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Scrape the Web with scrapestack (Sponsored)
14.10.2019
I first grew to love Firefox not as a web developer but as user, and what drew me to this amazing new browser was its add-on ecosystem. The add-on I used the most? Web scrapers. Piracy had just hit mainstream and I also need imagery and documentation to create my first websites. Scrapers were...
Patterns for Practical CSS Custom Properties Use
9.10.2019
I've been playing around with CSS Custom Properties to discover their power since browser support is finally at a place where we can use them in our production code. I’ve been using them in a number different ways and I’d love for you to get as excited about them as I am. They are so useful...
Interview with a Pornhub Web Developer
7.10.2019
Regardless of your stance on pornography, it would be impossible to deny the massive impact the adult website industry has had on pushing the web forward. From pushing the browser’s video limits to pushing ads through WebSocket so ad blockers don’t detect them, you have to be clever...
Zero hands up.
2.10.2019
Asked an entire room full of webdevs yesterday if any of them knew that FF/Chrome/Opera/Brave/etc. for iOS weren't allowed to compete on engine quality.
Zero hands up.
— Alex Russell (@slightlylate) September 25, 2019
It's worth making this clear then. On iOS, the only browser engine...
designMode
1.10.2019
Every once in a while I stumble upon an API or browser setting that I can’t believe ever existed. Such examples can be seen in the numerous String.prototype properties such as bold, italics, and even blink, which wrap given string text in their representative HTML tags. Bizarre. It...
Multi-Million Dollar HTML
30.9.2019
Two stories:
Jason Grigsby finds Chipotle's online ordering form makes use of an input-masking technique that chops up a credit card expiration year making it invalid and thus denying the order. If pattern="\d\d" maxlength="2" was used instead (native browser feature), the browser is smart enough...
Traders Bemoan New Localbitcoins Identity Requirements
28.9.2019
Recent data shows that countries with corrupt governments have a strong correlation with Localbitcoins trade volumes. However, even though the over-the-counter (OTC) marketplace Localbitcoins has grown massive over the years, traders are complaining about heightened know-your-customer/anti-money...
Preloading Pages Just Before They are Needed
27.9.2019
The typical journey for a person browsing a website: view a page, click a link, browser loads new page. That's assuming no funny business like a Single Page App, which still follows that journey, but the browser doesn't load a new page — the client fakes it for the sake of a snappier...
What happens when you open a new install of browsers for the 1st time?
27.9.2019
Interesting research from Jonathan Sampson, where he watches the network requests a browser makes the very first time you launch it on a fresh install, and otherwise do nothing. This gives you a little insight into what kind of information that browser wants to collect and disseminate.
This...
Browser Engine Diversity
24.9.2019
We lost Opera when they went Chrome in 2013. Same deal with Edge when it also went Chrome earlier this year. Mike Taylor called these changes a "Decreasingly Diverse Browser Engine World" in a talk I'd like to see.
So all we've got left is Chrome-stuff, Firefox-stuff, and Safari-stuff. Chrome...
UX Considerations for Web Sharing
20.9.2019
From trashy clickbait sites to the most august of publications, share buttons have long been ubiquitous across the web. And yet it is arguable that these buttons aren’t needed. All mobile browsers — Firefox, Edge, Safari, Chrome, Opera Mini, UC Browser, Samsung Internet — make it easy to share...
How Web Content Can Affect Power Usage
18.9.2019
Because we know that all people with battery-powered devices are constantly concerned about their battery levels, and that websites are significant consumers of that battery power, we should probably think about this stuff a lot more than we do.
I'd expect the browser itself to be our main ally...
Two Browsers Walked Into a Scrollbar
18.9.2019
Surprise: scrollbars are complicated, especially cross-browser and cross-platform.
Sometimes they take up space and sometimes they don't. Sometimes that is affected by a setting and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you can see them and sometimes you can't unless you're actually scrolling. Styling...
Overflow And Data Loss In CSS
17.9.2019
"Data Loss" is a funny term. My brain thinks of like packet loss on the way from the server to your browser, resulting in missing content in files. Perhaps it is that on some level, but in CSS parlance, it has to do with the overflow property. Too much content for sized container + hidden overflow...
A Proof of Concept for Making Sass Faster
17.9.2019
At the start of a new project, Sass compilation happens in the blink of an eye. This feels great, especially when it’s paired with Browsersync, which reloads the stylesheet for us in the browser. But, as the amount of Sass grows, compilation time increases. This is far from ideal.
It can be a real...
BCH Microblog ‘Member’ Shows the Future of Reddit-Like Forums
16.9.2019
Since the Bitcoin Cash upgrade in May 2018, software developers have unleashed a slew of microblogging protocols that utilize OP_return transactions. One application called Member is a BCH-based browser that makes use of these types of transactions and the extra space added to the data carrier...
(Why) Some HTML is “optional”
16.9.2019
Remy Sharp digs into the history of the web and describes why the <p> tag doesn’t need to be closed like this:
<p>Paragraphs don’t need to be closed
<p>Pretty weird, huh?
Remy writes:
Pre-DOM, pre-browsers, the world's first browser was being written by Sir...
Browser Extensions Can Help Scammers Steal Your Bitcoin: Casa CEO
15.9.2019
Browser add-ons can steal your crypto and identifying information, said Casa's Jeremy Welch
LocalBitcoins: Tor Browser Users at Risk of Losing Their Bitcoins
12.9.2019
Finnish P2P crypto exchange LocalBitcoins says Tor Browser users are at risk of having their Bitcoin stolen
Some HTML is “Optional”
11.9.2019
There is a variety of HTML that you can just leave out of the source HTML and it's still valid markup.
Doesn't this look weird?
<p>Paragraph one.
<p>Paragraph two.
<p>Paragraph three.
It does to me, but the closing </p> tags are optional. The browser will detect...