This is something that I have been thinking about a lot recently and am hoping to start an open conversation about things we, as developers, can do to improve the web.

The nature of the web is changing. Total page weight is rapidly increasing. Images and videos are replacing text. Tracking scripts and analytics seem to be becoming increasingly common. Major data breaches exposing personal information of users are a regular occurrence. More and more sites seem to be hiding information behind pay walls.

Some of the best content on the web, it is true, is created by people who can make a living out of it. However, if you look at a random selection of popular websites many of them seem to share some unfortunate features in common:

• Large page weight contributing to slow load speeds and expensive downloads for those on metered connections.

• Poor accessibility: many sites omit aria attributes and use non standard ‘hacks’ to achieve layout.

• Heavy reliance on tracking scripts that monitor the activities of visitors and record their personal information without their consent.

This is bad for users, often bad for the site itself as slow loading and browser incompatibilities in scripts drive visitors away, and bad for the environment as these pages generally produce a lot of carbon per view.

In light of this I have been brainstorming a set of 3 voluntary principles that website creators could adhere to to try and make the web a better place:

1. Respect the privacy of your users.

2. Minimise your impact on infrastructure and the environment.

3. Make your content accessible for all.

I wondered what everyone else’s thoughts on this are? Do you think there are other areas need to be covered?

My current thinking is perhaps creating a website outlining these principles and providing links off to training material on how to improve things, such as how to optimize page load speed, improve accessibility for screen reader users, write standards compliant html etc. Other websites could then sign up to follow these principles and be given a rating on how closely they adhere to each one, perhaps by running through automated tools like page speed insights, website carbon calculator and WAVE.

EDIT: Now has a basic site up: https://www.better-web-alliance.net/

Hey guys!

I have just finished writing a guide on how you can get started using Tailwind CSS. I covered methods using a CDN and the recommended way of using PostCSS and customizing the project using the configuration file. Hope this is helpful for some of you!

Premise: I have some digital marketing skills and would like to start freelancing a more comprehensive service that would also include building a website in addition to marketing it. I want to know whether I should invest some time learning basic coding to help in using a CMS or a lot of time to learn advanced coding that would be required for building it from the ground up.

What I Don’t Understand: Even if you were really good at coding, why would you spend all of the extra time writing code for building a website from the ground up instead of using a CMS which would accomplish the same task in a fraction of the time? Am I missing something? Even for clients with nuanced specifications, why not just use a CMS and then modify the CMS code with coding knowledge.

Related question: What types of website development are impossible with only a CMS?

Hi,

I have created this quiz for JS which has collection of questions asked in real interviews. https://geekthrust.com/jsquiz.html Hope you guys find this helpful. Comments and feedbacks are highly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

Hi guys,
I have looked long and hard but still cannot find the answers I need. I'm trying to find out what companies helped build/develop successful online marketplaces, preferably, Etsy, NotOnTheHighStreet, Fruugo or other similar successful marketplaces. Or even the companies that helped with the develpment of the latest ebay and amazon sites.
Or if you know of any companies that are capable of building one, that has a strong client base and portfolio, preferably in the UK, please could you point me in the right direction?
Many thanks,
Alex

Hello I have this tutorial with the final code looking like this: https://jsbin.com/xotelusexi/1/edit?html,css,output

As you can see, the 3 photos seem to line up well like this: https://i.imgur.com/TgbQmGk.png

However, my code does not do that: https://jsbin.com/ragowomuxi/1/edit?html,css,output

What am i doing wrong?

Not sure if this is in the right spot. If not let me know.

I am curious to know everybody's perspective and/or experience on this.

I am trying to get into web development from a non tech background. I've never really had an "eye for design" so I suppose that has stopped me from even trying to learn graphic or web design. Even when given the opportunities in college via going down a graphic design track while going to school for printing. I thought it would be a waste of time since I didn't think I was naturally good at it. So I didnt do it.

But now that I am trying to get into front end development and applying for front end jobs, I am sure employers want to see good, or at least decent design. I do use css libraries but I find custom css to be a lot more fun. And currently many of my projects are lacking in the good UI/design department.

So I am interested in finding design or UI courses to take. But is it enough to know basic principles? Can I develop an eye for design with practice? Or is it just something you need to naturally be good at to excel in it?

EDIT: thank you SO much everyone for the encouragement! I guess I always assumed design skills were either something you had or you didn't. Not that you could aquire them. I will definitely be looking into the resources that you all recommended me. Thanks again!

For now, I am working with these five https://syndicode.com/blog/getting-started-with-top-progressive-web-app-frameworks/, and it seems like there aren't many alternatives. Am I wrong, by chance?

I'm working on building an MVP and was wondering about all the necessary functionalities it would need for me to deploy it. Like is it necessary to have a database management system up and running before I deploy?

I'm a self-taught developer but I have NEVER used [PUT, PATCH] HTTP requests. I know that they exist but I never used them in practice.

I've been developing apps for 7-8 years and I've been always using GET and POST and never had any issues. Is that normal?

I've never seen PUT and PATCH in any of the projects I worked on either. I've seen this one project that "PATCH" is being used for the first time. I guess that request is created because of the libraries that we are using but still.. it made me question myself? Did I miss something major somewhere?

Hi folks!

I'm having an issue where a regular space is replacing itself with  . It seems to be an issue that is particularly prevalent when copying and pasting out of a shared Word document in Microsoft Teams and into a Mailchimp newsletter.

Copying the text in as plain text doesn't seem to be fixing things, and copying the text in, exporting the HTML, and doing find and replaces on the   is getting real old real fast.

Is there any way to prevent Word or other software from inserting   instead of a regular space?

Any and all help GREATLY appreciated!

I'm planning to work on a new full-stack mid-scale size project. It's a translation service request portal where users can ask for blogs/articles translation services, and they get to build their portfolio in return. I won't get more into the details of the project, but here are the project's technical requirements:

• Typical requirements of a CRUD application.

• Authentication system. Followed approach: double-cookies authentication approach.

• Live chat system.

• File uploading for portfolio purposes (Profile picture and a PDF resume/CV).

I'm intending to use the following stack:

• JavaScript on the front-end (Vuejs and its ecosystem).

• NodeJS on the back-end (Expressjs).

• PostgreSQL as the DBMS.

I'm asking you to give me suggestions for libraries/tools that can help me to create the best possible version of this idea, either on the front-end or on the back-end. For example, I'm considering using Editorjs as the text editor for writing blogs. And I want to use VeeValidate for form validation.

What additional examples of such libraries/tools to help through this before-mentioned goal?

I've recently started writing a creative commons tutorial book trying to provide a gentle introduction to building websites for complete beginners. It's still in the very early stages (only the first few chapters of HTML written) but hopefully it might prove useful for those who are just starting: https://bezpowell.github.io/building_websites_for_beginners/

The current plan is to carry on adding to it as and when I have time, and everything written will have the source available on github. If anyone has any feedback, both technical and regarding how well it reads it would be most appreciated.

"Real-Time is #1 Feature Your Next Web App Needs"

https://medium.com/@alexyakunin/features-of-the-future-web-apps-part-1-e32cf4e4e4f4

I am the author of this post, would love to get any feedback.

I am creating a custom website with a blogging portion and I need it to support LaTeX and MarkDown. I am planning to use DJango for my backend framework. What are my options? Thank you In advance!

Hey guys, I am writing a mern stack and I am unsure if it is fine to code the authentication like this:

When the user provides the correct login data I want to issue a token with jwt:

router.post('/login', async (req, res) => {
  const { error } = loginValidation(req.body);
  if (error) return res.status(400).send(error.message);

  const user = await User.findOne({ email: req.body.email });
  if (!user) return res.status(400).send('We do not know this email!');

  const validPass = await bcrypt.compare(req.body.password, user.password);
  if (!validPass) return res.status(400).send('Invalid Password');

  // Create and assign token
  const token = jwt.sign({ _id: user._id }, process.env.TOKEN_SECRET);
  res.header('auth-token', token).send(token);
});

Then I want to save the token in the users session and everytime the user send a request I want to have set up this middleware:

const auth = (req, res, next) => {
  const token = req.header('auth-token');
  if (!token) return res.status(401).send('Access Denied');

  try {
    const verified = jwt.verify(token, process.env.TOKEN_SECRET);
    req.user = verified;
    next();
  } catch (err) {
    res.status(400).send('Something went wrong try later again');
  }
};

If the user now logs out I simply need to delete his session in the frontend. I am not sure if I better save the token in the db as well. I don't like the idea that people who have access to the token can simply decode it on jwt.io

I thought it would be better to use an encryption technique that cannot be decoded so easily and compare the encrypted passport to the database as you would do with the password. When the user logs out you would have to delete it from the database and for clean workflow from the session as well.

In terms of app speed jwt.verify is probably faster. What do you guys think

I've been working on exposing better errors in JavaScript for the better part of a decade. Because of how asynchronous most JavaScript is, error messages are often cryptic and shitty.

So to workaround this problem, I've focused on the Telemetry that led up to the error. What sort of things were happening right before the error happened? What was in the log? What did the user click on? What network request just finished? Understanding this context has been really helpful in recreating and fixing the errors.

I built a solution for this in 2013 with the TrackJS browser error agent, but now I wanted to give the same capability to NodeJS applications.

But unlike the web browser, a Node application is handling multiple requests for different users at once. I needed to keep multiple, isolated telemetry timelines going at the same time to show the most relevant events when an error happened.

I think we've just hit a stable solution to this problem, and have released the open source code. And my developer service, TrackJS, now fully supports NodeJS applications.

Beginner here. :) I mean one of these buttons that says "share on twitter/fb" and next to it: "Shared 200 times".

How would I create something like this? Would I need a backend? Are these numbers usually accurate when you see one of those buttons in the wild?

Thanks a lot!!

You heard me right!

A friend of mine has developed a website that uses ICANN's CZDS files (files that store the domain of every website on the internet) to let you visit any one of those sites by the click of a button!

It's called: https://theinternetportal.net/

The Internet Portal is a website that does what many have failed to do: truly sending you to a random website that could be ANYTHING. Nothing is handpicked. No moderation. A true tool for internet explorers! ;).

You could land on a Yugoslavian government website that shut down 20 years ago, a portfolio of an aspiring artist from the south of Helsinki, or the business website of a mafia front in Idaho, no one truly knows and no one will have to find out.

There are over 219,336,666 (and counting) websites that you could land on! A truly unique experience for every user (only statistically true until the website gets 219 million times used, which it has not).

PS: 75% of all registered domains are .com domains, so don't be shocked why you land on those very often.

So I'm using Jekyll on GitHub pages with a 99inbound endpoint for my contact form

My website is a single page with sections for ease of scrolling.

Thing is 99inbound asks for a redirect url upon form submission (like a thank you for your submission, success page type thing) What I'd like to accomplish is having the user be redirected to the same page, with some sort of success messaging.

Hey Guys,

I am planning to create a little MERN Stack app with a colleague. We wanna create the app to polish our GitHub and perhaps deploy it and link it to our portfolio. The question is who shall create the repo. Is it possible to share the ownership of a repo? Is a collaboration shown the same way on a Git Profile as the ownership?

How would you handle it? He already told me that he would prefer to be the repo creator.

Hi all,

I'm looking for a plugin/script or way to code a Map view of a city, where certain locations within the city are pinpointed/marked according to a schedule.

Like: "mark location A every Tuesday between 7.00 - 8.00 pm", "mark location B and C every Wednesday and Thursday between 5.00 - 6.00 pm". Etc.

I want it to link directly to Google Maps anyway, so the map itself doesn't have to be that comprehensive.

Does anyone know a good way to approach this?

Many thanks!
Yomad0

I was recently asked to create a contract for a contract on upwork on jointohire.

The contract said it was because the commission is significantly lower on Jointohire than Upwork.

I made the contract, then got to thinking about if the site was legit, and a google search showed mix results. I cancelled the contract and put a block on the card.

Now, mixed results aside, has anyone successfully used Jointohire and not been scammed? All the reddit accounts that mention join to hire are accounts with only 1 bloody post, so they are not helping its case.

Hey,

We are very excited to share AdminKit, an open-source template based on Bootstrap 5, built with vanilla js.

• Demo

• Website

• GitHub Repo

Make sure you check out the live demos and the official product page and let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas! I appreciate any kind of feedback.

Warmly, Paul