2024.02.26 - Announcing web.dev for China

Title: 2024.02.26 – Announcing web.dev for China

JavaScript Bloat & Gemini Era & React Trends & Just Do It

This Week’s Highlights

Announcing web.dev for China https://web.dev/blog/web-dev-for-china?hl=en https://web.developers.google.cn/?hl=zh-cn
We’re excited to announce that web.dev is now available on a .cn domain, making our content more easily accessible for developers in China. All content is mirrored and available in every supported language on the .cn sites.

How to make a better default Firefox UI https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/wiki/[Article]-1.-How-to-make-a-better-default-Firefox-UI
For me, there are three big and sixteen small criteria for UI/UX design. I don’t have the data or environment to run A/B tests, so I have to predict user behavior—something that’s crucial. I had to think deductively, drawing on various theories.

JavaScript Bloat in 2024 https://tonsky.me/blog/js-bloat/
All this time I’ve been under the impression that, for example, if the average web page is 3 MB, the JavaScript bundle should be around 1 MB. Surely content should still dominate, right? The only way to find out is to mess around. Let’s do a reality check!

Building Open Models Responsibly in the Gemini Era https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/02/building-open-models-responsibly-gemini-era.html
The release of our Gemma family of open models is the next step in deepening our commitment to open technology while maintaining an industry‑leading safe, responsible approach. At the same time, the rapidly evolving nature of AI raises important considerations for enabling safety‑aligned open models: an approach that supports broad innovation while promoting safe use. Related:

• Gemma: Introducing new state-of-the-art open models
• The killer app of Gemini Pro 1.5 is video
• Stable Diffusion 3
• Meta’s new LLM‑based test generator is a sneak peek at the future of development
• GitHub: How AI code generation works

In‑Depth Reading

Vanilla JavaScript, Libraries, and the Quest for Stateful DOM Rendering https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/02/vanilla-javascript-libraries-quest-stateful-dom-rendering/
It’s well‑established that the web suffers from a wide range of usability and performance problems—from user‑hostile UI patterns and twisted search results to sluggish performance and battery‑draining bloat. While many underlying forces lie beyond developers’ control, questionable technology choices—especially on the client‑side JavaScript front—often play a significant role. To deepen our collective understanding of this self‑inflicted quagmire, let’s examine one small‑but‑significant area where developers have direct influence: painting pixels on the screen.

Why My Code Isn’t in TypeScript https://remysharp.com/2024/02/23/why-my-code-isnt-in-typescript
Frustratingly, most of the replies were either “why aren’t you using TypeScript?” or “you’re probably using TypeScript wrong.” I guess that’s the “developer bro/you’re‑wrong” culture we’ve managed to create.

React Trends in 2024 https://www.robinwieruch.de/react-trends/
2024 has reignited my excitement about the React ecosystem. Despite the many challenges and dramas (the biggest being the move of React to the server with React Server Components) we faced last year, new React trends are emerging that everyone should watch. Here’s my list of exciting React trends for 2024. Related: React Labs: What We’ve Been Working On – February 2024.

How Google Is Killing Independent Sites Like Ours https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/
And why you shouldn’t trust product recommendations from big‑media publishers that rank at the top of Google.

UI = f(org): UI Is a Function of Your Organization https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2024/ui-fn-org/
Your UIs—and the real‑life experiences they deliver—can only be as good as an organization’s ability to deliver on them.

Things I Have Learned About Tech Leadership https://medium.com/bbc-product-technology/things-i-have-learned-about-tech-leadership-5efcf94065ca
I’ve now been a Software Engineering Team Lead on the BBC Sounds mobile apps team for four years. So what have I learned from this once‑daunting, now‑familiar role?

My Productivity App Is a Never‑Ending .txt File https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39432876
I tried various todo‑list apps, task trackers, and productivity tools. They were all discouraging because the list kept growing, and there were too many interrelated items—meeting notes, calendar events, idea lists, lab notebooks—spread across different systems. I gave up and started tracking everything in a single text file, and I’ve been using it as my main productivity system for 14 years. It’s become essential to my work and has surprisingly scaled with increasing responsibilities, so I wanted to share this “secret weapon.”

Fresh Finds

• Node.js 2023 Year in Review

• Deno 1.41: Smaller deno compile binaries

• Apache ECharts 5.5: The Powerful Visualization Library

• Redwood v7.0.0: The full‑stack web framework designed to help you grow from side project to startup

• WXT: Next‑gen Web Extension Framework

• htmz: HTML with targeted manipulation zones

• WebKitGTK and WPEWebKit Switching to Skia for 2D Graphics Rendering

• 2023 Annual Rust Survey Results

• On‑device ML research with MLX and Swift

• We Have to Start Over: From Atom to Zed

• Pages CMS: The No‑Hassle CMS for GitHub

Products & Others

Observations | 2024: “Just Do It!” https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aHAXPTISx83qiVouqILSdg
We easily “add” a lot of supposed reasons, meanings, and values to a task, as if without them the task isn’t worth doing. Does the sun need to contemplate its purpose? Does the earth need to decide which flower is meaningful? The universe speaks without words, yet it is beautiful.

Spring Liver‑Care: Master These Two Habits First https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/UVcsaNkfq5VrxTTxl25Asw

1. Go to bed early to nurture the liver.
2. Seek warmth and avoid cold.

Stretch Out Both Hands to Check If You’re Yang‑Deficient https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SPHve3EAxKlP9Y9 (content truncated)

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.