growing browser support of the :focus-within selector, the much wanted justify-content: space-evenly for Flexbox or how great CSS Grids already work, I feel really grateful to have such awesome tools available to work with. Read more…

June 30, 2017 — This week, we’ll explore some rather new concepts: What happens if we apply artificial intelligence to text software, for example? And why would a phone manufacturer want its business model to be stolen by competitors? Read more…

June 16, 2017 — Design is one of the most controversial things in our industry. There are barely any redesigns that aren’t discussed heavily in the community. Changing a well-working design is even harder as people tend to dislike anything new, but if we give them a bit of time, they might start to see things from a different perspective. Instead of following what everyone else is doing, we shouldn’t hesitate to leave the beaten tracks when designing — by creating a contrast-rich, deep design without using drop shadows, for example. Whatever you do, be sure to explore new options whenever you can. Read more…

June 9, 2017 — This week was full of great browser vendor news: Safari 11 was announced with long-awaited features such as WebRTC and tracking protection, and a new Edge build with new CSS features is now available, too. But the past few days also had some valuable articles up their sleeves: about implementing HTTP/2 push, using datetime-local, and slimming down your CSS, for example. I collected everything in this reading list for you, so you don’t miss out on anything. Enjoy! Read more…

June 2, 2017 — Our lives are in constant change, we never stop developing and evolving — our bodies, our minds, our views. And today’s technology supports us in doing that: We can access a lot more information as the generations before us, and with that, we have a variety of new possibilities to grow and develop our personalities. We can see how work environments change, for example, we see resistance towards change and new methods, but slowly and over time, humanity is changing their overall behavior. Seeing technology in this light gives us a new perspective on our work attitude and how we approach technology. Read more…

May 19, 2017 — When was the last time you took some time to reflect? Constantly surrounded by news and notifications to keep up with and in a rush to get things done more efficiently, it’s important that we take a step back from time to time to reflect our actions and opinions. Reflect if you are working the way you want to work, reflect if you live your life as you want it to be, but also everyday matters. Do you really need that one particular app or service, for example, or could you live without it? Sometimes less is more and efficiency isn’t everything. What counts is how you use your time. Read more…

May 12, 2017 — When did you take your last vacation? For many of us, it was probably a long time ago. However, since quite a while, I stumble across more and more stories about companies that take unusual steps vacation-wise. Companies giving their employees a day off each week in summer or going on vacation together as a team building event instead of traveling somewhere just to work. But while there’s a new generation building their dream work environments, a lot of people still suffer from very bad working conditions. They work long hours and are discriminated or harassed by colleagues or their managers. And just this week, I heard that many company owners are desperate because “Generation Y” doesn’t want to work long hours anymore. Read more…

May 5, 2017 — In a world between building accessible interfaces, optimizing the experiences for users, and big businesses profiting from this, we need to find a way to use our knowledge meaningfully. When we read that even the engineers who built it don’t know how their autonomous car algorithm works or that the biggest library of books that mankind ever saw is in the hand of one single company and not accessible to anyone, we might lose our faith in what we do as developers. But then, on the other hand, we stumble across stories about accessible smart cities or about companies that embrace full honesty in their culture. There are amazing examples of how we can pursue meaningful work and build a better future. Let’s not let negative news get us down, but let’s embrace them as a reason to change for the better instead. Read more…

April 28, 2017 — We all have fears and doubts. It’s not different for you than for me. Over the last weeks, “well-known” people on Twitter started to share mistakes they made in life or their careers. I think it’s very helpful to read that we all make mistakes. We all have to learn and improve, and people who are on a stage at an event for the 100th time are still known to be extremely nervous. Let’s realign our views, our expectations and, instead of being afraid of making mistakes, try to improve our knowledge and let others learn from the things that didn’t go as expected. Read more…

April 21, 2017 — Bots and Artificial Intelligence are probably the most hyped concepts right now. And while some people praise the existing technologies, others claim they don’t fear AI at all, citing examples where it fails horribly. Examples of Facebook or Amazon advertising (both claim to use machine learning) that don’t match our interests at all are quite common today. But what happens if we look at autonomous cars, trains or planes that have the very same machine learning technologies in place? How about the military using AI for its actions? While we’re still experimenting with these capable technologies, we also need to consider the possible consequences, the responsibilities that we have as developers and how all of this might affect the people the technology is being served to. Read more…

April 13, 2017 — Looking at recent discussions, I feel that more and more people are starting to think about ethically and morally correct work. Many of us keep asking themselves if their work is meaningful or if it matters at all. But in a well-functioning society, we need a variety of things to live a good life. The people writing novels that delight us are just as important as those who fight for our civil rights. It’s important that we have people building services that ease other people’s lives and it’s time to set our sense of urgency right again. Once we start to value other people’s work, the view we have on our own work will start to change, too. As we rely on book authors, for example, other people rely on us to be able to buy the books via a nice, fast and reliable web service. Read more…

April 7, 2017 — In his article, Eric Karjaluoto states that, “Taking pride in how busy we are is one of the worst ideas we ever had.” So, how about reading just a few articles this week for a change and then take a complete weekend off to recharge your battery? Read more…

March 31, 2017 — What a busy week! To stay on top of things, let’s review what happened in the web development world the last few days — from browser vendors pushing new updates and building new JavaScript guidelines and security standards to why we as web professionals need to review our professional pride. How can we properly revoke certificates in browsers, for example? And how can we build accessibility into a style guide? Let’s take a look. Safari 10.1 was announced a while ago already, and this week it finally came to Macs and iOS devices around the world. The new Safari version ships CSS Grid Layouts, fetch(), IndexedDB2.0, Custom Elements, Form Validation, Media Capture, and much more. Read more…

March 24, 2017 — With GraphQL, FQL, and IndexedDB2, we have new tools at our fingertips that allow us to build products that are not only more flexible but also faster. With this week’s Web Development Reading List, we’ll dive a bit deeper into these promising technologies and combine this with thoughts about the openness of the internet, ethical choices, and building inclusive products. So without further ado, let’s get started! Chrome 57 just hit stable, now the Chrome developer team announced Chrome 58 beta. It includes IndexedDB2.0 support and improvements to iframe navigation. Among the smaller changes are also auto-pause/resume of video on Android when the window is in the background and the fact that HTTPS is now required for the Web Notifications API. Read more…

March 17, 2017 — We’re all designers. Whether we do a layout, a product design or write code to design a product technically doesn’t matter here. What does matter though, is that we always take the context of a project into consideration. Because as someone shaping a project so that it is appealing to the clients and works in the best way possible for the target audience, we have a pretty big responsibility. Imagine architects building a wall out of recycled material that also looks nice — sounds pretty great, right? But seen in the context that this will be a wall that divides people and encourages racism and even more inequality in our society, our first impression of the undertaking suddenly shifts into the opposite direction. We have to make new decisions every time we start a new project, and seeing things in context is crucial to live up to our responsibility — both in our work and our lives. Read more…

March 10, 2017 — This week was a big week in terms of web development news. We got much broader support for CSS Grids and Web Assembly, for example, but I also stumbled across some great resources that teach us a lot of valuable things. With this Web Development Reading List, we’ll dive deep into security and privacy issues, take a look at a lightweight virtual DOM alternative, and get insights into how we can overcome our biases (or at least how we can better deal with them). So without further ado, let’s dive right in! Read more…

March 3, 2017 — As web developers, we all approach our work very differently. And even when you take a look at yourself, you’ll notice that the way you do your work does vary all the time. I, for example, have not reported a single bug to a browser vendor in the past year, despite having stumbled over a couple. I was just too lazy to write them up, report them, write a test case and care about follow-up comments. This week, however, when integrating the Internationalization API for dates and times, I noticed a couple of inconsistencies and specification violations in several browsers, and I reported them. It took me one hour, but now browser vendors can at least fix these bugs. Today, I filed two new issues, because I’ve become more aware again of things that work in one browser but not in others. I think it’s important to change the way we work from time to time. It’s as easy as caring more about the issues we face and reporting them back. Read more…

February 24, 2017 — Phew, what a week! Due to an HTML-parsing bug, Cloudflare experienced a major data leak, and the first practical collision for SHA-1 was revealed as well. We should take these events as an occasion to reconsider if a centralized front-end load balancer that modifies your traffic is a good idea after all. And it’s definitely time to upgrade your TLS-certificate if you still serve SHA-1, too. Here’s what else happened this week. Read more…

February 17, 2017 — As web developers, we need to rely on our knowledge, and choosing solutions we’re already familiar with is often the most convenient approach to solving a problem. However, not only technology is evolving but also our knowledge of how to use it. For a while, we thought it’s best to use base64 encoding for inlining assets into CSS files, for example, and that loading JavaScript asynchronously will make websites faster. With more evidence and research, however, we came to realize that we were wrong. We should take this as an occasion to remind ourselves to question our habits and from now on ask ourselves if the solution we have in mind for a given problem really is still the best one we could choose. Read more…

February 10, 2017 — Everyone here can have a big impact on a project, on someone else. I get very excited about this when I read stories like the one about an intern at Google who did an experiment that saves tons of traffic, or when I get an email from one of my readers who now published an awesome complete beginner’s guide to front-end development. We need to recognize that our industry depends on people who share their open-source code and we should support them and their projects that we heavily rely on. Finally, we also need to understand that these people perhaps don’t want a job as an employee at some big company but remain independent instead. So if you make money with a project that uses open-source libraries or other resources, maybe Valentine’s Day might be an occasion to show your appreciation and make the author a nice present. Read more…

February 3, 2017 — With great power comes great responsibility. This week I found some resources that got me thinking: Service Workers that download 16MB of data on the user’s first visit? A Bluetooth API in the browser? Private browser windows that aren’t so private at all? We have a lot of methods and strategies to fix these kinds of things. We can give the browser smarter hints, put security headers and HTTPS in place, serve web fonts locally, and build safer network protocols. The responsibility is in our hands. Read more…

January 27, 2017 — When working in a team, we focus so much on the work, that we often forget that we all have something in common. Something that is so obvious that we underestimate it: we all are human beings. And well, if we want to grow as a team and get better at what we do, we should embrace this fact more. In fact, I just came back from a week-long team retreat where we had team activities, team games, and sessions and discussions about how we can achieve just that. We figured out how much we value diversity, we realized how different the English language and its words are perceived by people from different countries, and we’ve seen short talks on various topics like work-life-balance but also on technical stuff like Docker or intercepting any computer’s traffic with a Raspberry Zero. So if you have the chance to work in a team, use the opportunity and exchange views and share information with your co-workers. Work is part of your life, so why not make it a lovely part? Read more…

January 20, 2017 — What fuels your work? What fuels your mind? What do you do on a non-productive day or when you’re sad? Nowadays, I try to embrace these times. I try to relax and not be angry at myself for not being productive. And the fun fact about it? Well, most of the times when I could convince my mind that not being productive is nothing to feel bad about, things take a sudden turn: I get my ideas back, my productivity rises and, in effect, I even achieve more work than on an average day. It’s important to try to be human. Read more…

January 13, 2017 — Happy new year! I hope you had a good start and can feel positive about what 2017 might bring. As mentioned in the last edition of the past year, I don’t like New Year’s resolutions too much, but I’d like to point you to something that Marc Thiele wishes for this year: “So my wish then also is, that you reflect and ask yourself, if you want to post the text or maybe even just have another, a second look on the text you are about to post. Maybe you decide, that you don’t post it. Maybe this helps, that less negative posts and emotions are spread.” Read more…

December 23, 2016 — Welcome to the last reading list of the year. I’m happy to still have you as a reader and very grateful to all the people who value and support my work. I hope you’ll be on vacation for the upcoming days or can relax a bit from your daily work. Remind to take care of yourself, and see you next year! New year’s resolutions — you know it, they’re hard to reach. Find out why it’s easier to use recurring systems instead of setting goals. As James Clear explains, “It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems. Read more…

December 16, 2016 — Only one week left until Christmas, and people already start freaking out again. No gifts purchased yet, work isn’t finished either, and suddenly some budget has to be spent until the end of the year. All of this puts us under pressure. To avoid the stress, I’ve seen a lot of people take a vacation from now until the end of the year — probably a good idea. And while it’s nice to see so many web advent calendars, I feel like I’ve never written a longer reading list than this one. So save this edition if you don’t have much time currently and read it during some calm moments later this year or early next year. Most articles are still worth reading in a few weeks. Read more…

December 9, 2016 — We shouldn’t let ourselves get distracted by people who work on different projects than we do. If a developer advocate works on a web-based QR code application, for example, their way of tackling things most certainly won’t fit your project. If someone builds a real-time dashboard, their concept won’t relate to the company portfolio website you’re building. Bear in mind that you need to find the best concept, the best technologies, the best solution for your specific project. Thinking about the right decisions rather than following cool, new trends blindly, is the first step to building responsible web solutions. That’s what we call progressive enhancement. The only subjective matter in this undertaking is you, judging what level of progressive enhancement a solution should have. Read more…

December 2, 2016 — Are you afraid of refactoring code? I love refactoring code. It’s nice to see a code base growing, but this also means that new quirks and suboptimal changes are introduced along the way. At some point, you might realize that there could be a huge opportunity in rewriting the code — to eliminate conflicts or to rename things. Read more…

November 25, 2016 — We have great new technology available to enhance our websites. But while theoretical articles explain well what the technologies do, we often struggle to find real use cases or details on how things worked out in actual projects. This week I stumbled across a couple of great posts that share exactly these precious real-life insights: stories about HTTP/2 implementation, experiences from using the Cascade of CSS in large-scale projects, and insights into employing Service Worker and BackgroundSync to build solid forms. Read more…

November 18, 2016 — As developers, are we paid to write code? This challenging question raises concerns about product quality, code quality, and our purpose as developers in a world of coded applications. You’ll find an interesting post that dives deeper into the matter in the “Work & Life” section of our reading list this week. But we have other amazing resources to look at this week, too: new tools, new tutorials, and we’ll also take some time to reconsider CSS print styles. Let’s get started! Read more…

November 11, 2016 — These days, I’ve been pondering what purpose we as developers have in our world. I’m not able to provide you with an answer here, but instead want to encourage you to think about it, too. Do you have an opinion on this? Are we just pleasing other people’s demands? Or are we in charge of advising the people who demand solutions from us if we think they’re wrong? A challenging question, and the answer will be different for everyone here. If you want to let me know your thoughts, I’d be happy to hear them. Bear with me, this week’s list is a large one. Too many good resources popped up, explaining technical and design concepts, how to use new JavaScript methods to write smarter applications, and sharing lessons learned from CSS Grid Layouts and tips to take care of your happiness. Read more…

November 4, 2016 — We all have visions and dreams. Whether it’s about our personal lives, our work, or about complex concepts that target issues which are hard to grasp. The important thing is to listen to your ideas, to write them down, and, if they wake strong feelings, to pursue them. It can be easy to achieve this, yet sometimes it’s not. A nice technique is to start small and take small steps instead of going 100% all-in or do nothing at all. We like to play with new things, we like to try out new technology, and our minds want to explore new paths — let’s do it! Read more…

October 28, 2016 — Is a person who is sitting by herself in a room alone? From an outside perspective, it might seem so, but the human brain is way more interesting in these regards. We carry a map of relationships inside ourselves, and it depends on this map if the person actually does feel alone or not. I just read “Stress and the Social Self: How Relationships Affect Our Immune System”, and I feel that we can learn a lot from it. In fact, I might see social media from a different perspective now. We’re social beings, I love sharing good content with you, so, without further ado, here’s this week’s web dev reading list. Read more…

October 21, 2016 — As people working in front of a screen all day, we often struggle to find the right balance. I’m not talking about work-life balance alone here, but of how our life that is completely virtual during the day often causes us to not take real life into account. We tend to forget that our bodies need something else than coding all day. And we need to take care of our fellow human beings in real life as well. Just think about this number: The average US person will spend over 9 hours in front of a screen today. Time to become more aware of how we can keep the balance between the virtual and the real world. Read more…

October 14, 2016 — With new frameworks and libraries emerging, the tools we have at hand are constantly changing. But it’s not only our toolkit but also the way we write code that constantly evolves — new CSS conventions are developed all the time and the best practices to write JavaScript change at least every year. But then again, we have to remind ourselves that we shouldn’t immediately jump to a new tool just because it’s available, to not rewrite the whole code of a project just because conventions have changed. No project will stop working because you’re using OOCSS instead of ITCSS or Backbone.js instead of React.js. If the project is an ongoing process and will be developed and maintained for another few years, you should evaluate to change tools from time to time, of course. But take your time. Better evaluate first, then reconsider, before you immediately jump on a train from which you don’t know where it’s heading. Read more…

October 7, 2016 — While I was away on vacation, the web development community stayed consistent, and since I’ve been back, the same well-known, long-running discussions about JavaScript, frameworks, and progressive enhancement are full on again. But on the other hand, we also see great new solutions for CSS, simple but efficient JavaScript libraries, and brave people sharing their personal stories from which we all can learn a lot. Read more…

September 2, 2016 — This week’s reading list consists of a lot of little, smart details that you can use on websites. From tweaking the user’s reading experience during page load to pure JavaScript functions and verifying the integrity of external assets. And finally, we see some articles on thinking differently about established working habits — be it working on AI without data or the virtue of not shipping a feature. Please note that I’ll be on vacation for the next four weeks, so please don’t expect any new Web Development Reading List before October, 7th. Enjoy September, your work, your life! Read more…

August 26, 2016 — In the last few years, I’ve seen a lot of code. As a freelancer working on multiple big projects with a lot of people, you’ll inevitably see all varieties of code styles. But I also realized how much writing JavaScript changed over the past years. Having learned JavaScript before ES6 was there, a great mentor (Hans Christian Reinl) taught me the most important lesson: Always write clean, understandable code. Avoid ternary operators, declare variables in one place, make functions as simple as possible. Basically things that so many JavaScript style guides also advise. But with the growing adoption of ES6/ES2015, I also saw an increase of code where most of these principles (except for keeping functions small) are ignored. Read more…

August 19, 2016 — There is a lot to learn this week. It starts with non-technical things like going for a walk to refresh your mind and finishes with how to prevent reverse XSS attacks in forms. But it doesn’t matter whether you learn how to build self-contained web components using the new specification or to maximize the efficiency of your Angular 2 app or just how you can write less code. What matters is that you keep asking questions and that you try to get better and smarter at your craft. Read more…

August 12, 2016 — Even though we think everything happens in real-time nowadays, we need patience. While technology has been capable of real-time for long now, the “bottleneck” are human beings. Whether it’s a pull request that’s waiting for review since days or weeks or an email response, we need to keep in mind that delays might happen for a good reason. Read more…

August 5, 2016 — I shut down my browser on Wednesday, accidentally having a setting switched on that clears history and all sessions. First, I was sad to have lost many tabs with articles I stored “for later”. At the same time, it felt refreshing, liberating to have a clean browser window with zero tabs open. So my new goal is to start work in the morning with a completely clean browser window at least once a week. In other news: I spent several hours fixing broken links this week, and as a result I can’t say how happy I am that archive.is and archive.org exist to prevent content from disappearing forever. Still, some of the resources I found broken have left forever. So remind yourself about redirecting content. Read more…

July 29, 2016 — When working in a team, it’s important to stick to rules. A common challenge is to build all your projects with a similar or the same toolset and coding guidelines. Only yesterday I discussed how we could port over a project that outgrew its initial codebase over the years to a fresh, React.js-based source code. The decision for this wasn’t easy, since we had invested quite a lot of work and money into this project already, and a move to React would require quite some time, too. But since the switch makes sense from a technical perspective and the team is already using React for three other projects, we concluded that this would be a good step to do. It will enable more developers of the team to contribute to the project, to review code and to reduce the shift of technologies in the company. Occasionally, it’s time to re-evaluate your projects and move on. Read more…

