I first started programming for the Mac in 1986, in my second year of computer science. The computer science department had moved from Vax minicomputers running some form of Linux to labs full of networked Mac II computers. This was the real heyday of the Macintosh’s first run. You’d find them in art departments where […]
As we head toward the end of 2025, I’ve got a final round up of articles I recently found valuable and interesting. Only one of them focuses in any way on frontend development. It’s probably as good an encapsulation of this year from my perspective, but I imagine from many others, as you could have. […]
For our second-to-last newsletter of the year, we have, once again, a bumper crop of articles with a very strong AI flavour, as increasingly has been the case over the course of the year. I’ve also just published a piece where I give some thought about the kinds of applications or the domains of application […]
A provocation: The domains where large language models will deliver truly transformative breakthroughs in the near term aren’t determined by human need or market size—they’re determined by whether we can automate the evaluation of their output. There’s a pattern emerging in how large language models are being adopted across different domains. The conventional wisdom suggests […]
Well, I’ve had a couple of weeks off from posting after a very good run this year. In my defence, we did run three conferences in ten days at the back end of November, and that tends to end up quite the consuming. But there’s more… AI Engineer comes to Melbourne as part of AI […]
This week, there’s just a limited number of articles for your reading. Partly—and no small part indeed—that’s because we’re currently in the final stages of producing three conferences in about ten days starting next Wednesday. In these stages, you tend to get very busy with all kinds of things that just need to be done. […]
A bit of a quieter week for reading, though I did pen some thoughts that have been floating around my head for a while now. A kind of farewell A (kind of) farewell to the web finds me less than optimistic about the direction of front-end development right now. At a time when there’s a lot […]
Front-end engineering is at a crossroads, and right now I’m not optimistic about it. Which is ironic because I think there’s a lot to be optimistic about. I think there’s so much potential in the platform. A potential that has been growing for years, which is really starting to come to fruition. The power and […]
Another big week at Web Directions this week. First up, we streamed Performance Now Live from Amsterdam. If you’d like to catch up with the videos, you can do that on Conffab for a very reasonable price. Why not consider a Conffab Premium account? You can get access to all of our conferences live, including […]
Specification over code, the browser as a capable client, design systems as infrastructure, and the rise of open automation. A lifetime ago, when I wrote A Dao of Web Design, I argued for working with the grain of the medium. The grain is changing again. Here are four trends that, taken together, define this moment. […]
Scroll‑driven animations, view transitions, OPFS, WebGPU, Passkeys & FedCM: where they’re ready and how to adopt them safely The web platform continues to evolve and gain capabilities more quickly than we’re able to keep up. At our Developer Summit, we will focus on some of those key features that have recently landed or are about […]
TL;DR: We’ve been using the wrong metaphor for AI in development. It’s not just a power tool that makes us more productive—that’s a sustaining innovation mindset. The better analogy is the surgeon: someone with deep foundational knowledge, embodied expertise from thousands of cases, and the judgment to make critical decisions. As AI handles more of the […]
It’s been another busy week here at Web Directions as we prepare for those three upcoming conferences at the end of November. That hasn’t stopped us gathering another crop of great articles, interviews, and more to keep you up to date. Check out the programmes, and we’d love to see you there in person or […]
Back in early September 2022, so over three years ago now and weeks before ChatGPT came out, I wrote this article. For some reason, I never published it. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps a version of it ended up in my newsletter. I don’t know. But in it, I said to people, playing with […]
How to keep velocity while reducing risk: BFFs, capability boundaries, feature flags, and evidence‑driven rollouts. The hardest part of modern front‑end isn’t the framework—it’s the shape of the system. As AI‑assisted workflows arrive, we need architecture that absorbs change without multiplying risk. Here are some of the related topics we’ll be focusing on at our […]
Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development
Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney
