technojunkie

Thanks for correcting me!

If I'm torn about anything for Tor 15, it's that the cadence didn't align with a minimum of Firefox 144 as base.

Why?

View Transitions support being implemented in 144 is a very big deal and pushes the web forward for native transition animations.

In the next two or three versions before the end of 2025, Anchor Positioning will also be a big deal.

So, congrats on Tor 15, but Tor 16 will bring a massive improvement for Tor!

I thought the provided video did a good job describing what's coming.

Here's the referenced article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/apple-and-google...

This article is a good reminder of another one from late last year: https://csswizardry.com/2024/12/a-layered-approach-to-specul...

In the above article, Harry gives a more nuanced and specific method using data attributes to target specific anchors in the document, one reason being you don't need to prerender login or logout pages.

<a href data-prefetch>Prefetched Link</a>

<a href data-prefetch=prerender>Prerendered Link</a>

<a href data-prefetch=false>Untouched Link</a>

Since last year, I've finally finished two WordPress plugins I wasn't able to completely figure out, I've built new tiny apps that I previously would be stuck on, I am improving existing projects that I have up to Github now, and more. I think my abilities are enhanced by probably 25-50%.

Middle management for software engineering has gone through a paradigm shift. The trend for businesses is flatter structures, manager roles with more responsibilities and this reality largely includes being as deep in the code as direct reports.

Since 2023, most roles I reviewed or interviewed for were player/coach roles, often close to 50/50 split. In my last EM role, I was hired for exactly this.

I found very few EM roles that are primarily managing with only "being in the code"; I can count on my hands out of hundreds of Engineering Manager roles. Probably closer to 95% or more EM roles require hands-on technical work similar to Tech Lead roles.

60 minutes did a segment for this type of treatment at WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience in West Virginia. It's intriguing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/neurosurgeon-works-to-slow-alzh...

I could have written all of this myself. It exactly mirrors how I progressed to the same conclusions. Very well said!

PHP 8.x == TypeScript

My journey into building computers and networking were partly driven by Anandtech. I bought and sold quite a few things on the forums, too. I always thought Anandtech was one of the higher quality tech publications. RIP to one of the best.

I started with Part 4 intentionally, it stands alone from the other three.

This article is a damning call out of the web development industry and how we've gone down a bad path for the Javascript-first landscape of websites and services.

Part 1: https://infrequently.org/2024/08/the-landscape/

Part 2: https://infrequently.org/2024/08/object-lesson/

Part 3: https://infrequently.org/2024/08/caprock/

If you want to join the discussion, he's releasing each article via his Mastodon account or RSS feed.

https://toot.cafe/@slightlyoff

Regarding the Ad Tech section, I found value in the August 6th episode of Security Now titled "How Revoking!" where he's talking about 3rd-party cookies handling in Firefox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZx-W5qC_dc

Generally speaking, I'm sure it's difficult to find a general balance between privacy and usability, and I tend to want a purist viewpoint on blocking all 3rd-party cookies if I set Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict. The above episodes explains why it's not 100% doing what we expect, which was troubling to hear!

Browser spec creators and browser vendors have been implementing touch and non-touch UI differences in common primitive features since the 2010s. Example, if you use at a <select> element on desktop browsers and mobile browsers, I would say it falls into a similar idea as rotating UX. There are countless other examples, too.

Could there be improvements? Absolutely, and that's where we get to have a voice.

Except that studies show that users expect both similar content and experiences regardless of device. Responsive web design, with progressive enhancement, is the foundational bridge to make this experience work well.

Just because someone experiences a less than ideal experience of RWD in one or more places doesn't mean to group all RWD UI experiences together as bad.

It's more practical spend less time developing and testing one global component than more than one.

The big takeaway from this presentation is CSS offers so many things that were mostly Javascript previously. Going forward, sometime in 2025, it will be less compelling to use libraries an frameworks for many web native interactions and features.

Firefox, please hurry up your support for many mentioned features in this video!

I just tried Storybook this past week and it's a great improvement even from version 6.x.

That said, I wish this was at a place where I could easily use it for the UI layer with simple integration into a given CMS. As others have stated, it's great in isolation and for demos. Also, I realize that most apps and CMSes are so opinionated and using Storybook for the view of that system is a lot of overhead.

One less than stellar example is WordPress. It's technically possible to create a headless app using Next.js or Remix on the front-end, Gutenberg for the data layer and authoring, and Storybook as the source of truth for both ends. However, it was so much work to get there.

Maybe a legacy PHP system trying to be modern isn't a great example. But, then I'm stuck with any flavor of, usually paid database hosted, software like Contentful or Sanity. Again, the overhead!

I am a huge advocate for design systems that translate into component libraries, and Storybook fills part of that gap, but it'd be huge to see this type of setup become more practical.

There's not a lot of examples provided, but the ones there are interesting. Also, why the tracking with Yandex? They might be legit, but it's suspect.

This reminds me of many other gallery sites, but one of the best right now is https://httpster.net/. Lots of inspiring, minimalist, but beautiful websites.

If "they" is WordPress, have you tried modern PHP? 8.x has come a long way to looking and feeling like a modern programming language. So many new things reminding me of Typescript, Javascript, Python, etc.

For those of you who are curious what drives jQuery in 2024 and beyond, you need to remember that WordPress is still more than 1/3 of the web, and the majority of installations and so many plugins critically rely on jQuery. Yes, seriously.

Any advances to removing deprecated APIs or functions are great. jQuery will probably be around dominantly on the web for years to come.

Hey browser makers, can we please be able to style the datalist dropdown?

Also: https://adrianroselli.com/2023/06/under-engineered-comboboxe...

When 2025 rolls around, I can see the following:

1. Foremost, HTML Modules allow importing HTML files natively, that's key. New components are more stable, more accessible, and widely supported. Web Components are more stable than ever.

2. The most popular features of Sass/Scss are added into core CSS by this point

3. With broad support of features like :has, @scope, @property, subgrid, anchor positioning, MPA view transitions, and lots more

4. Modern JS is stable, most new versions are incremental in the 2020s.

As long as WordPress fully embraces React as its future for Gutenberg, the case for frameworks still continue to be made for React. ~43% of all websites run WordPress, and those on version 5 or newer include React.

Try to convince modern developers who build Gutenberg blocks to use React-free libraries or frameworks for their component libraries or front-end.

Here's a contributor's (pfraze) reason for not using ActivityPub.

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/issues/255#issueco...

WordPress Core devs can double ActivityPub testing using wordpress.com in addition to Tumblr. With success, and with it in core (disabled by default), we then have an easy path to turn it on.

This is great. Now, who can we contact to get this integrated into WordPress Core? I know there's a plugin but it'd be great to get something into Core.

https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-activitypub

RCS sucks, but it's the best path to cross-platform messaging that can (and should) be end-to-end encrypted (RCS already supports the Signal protocol for E2EE).

I'd love to see a better privacy/security messaging standard, but let's get something in there incrementally like RCS.

On a side note, can Google allow Android devs to implement RCS in other apps than Google Messages and Samsung Messages, please?

Biteable | Remote, WFH, US, North America, and Australia | Full Time | Full Stack Developers and Engineering Manager | https://biteable.com

Biteable is an online video tool that puts the power of making a video in your hands. We enable you to create a video from scratch using our broad library of animations and footage. We stand apart in our market thanks to our dedication to studio-quality content and our passion for simplicity.

We're fully remote, primarily concentrating on North America and Australia hires, but all are welcome to apply. We recently raised $7 million in Series A funding and we're rapidly growing.

We're committed to the happiness of our employees. We love it when everyone feels supported, and we doubly love it when everyone feels empowered to create.

Some of the tech stack we use regularly are Ruby, Typescript, and JavaScript on top of AWS and Terraform.

We have multiple job openings including Full-Stack Engineer, Engineering Manager, Platform Engineer, and Product Manager.

https://biteable.com/careers/

Biteable | Remote, WFH, US, North America, and Australia | Full Time | Full Stack Developers and Engineering Manager | https://biteable.com

Biteable is an online video tool that puts the power of making a video in your hands. We enable you to create a video from scratch using our broad library of animations and footage. We stand apart in our market thanks to our dedication to studio-quality content and our passion for simplicity.

We're fully remote, primarily concentrating on North America and Australia hires, but all are welcome to apply. We recently raised $7 million in Series A funding and we're rapidly growing.

We're committed to the happiness of our employees. We love it when everyone feels supported, and we doubly love it when everyone feels empowered to create.

Some of the tech stack we use regularly are Ruby, Typescript, and JavaScript on top of AWS and Terraform.

We have multiple job openings including Full-Stack Engineer, Engineering manager, Platform Engineer, VP of Marketing, and Product Manager among others.

https://biteable.com/careers/

I hope this type of fork can be converted to repeat the same model that VSCodium uses for VSCode.

https://vscodium.com/

VSCodium is not a fork but it also strips out the telemetry that VSCode integrates.

This is good information, and I'd love to see a write up how Firefox, Chrome, Brave and other browsers can be set up to prevent some of this.

For example, Firefox has both first-party isolation mode and now Total Cookie Protection, which isolates cookies and would thus likely prevent CSRF. However, I think first-party isolation causes CORS issues like when trying to pay with Paypal on another retail site.