July 22, 2016 — So, what do we have this week? Well, it’s quite a lot actually. For example, there’s now a deal that might make Opera’s browser a Chinese business, leaving all privacy and security efforts that have recently been made in the browser uncertain. If you want to dive into learning ECMAScript 6, Wes Bos has published a huge series of ES6 screencasts this week that are absolutely worth the money. Besides, there are a few other recommendations for you to read this week. Let’s get started. Read more…

July 15, 2016 — I love articles that specifically focus on tiny little details within web development. For example, this week I stumbled upon an article featuring all the fine details about scheduling in requestAnimationFrame. Another gem I discovered is a widely unknown but very practical SVG attribute to preserve stroke widths while scaling an illustration. All of these little details can make such a huge difference in our projects, so I’m particularly thankful for having discovered these articles to share with you this week. Let’s dive in. Read more…

July 8, 2016 — Every week is a learning week and this week I was reminded that viewport units are not all good to use. Also, choosing the right HTTP status code can be difficult and may not even be supported by the Apache version running on your server. I also learned how JavaScript error logging can be extended so that you can finally get easy-to-read and useful reports. As if that wasn’t enough, I learned a lot about accessibility and progressive enhancement again, and discovered a slidedeck on how you can bypass CSP and why browsers can render elements with known boundaries as well as layout limitations incredibly faster than unknown. Are you ready? It’s now your turn to learn all of this as well. Read more…

July 1, 2016 — Hey! I don’t have a lot of links for you this week, but I feel that the ones that I selected are particularly useful to read. I learned about how to break Google captchas, the Referrer header, color psychology, and read an amazing new article by Maciej Cegłowski whose articles and talks I value a lot. Enjoy your weekend! Read more…

June 24, 2016 — Today will be a day in history regardless of what happens over the next weeks. The majority of people in the UK voted to leave the EU, and this made clear once again that many people in our society think the current situation is no longer acceptable. Unfortunately, we think blaming those people is the solution, but, as we see, it isn’t. Instead, we should focus on teaching people about the root causes of problems, and we should retain from posting everything right away. In other news, I’m back from vacation to bring you new articles to read. And I realized one thing: While mountaineering holds real risks and dangers, working on websites mostly does not. Of course, the security of our websites should be a top priority, but even if we fail, if a website is down for a few minutes, if we screwed up the layout on some devices, you won’t be dead. We have the opportunity to improve our work by making mistakes and fixing them. Read more…

June 10, 2016 — There are weeks where I don’t find articles for the “Going Beyond” section of the Web Development Reading List at all. And then there are weeks like this one, where two brilliant pieces show up that reveal so much about how we live together with new technology and how this shapes our society. Along with a bunch of good tech articles, a great way to leave you for the next two weeks. Please note that I’ll be away on vacation next week, so there won’t be a summary next Friday. Read more…

June 3, 2016 — In times where Facebook announces to track all web users whenever it can, it feels weird to work on disaster management tools. You may now ask why, but if you consider what data you work with in such a project, you’re likely to be monitored because of a lot of keywords in there. And that’s what bothers me most: that people who want to do good need to fear that they’re under complete surveillance. I like Tor and secure VPNs more than ever for that reason. Speaking about web development, here’s why using Tor or VPNs for testing performance is a great idea. Read more…

May 27, 2016 — Finding our passion is a big challenge for all of us as human beings. At some point in life, we try to figure out what our purpose in this world is, what our future will look like. And for some of us, the answers we find to these questions are constantly changing. The constant search to find answers lets us stay curious, creative, vital — and if that’s missing, we need to find our passion again by exploring what things we like in our world, what makes us happy. Searching takes time, and we should invest that time — maybe by cutting down watching TV by an hour a week. Read more…

May 20, 2016 — From time to time you need to recalibrate your brain by experimenting with new technologies, by tracing down the performance of a certain feature or by reconsidering the environment of your project. While I’m generally not a proponent of inlined CSS, we now will use it for a third-party script we are providing to avoid style leakages. The point here is that this decision won’t harm performance as it’s an asynchronously loaded script. The other thing I always assumed but never got confirmed was that CSS filters slow down the rendering of a page massively. But as it turns out, when you research this properly, there’s only a barely noticeable difference to unfiltered images. Don’t hesitate to try out new things, only make sure that it’s the best solution when you put it to production. Read more…

May 13, 2016 — This week reminded me again of how refreshing attending a conference can be. As mentioned, I was at the beyond tellerrand conference and, apart from meeting new people, I mostly enjoyed the inspiration I got from listening to the great talks. I realized how I might be able to solve a few things that had led to me being unhappy with my work in the past. My trying-to-change-everything-at-once strategy always failed, and seeing that some people just change small things and succeed, I recognized that this is what I want to try over the next months. And I’m happy that I don’t need to do this alone but have some friends who spent nearly the entire Monday night talking with me about how to do more meaningful work. Read more…

May 6, 2016 — The past week showed yet again how fractured opinions in our industry can be and that to some problems there’s definitely more than just one answer, or we still have to figure out what the proper way is in the end. This is why talking about technical problems matters, and this should certainly be done from time to time with your colleagues. We all know that by sharing and talking to other people, our jobs get more interesting. So, let’s work together more instead of on our own — that would be my advice. Read more…

April 29, 2016 — After spring has started marvelously, this week brought us some snow again. But today, the sun is shining, it’s getting warmer, and nature is flourishing. Inspired by the fresh green of spring, I’d like to announce The Evergreen List. This is a sub-part of my reading list, collecting important links that stay relevant over a longer time so that you can find them more easily. Give the page a try and if you have feedback, just email me. Read more…

April 25, 2016 — For a great project, we need a well-functioning team, solid style guides, smooth workflows and well-organized kick-off meetings. Last week, I found a couple of resources that help you achieve just that. And, a bit further down the road, the developers shouldn’t miss out on anything either, of course, — having a proper workflow is essential to be productive, and that’s why it might be a good idea to start playing with Docker. Have a productive week ahead! Read more…

April 15, 2016 — I write about it often, but it’s a topic that makes me love my job, it’s the reason why communities work and why great people are great. I’m talking about honesty and ethics in everything we do, in how we live. Reading about corruption, tax avoidance tricks, wars, and also about poorly written code or bad user experiences has taught me a lot. Looking back at projects where I stood behind the idea and business model and at projects that I saw only as money-making work showed me that sticking to my ethical principles and being honest makes me feel better, which leads to better work. Read more…

April 9, 2016 — What has been your biggest web development challenge recently? Was it a development issue, a communication issue or an education issue in your team? Facing so many things that don’t work as expected these days in many different teams and projects, I now realize that we all are part of a very young industry, and by challenging not only our technical foundations but also traditional working habits, we have yet to find how we want to work. Share your challenges in the comments to this post, and enjoy the weekend! Read more…

April 1, 2016 — Although it’s April 1st, and people go all crazy making up jokes and spreading hoaxes, I’m sending out this edition to you without any April fools. Instead, I want to challenge you to put more effort, more thoughts into your code. Instead of blindly following a given path to build the solution with the least effort, what about thinking more about your users? Wouldn’t a lot more users benefit from you spending an additional hour on building a form on your own instead of relying on a third party that involves tracking? Wouldn’t they benefit from a smaller website that doesn’t contain big libraries? Read more…

March 25, 2016 — What a week! Some people were debating over our npm workflows and security attacks (and sadly not just virtual social engineering ones but real ones in Brussels), we’ve also seen some great new articles that feature the better parts of our community and society. I’m happy to share them with you over this longer Easter-weekend. Cheers! iOS9.3 and OS X 10.11.4 is finally being delivered to users, and with it, Safari 9.1 is out with <picture> element support, CSS Custom Properties, will-change property, unset value and unprefixed filter. Read more…

March 18, 2016 — Every week I learn so many new things about front-end development. By building various kinds of projects, by talking to other developers, by reading new articles. Of course, it can be overwhelming, but to me this is the best part of the job. By sharing and talking to other people, my job gets more interesting. For example, this week I learned how to build malicious links with target="_blank", I learned how CSRF works, and how important it is that an icon clearly indicates what it is thought for — the latter after I implemented the icons and only found some of them helpful as I saw the fallback/title text for them. Always stay curious. Read more…

March 11, 2016 — Another week comes to an end, with new browser announcements, releases and cool new tools that you might want to check out. I make it short: Have fun reading this week’s reading list and enjoy your weekend! Firefox 45 is out and now re-evaluates responsive images in srcset on resize or viewport changes. Also, the Web Speech Synthesis API and window.onstorage were implemented, and you can now test CSS Grid Layouts. Firefox Nightly also got an interesting new feature: the browser can read text in Reader View. Read more…

March 4, 2016 — Working on very different projects, in different teams and with different people can sometimes be a challenge. But one thing that works out remarkably well is doing retrospectives with your team. In retrospectives, you talk about how a certain project went, and the whole team shares what problems/challenges they faced, what was good and what was annoying people, why people were unhappy. And after each person has written this down on a wall (you can use Post-Its), you try to find useful solutions, small improvements that avoid conflicts, that avoid people feeling bad in a project, and that avoid unnecessary stress situations. Ideally, you do this often — like every two weeks. In every team so far, talking about issues and addressing them has helped to bind the team together and improve future work. Let’s work more together in our teams instead of on our own. Read more…

February 26, 2016 — It’s interesting to see how user experience design advances now that we managed to understand what it means. I think artificial intelligence will become a huge part of user experience over time and that we will spend more time on developing clever integrations to third parties than developing our own “dumb” interfaces. That’s why I find it interesting to see research on how services can use unified interfaces like text messaging apps to become more intelligent. Enjoy your weekend! Why reinvent everything and ship your own application when you could use a messaging app as input and output of your API instead? For example, a schedule for the next bus could be delivered to the user via a text, WhatsApp or Telegram message. Read more…

February 19, 2016 — It’s Friday again, and I found some interesting articles for you to read over the upcoming weekend. In projects, developer, manager and product leaders still try to put pressure on the people who work on a task. Somehow they feel relieved, more secure if they do that. On the other hand, the people experiencing the pressure of urgency are struggling massively with it. The fallacy here is that while the ones spreading the pressure feel better, the people experiencing it usually do a worse job than without the pressure. It leads to more bugs, unstructured work and, in the end, all people involved will suffer from the result. So instead, a team, which includes everyone from a developer to a manager, should focus on the purpose of the work. Give it a try, y’all, and now, enjoy your weekend! Read more…

February 12, 2016 — I often think about our responsibility as web developers. I compare our job to a health worker, to a craftsman, and I realize that we have a pretty easy job in most cases. Usually, nobody’s life will be affected if a website is not available for a couple of minutes or hours. But there are some cases where this could happen. People start coding app interfaces for health application with web technologies, people start connecting health services to the web, and people also rely on websites for their own safety. And that’s why I think we should feel responsible for our users. And by making choices that are ethical and user-centered, we create a better web for everyone. Read more…

February 5, 2016 — This week I mostly spent time on fixing bugs, improving a deployment workflow and on getting another new front-end project structured. One major takeaway from this was that it’s good to have a proper deployment workflow in place already in the early stages of a project. To document appropriately in git what has been done in a commit instead of sleazily writing “changed [XY] because of [some arbitrary reason]”. By doing so, it becomes easier for myself, or someone else, to identify bugs at a later stage. Read more…

January 29, 2016 — This list of articles gather information about the Web Develpment industry, Web Development tools and Web Design insights, tools, tips and tricks. Read more…

January 22, 2016 — This list of articles gather information about the Web Development industry, Web Development tools and Web Design insights, tools, tips and tricks. Read more…

January 15, 2016 — This list of articles gather information about the Web Development industry, Web Development tools and Web Design insights, tools, tips and tricks. Read more…

January 8, 2016 — This list of articles gather information about the Web Development industry, Web Development tools and Web Design insights, tools, tips and tricks. Read more…

December 24, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. Today is the Christmas day for many of us around the world and I hope you’re already enjoying the day with your family or friends. This time is often a rare opportunity to relax a bit, avoid emails for a couple of days and not to be disturbed by daily routine, as other people aren’t working either. Before the new year comes up next, there’s a yet another web development reading list, so you won’t get bored over the next few days! ;) Read more…

December 18, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. The end of the year is near and some people are enjoying their well-deserved holidays already. For others, the pressure increases when managers or clients want to finish a project before Christmas. And then, the Christmas and New Year celebrations — so many things to prepare, to buy, to think of. I hope you either belong to the ones who can enjoy their vacation already or that you can stay calm while having a stressful time. Try to take your time with friends and beloved ones and enjoy some moments of silence. Read more…

December 11, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. You probably haven’t bought your Christmas presents yet. Usually we feel the need to buy a gift for friends and family. It often lets us buy random stuff that is often of no real value. Turning this around, I started to enjoy the evening with a hand-made dinner, small hand-made gifts and enough time for the loved ones. So far, this worked way better than any gift I’ve ever bought in a store. So don’t stress yourself if you haven’t found anything yet — time, attention and doing things together can also be a great gift. Have a nice weekend! Read more…

December 4, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. Winter isn’t here yet, instead as you’re reading this, I’m out for another biking session in the mountains today. You might already have noticed how important nature is to me. So this week, seeing the international climate conference in Paris not aiming for an ambitious goal, a reader sent me this great article in which he questions what we as people in the tech industry can personally do against global warming. If you’re caring only a bit about this, read it and think about it. Have a great week and try out some of the amazing web development stuff I collected for you this week. Read more…

November 27, 2015 — “Black Friday” has many explanations and various historical reasons. Besides that, every year it leads to people buying things just because retailers give huge discounts. But do you really need more? If you wouldn’t have bought something at its full price, you probably don’t need it at all. In a world where most of us have many things in their home untouched for months or years, we should focus on what is important. It’s not having the newest products, using the latest tools, using the latest cool startup service. It’s about helping other people, sharing real experiences and stories with your friends. Thank them and yourself this year without a bought gift. Read more…

November 20, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. Autumn is nearly over, winter is coming to Germany and on the weekend the forecast predicted the first snow for the Bavarian Alps which is near where I live. Time to read about Service Workers, and some abstract topics like teaching complex algorithms, and how to be more objective. Read more…

November 13, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. Last week I was talking about avoiding working all day and night. But Erik actually added a valid point to it: For you as an employee, it’s not always easy to turn off devices and just not respond to requests of your manager. And many companies still have the thinking of “we pay you salary, so we pretty much own you”. This is not true and we all need to educate people, including our managers, to respect that. Because work without joy is not efficient work. And we need some downtime to deliver good work and enjoy our work. Read more…

November 6, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. Each week when reviewing links I’m grateful that so many people write such great articles. Useful technical articles that help you resolve front-end issues, inspirational articles that motivate you to enjoy work again, and sort of “social” articles that reveal that there are still start-ups out there that do their best to be meaningful, and not just seeking an exit strategy to sell out. I’d love more people in the world think like that, embrace their employees’ work time, try to force workaholics to stop working, and build health monitors in the team. Read more…

October 30, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. My friend Tobias told me of an interesting approach a few weeks ago. If you work on a big project with a team, just force all developers to delete the project before they leave on Friday, and have them reinstall and set it up every Monday morning (or every other week). This way, you’ll ensure that the process of onboarding people and the whole project’s setup is as simple as possible. And you will love it if the server crashes and you can set up the whole thing again within a couple of minutes. Now, enjoy this list and have a great weekend! Read more…

October 23, 2015 — What’s going on in the industry? What new techniques have emerged recently? What insights, tools, tips and tricks is the web design community talking about? Anselm Hannemann is collecting everything that popped up over the last week in his web development reading list so that you don’t miss out on anything. The result is a carefully curated list of articles and resources that are worth taking a closer look at. — Ed. Building products or software is not easy. As developers, we are constantly aware of this fact. As managers, we also know this. As product owners, hell yes. But the most important thing is to also teach our customers. It’s important that we figure out a holistic approach to build a product that pleases the user and all others who are involved. Read more…

October 16, 2015 — What’s happening in the industry? What important techniques have emerged recently? What about new case studies, insights, techniques and tools? Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list so you don’t have to. The result is a carefully collected list of articles that popped up over the last week and which might interest you. — Ed. Last week I asked for some comments on how web development got more complex in my opinion and I got great feedback. It’s great to see a good discussion as the outcome, and I say “thank you” for all your support! Read more…

October 9, 2015 — Lately, web development has become very complex. People being full-stack developers often complain to me that they can’t care about all these cool things in front-end development. People doing front-end still complain about having too few things to control the website, make it faster, more reliable. This growing gap worries me about the future of usual websites. For big web applications and big websites, it’s great to have all the options and a dedicated front-end performance engineer. But what about an average website? A simple website for a painter can’t cost thousands of dollars. Read more…

October 2, 2015 — Asynchronous code gets easier with ES2016 Async Function support. Also, only about two months from now, PHP7 will finally be released. Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list so you don’t have to. The result is a carefully collected list of articles that popped up over the last week and which might interest you. Read more…

September 25, 2015 — nginx released 1.9.5 this week and with that, lets you enable HTTP/2. Also, Firefox 41 is out and now brings support for SVG favicons. Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list so you don’t have to. The result is a carefully collected list of articles that popped up over the last week and which might interest you. Read more…

September 18, 2015 — Hey, lovely to have you back here. Facebook announced that they built their first cross-platform React Native app. After nearly three years of development, Modernizr 3 is out now. Heydon Pickering explains how to re-create the goodness of gifs in a vector format with SVG. Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list, so you don’t have to. The result is a carefully collected list of articles that popped up over the last week and which might interest you. Read more…

September 11, 2015 — The industry wants us to waste broken gadgets and buy new ones, even if it would only take minutes for anyone to repair it. But without companies sharing how we can repair things, it’s a tough task. We, including the gadget vendors need to start thinking about how to produce less waste. Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list, so you don’t have to. The result is a carefully collected list of articles that popped up over the last week and which might interest you. Read more…

September 4, 2015 — Chrome introduces custom tabs and smooth transitions, allowing apps to preload specific URLs in the in-app browser for a faster user experience. Facebook released a complete rewrite of their React developer tools, now available for Firefox as well. Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list so you don’t have to. The result is a carefully collected list of articles that popped up over the last week and which might interest you. Read more…

August 28, 2015 — Welcome back to the Web Development Reading List (WDRL) for this week! Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything in the web development reading list so you don’t have to. The reaction on the first post last week was quite overwhelming. Instead of the previously announced biweekly schedule here on Smashing Magazine, Anselm will post it in sync with the original WDRL; so, expect content to appear weekly here from now on. Read more…

August 21, 2015 — Our dear friend Anselm Hannemann is keeping track of everything that’s happening in the industry so you don’t have to. Starting from today, we are happy and honored to feature a bi-monthly web development reading list here on Smashing Magazine. Now it should be a bit easier to stay up to date! Welcome to the one hundredth edition and the first one to appear on Smashing Magazine. Anselm is very happy to keep you up to date with the web development industry. If you have any feedback, please let us know in the comments or write him an email. Read more…

February 20, 2014 — An easy way of configuring settings once and reusing them is by using some kind of tools such as INIT, which can perfectly coexist with and even be used through a generator. Keep in mind that it is intended for Web apps, so the lack of a build workflow might trouble you if you try to build a whole Web page architecture with it. Have you thought about a good workflow and about which tools provide the most convenience? Read more…

May 29, 2013 — In this article, Anselm Hannemann suggests how we can manage to test on multiple devices to resolve errors, without pouring a truck-load of money into actually buying all of these different devicessince these tasks haven’t become any simpler since the wide variety of smartphones, tablets and other devices that sport various operating systems and versions. Read more…