Weekend Reading: From Accessibility to AI to Architecture the A to A of front end dev this week
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 screen reader testing environment on your computer
When you’re designing and developing for accessibility, performing manual testing using a screen reader is important to catch and fix accessibility issues that cannot be caught by automated accessibility testing tools. In this article, which is a _modified_, text-only excerpt from the Practical Accessibility course, we’re going to walk through the process of setting up your screen reader testing environment, from downloading virtualization software if you need it, to installing screen readers, and setting up keyboard configuration. We’ll also learn what screen reader and browser combinations are most relevant for your testing work.
Source: Setting up a screen reader testing environment on your computer
A comprehensive guide to setting up a screen reader testing environment on your computer from one of our favourite speakers ever Sara Soueidan, taken from her comprehensive and highly recommended course on accessibility.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Web Accessibility Audit
The idea of an accessibility audit might sound overwhelming, especially if you’ve never conducted one before. But if you’re serious about making your digital content accessible to everyone, it’s an essential step.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to audit your website or application to verify accessibility and uncover how audit data can help you make meaningful improvements that benefit all users.
Whether you aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or create a more inclusive experience, this is where it all begins. Let’s dive into each step so you can better understand this intricate process.
Source: A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting a Web Accessibility Audit – TPGi
Speaking of accessibility, here’s a detailed guide to running an accessibility audit from the folks at TPGi.
The Rise of the Design Engineer
Having a Design Engineer (aka UX Engineer) on your team is a game changer. Attention to detail, product quality, velocity, all benefit from this hybrid role.Yet most tech companies overlook the importance of having people that excel at “front-of-the-front-end” work.
Source: The Rise of the Design Engineer. Having a Design Engineer
It has long baffled me that the part of a site or app that our users interact with the most, the front end, the UI, is treated as more or less a commodity, with the capabilities vital to delivering performant, engaging experiences, the ‘front of the front-end’ being really devalued in the industry as a whole.
Lee Monroe argues for recognising the value of these roles.
Notes on using LLMs for code
I was recently the guest on TWIML—the This Week in Machine Learning & AI podcast. Our episode is titled Supercharging Developer Productivity with ChatGPT and Claude with Simon Willison, and the focus of the conversation was the ways in which I use LLM tools in my day-to-day work as a software developer and product engineer.
Source: Notes on using LLMs for code
Simon Willison has been reporting from the front lines of working with LLMs as a software engineer for as long as almost everyone. Here he reflects on what he has learned–listen, watch or read his highlights. Highly recommended.
I’m working on a comprehensive piece on AI and software engineering, and we have several sessions on the topic at our upcoming Developer Summit.
SPA by default
SPAs incur complexity that simply doesn’t exist with traditional server-based websites: issues such as search engine optimization, browser history management, web analytics and first page load time all need to be addressed. Proper analysis and consideration of the trade-offs is required to determine if that complexity is warranted for business or user experience reasons. Too often teams are skipping that trade-off analysis, blindly accepting the complexity of SPAs by default even when business needs don’t justify it. We still see some developers who aren’t aware of an alternative approach because they’ve spent their entire career in a framework like React.
Source: SPA by default | Technology Radar | Thoughtworks
Via Simon Willison (see above, and follow his blog) and over 2 years old, ThoughWorks expressing concerns that the SPA pattern has become so ingrained that developers and teams rarely consider whether it’s the right approach for a given project.
With the arrival of View Transitions (we’ll be covering those at Dev Summit), and speculation rules (also covering these at Dev Summit) one of the key drivers for the use of the SPA architecture–smooth transitions between application states–becomes far less compelling. This is not to say we should never use the SPA model, but it should always be a decision based on the specific project, not simply the reflexive default.
Thinking about the frontend treadmill and how you and your team might get off? Marco Rogers has been too and share his thoughts as the opening keynote at Dev Summit.
Frontend Schism: Will React Server Components Destroy React?
To quickly summarize, React Server Components (RSCs) are components that run exclusively on the server. As the React team explained in March 2022, when stable support for this “new type of component” was added in React 18, RSCs “run ahead of time and are excluded from your [client-side] JavaScript bundle.” Next.js (developed by Vercel, which also supports and helps fund React development) was the first major framework to announce support for RSCs, in Next.js 13 released in October 2022. This version of Next.js integrated RSCs as part of its new App Router architecture.
Source: Frontend Schism: Will React Server Components Destroy React? – The New Stack
Perhaps a little overly dramatic a headline but a valuable discussion of the impact of React Server Components on the React and front end ecosystem.
If you work in the React ecosystem world, we’ve got a whole track at Dev Summit largely dedicated to you with sessions on React Compiler, React Router, Suspense, Signals and more.
Great reading, every weekend.
We round up the best writing about the web and send it your way each Friday.
