Tis the season of Advent Calendars–not the ones you open the little windows of to get a treat, but ones you visit each day in December to get a great article. I’m not sure exactly when they started, but they’re not a recent phenomenon. And they do however seem to be having something of a […]
This week marked the 2 year anniversary of the launch ChatGPT. It feels like much longer ago, and so recent. So much hype in so little time. And yet also so much promise. The challenge is separating those out. So perhaps it’s no surprise that this week or two my reading has included numerous articles […]
As we close in on Web Directions Dev Summit next week, here’s a roundup of valuable reading for all front end developers. Most of the articles below we’ll have sessions on at the conference–but I’ve not chosen these links for that reason–these are the things folks seem to be paying attention to right now. We’d love to […]
Recently two things that are very significant to me in quite different ways turned 20. At the very first conference I helped run, just over 20 years ago, Firefox was still in Beta. We gave a bunch of software to our audience that we thought they would benefit from on DVDs (it might have even […]
This week’s roundup of articles on web design and development we found interesting. What’s a Single-Page App? Source: What’s a Single-Page App? | jakelazaroff.com Jake Lazaroff goes deep into the question “What is a Single Page App?” The button element The button element is undoubtedly the most misunderstood and least utilized of all HTML. As […]
In the opening piece of this week’s roundup Sacha Greif, the organiser of the “State of” surveys (like the State of CSS, State of JavaScript) observes Let me make a prediction: we’ll look back at 2024 as the turning point between “CSS Classic” and “New CSS”. I think he’s right, but I think it’s more […]
This week in the newsletter with 5 weeks to Web Directions Dev Summit and Next, we’re rounding up a bunch of things we’ve taken notice of this week. Each week we read hundreds of articles, watch videos and listen to podcasts to bring you those we think you should be paying attention to. Hours of […]
AI has had many ‘springs’ over the decades, with its promise always just around the corner. In 1970, an early AI pioneer (his legacy is now quite odious) predicted: “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” This wasn’t the last time such […]
At the start of this year, I wrote The Internet Is About To Get Weird Again, which began by calling back to the Internet of 2000. In thinking more about it, though, we more closely resemble the Internet of a few years later, where the crash of the dot-com bubble and the stock market had […]
One of the most focused areas in the use of large language models, which has arguably seen the best outcomes, is in software development. Both numerous startups and established players in the IDE market now offer generative AI solutions. OpenAI recently launched their ‘canvas’ UI, which is similar to Claude’s UI for working with code. […]
At last year’s Web Directions Summit one of the attendees (I try to chat to as many as I can) and I had quite a long conversation. His concern was that the keynote talks in particular were a little ‘pessimistic’. In a sense I could see what he meant. They certainly weren’t unalloyed optimism. Not Techno–Optimism as […]
It’s no secret we’re fans of the web platform here at Web Directions—it’s in our name, after all. One aspect of the platform that we’ve long felt is underappreciated is Web Components. Part of this is because support for Web Components, as well as the technology itself, developed gradually over a long period. Until recently […]
A few weeks back we announced the lineup for Next, our brand new conference. Drawing on experts in economics, game theory, design, finance, data science, social psychology, behavioural economics and more, Next aims to reignite your thinking about the challenges you’re facing right now–from business models, to better user interaction, the (real, non hyped) place […]
A lot going on at the moment React is a central plank in many teams’ technology stacks, and at Web Directions we’re very mindful of that. On Conffab, our platform for conference presentations, you’ll find talks tagged React are among the most common. For the last couple of years at our Summit, we’ve had a […]
A week or so back we took the wraps off the full program for our upcoming Developer Summit–two days and two tracks of amazing speakers covering things we feel it is essential folks are thinking about right now. A large part of why I do that is so that you, our audience, can keep up […]
Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development
Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney
