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 […]
This week a roundup of some recent things I think you might find valuable. Some accessibility, some AI, and some thoughts on architecture. All the sort of thing we’ll be covering at our upcoming Developer Summit, in Sydney at the end of November–early bird ends in 3 weeks so don’t miss out! Setting up a […]
The Web platform doesn’t have a WWDC, or I/O or Build, where brand new shiny things for the platform are announced all at one time. Unlike for proprietary platforms, there’s no single entity is responsible for the development of the technologies we use, instead we have TC39, the W3C, IETF, and others particularly for image, […]
Today I am incredibly excited (and just a little bit terrified) to be announcing the program for a brand new Web Directions conference–Next. In a nutshell Next is a single day, single track conference that asks the question: what’s next in the Web and technology? Next will help transform the ways you think about developing digital […]
Like previous attempts to find a silver bullet such as 4GLs, it does not seem likely that LLMs as a software authoring tool will be succeed. In particular, like 4GLs they suffer from the problem that because software spends most of its life in maintenance, the cost of change makes most improvements to the cost […]
Next week we’ll be announcing the program for our upcoming, brand new Next conference. It’s a project I’ve been thinking deeply about for many years, and am really excited for. Here’s some of the thinking that has been going into that. What the hell is water? “There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to […]
The FrontEnd Treadmill Marco Rogers, Senior Director of Architecture Mode I want to open by stating my biases. I’m a web guy. I’ve been bullish on the web for 20+ years, and I will continue to be. I think it is an extremely capable and unique platform for delivering software. And it has only gotten […]
Speculative Loading: The Future of Navigation Quynh-Chi Nguyen, Staff Software Engineer Stile Education Speculation can be risky business, but it’s worth taking risks for the rewards! With speculative loading, we can predict the future to guess what our users are going to do next, and preload resources to give them a speedier, smoother experience. We’ll […]
CSS Containers, What Do They Know? Miriam Suzanne, Co-Founder OddBird A deep-dive into CSS container queries. How did container queries go from ‘impossible’ to ‘shipping’ after so many years? How do we use them, and what hidden powers do they have? What are CSS containers, and what queries can they respond to? Let’s find out! […]
Building an AI team when no one knows anything about AI Matt Colman, Senior Engineering Manager Atlassian We started a brand new AI team with 14 engineers that have never touched AI before! We started madly learning about AI, LLMs, top-k, temperature, ALL THESE NEW WORDS!After 6 months, we’ve learned so much, we’re productive and […]
Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development
Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney
