Full Stack Developers Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski dive deep into web development topics, explaining how they work and talking about their own experiences. They cover from JavaScript frameworks like React, to the latest advancements in CSS to simplifying web tooling.
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Scott and Wes break down why your CSS might suck—from misusing specificity to not leveraging CSS variables. Tune in as they dive into common pitfalls that are making your stylesheets a hot mess.
Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:33 Breakdancing in the Olympics.
05:29 Brought to you by Sentry.io.
05:44 Why your CSS sucks.
07:01 You’re styling the wrong element.
11:01 Nesting too deep.
12:37 You don’t understand specificity.
14:56 Your classes don’t use a system.
16:24 You’re using values instead of CSS vars.
20:16 You don’t understand block vs inline vs inline-block. CSS Logical Properties
21:16 You aren’t using the right tool for the job. CSS Flexbox, CSS Grid.
24:15 You’re setting the value in too many places.
24:31 You’re scoping to tightly or not tightly enough.
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815: Deno 2 with Ryan Dahl
Friday, August 30, 2024 • Duration 44:31
In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Ryan Dahl about Deno 2.0, its new features and use of web standards, and how it seamlessly integrates with popular frameworks like Next.js. Ryan shares insights on the motivations behind Deno’s creation, its emphasis on simplicity and security, and offers his take on the evolving JavaScript ecosystem.
Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:34 What is Deno?
05:08 Deno 2.0
07:49 NPM compatibility
09:40 What parts of Node aren’t doable in Deno?
11:22 Do we need a hard break from Require?
13:51 Package management
16:25 Security and performance benefits of Deno
20:57 Brought to you by Sentry.io
20:57 Thoughts on Bun and Node additions
26:25 Ryan’s favorite Deno projects Lume
Fresh
webgpu-examples
gpucraft minecraft clone + deno + webgpu
gpucraft example
Shaderplay
Orillusion
28:42 Will we ever see a unified file system API?
31:49 Typescript
36:12 Jupyter Notebooks with Deno Polars
39:11 AI and WASM in JavaScript
42:01 Deno 2.0 features and future
43:08 Sick Picks & Shameless Plugs
Sick Picks Ryan: McCarren Park
Shameless Plugs Ryan: https://deno.com/enterprise
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806: The King of Drag and Drop: Alex Reardon
Friday, August 9, 2024 • Duration 55:29
Scott and Wes talk with Alex Reardon from Atlassian about developing drag-and-drop libraries, specifically the challenges with creating efficient and accessible drag-and-drop functionalities for the web. They also explore what it takes to build and implement a system that works seamlessly across various frameworks.
Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
01:18 Brought to you by Sentry.io.
01:51 What Alex does at Atlassian react-beautiful-dnd
Pragmatic drag and drop
04:38 What makes drag and drop tricky.
06:38 Use-cases.
10:54 What security is in place?
12:30 How to make it feel native.
19:20 Is the drag and drop spec ongoing?
20:03 How do you build this headless?
21:33 How does drag and drop work with frameworks?
23:48 Making drag and drop feel the same across mobile and desktop.
26:09 What’s the key to really good drag performance?
29:58 How do you make drag and drop accessible?
34:57 Pragmatic drag and drop code vs application code. Shoelace
shadcn
40:00 How does testing work? Playwright
Cypress
43:15 Internal adoption at Atlassian.
44:27 Working on high-impact projects.
49:15 Versioning and internal adoption at Atlassian.
51:29 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs.
Sick Picks Alex: Coffee, James Hoffmann YouTube Channel.
Shameless Plugs Alex: Dom Events.
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716: JS Perf Wins & New Node.js Features with Yagiz Nizipli
Friday, January 12, 2024 • Duration 01:01:07
Yagiz Nizipli talks about his involvement with Node.js, implementing .env, how he finds areas to improve in performance, the happy path vs the hot path, and new features coming to Node.js.
Show Notes 00:32 Welcome
01:01 Introducing Yagiz Nizipli
02:21 What is your involvement in Node.js?
03:27 Implementing .env
07:03 Why was 20,000 lines of C required?
11:00 How do you begin to find performance issues?
15:17 How do you measure improvements?
26:27 The happy path vs the hot path
27:36 Is Rspack ready for prime time?
RSpack
28:47 Bundle Size VS runtime perf? Whats more important?
30:51 What’s it like working on a large project like Node?
38:26 Will Node ever get TypeScript support?
40:22 What are loaders?
44:24 Node.js is getting a config file?
51:37 Sick Picks
Sick Picks Oxc
@Boshen_c
Shameless Plugs @yagiznizipli
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715: Google & MS Duopoly, Frontend to Fullstack, Where to Put Business Logic + more(Potluck)
Wednesday, January 10, 2024 • Duration 51:30
Wes and Scott answer your questions about duopoly in tech, tech stacks for creating content, switching from frontend to full stack, DSA knowledge, email HTML, and more!
Show Notes 00:10 Welcome
02:21 Syntax Brought to you by Sentry
03:31 Are you concerned about duopolistic companies taking over the web?
11:29 What stack do you you use for videos and sharing content?
15:02 How do you know once your ready to officially make the switch from frontend to full stack?
17:58 As someone new to tech and looking to apply for junior front end positions, how much should i know about DSA’s?
Friends that work at big tech companies - did you need Data Structures and Algorithms to get hired? I get an lots of messages from new devs asking how to learn these things. Many of them say the need it to work at FAANG type companies
21:59 Which tools would you recommend for crafting HTML emails from scratch?
Foundation
MJML
React Email
25:03 Hey are you guys setting up your own CI/CD like github action or gitlab CI?
Netlify
Vercel
28:25 What do you think about unstyled component libs. Eg: Ark?
Ark UI
31:47 Do I need to have every single feature on mobile as I do on a desktop?
Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking
Missive ‐ Team Email, Chat & Tasks
39:15 How can I get better at planning my code?
shaky.github.bushong.net
Monodraw for macOS — Helftone
Octopus.do, Visual Sitemap Tool, Website Planner, Architecture
Mermaid | Diagramming and charting tool
42:32 What exactly makes it so that a piece of logic is client/frontend logic vs backend logic?
46:17 Sick Picks
Sick Picks Scott: Sleeping Queens Card Game, 79 Cards : Toys & Games
Wes: Package drop box
Shameless Plugs Scott: Syntax Newsletter
Wes: Wes Bos Courses
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714: CSS :has() in Every Browser! 10 Uses
Monday, January 8, 2024 • Duration 30:27
CSS :has() is out in all browsers and Wes and Scott have got the top 10 reasons you should start using :has() now.
Show Notes 00:25 Welcome
02:28 Syntax Brought to you by Sentry
03:02 Overview of :has
07:09 The anywhere selector
09:41 Previous element
12:59 Layout targetting
15:45 Form validation styling
17:51 All siblings
21:07 Quantity queries
24:19 Empty children
24:56 Nested dropdown navs
26:36 Attribute matching
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713: The CSS OG Eric Meyer. 1994 CSS, JS in Fridges, Tailwind, and Web Standards
Friday, January 5, 2024 • Duration 01:05:28
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Eric Meyer about his start on the web, the early days of CSS, where CSS is headed, are we going to lose a browser, and more!
Show Notes 00:32 Welcome
01:26 Who is Eric Meyer?
05:44 In the earliest days, what browsers supported CSS?
10:23 The current web platform test suite
web-platform-tests
17:59 Are CSS features shipping faster these days?
20:45 CSS learning from preprocessors
26:24 What do you think about Tailwind and inline CSS?
33:26 Alternative spaces where CSS may be used
CSS Speech Module Level 1
The World Wide Web Consortium Issues CSS2 as a W3C Recommendation
37:17 Do companies push CSS forward for a business use case?
44:06 Trying to keep up with all the things is difficult
48:19 What’s on Eric Meyer’s CSS wishlist?
54:35 Supper Club Questions
Bruce Lawson
Firefox Nightly desktop, Android and iOS.
SerenityOS
The Ladybird browser project
Thunderbird — Free Your Inbox. — Thunderbird
Arc from The Browser Company
Mozilla Foundation - Homepage
01:58 Sick Picks
Sick Picks Polypane
Shameless Plugs Igalia - Open Source Consultancy and Development
meyerweb.com
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712: 2024 Predictions
Wednesday, January 3, 2024 • Duration 01:03:07
Wes and Scott give their predictions for 2024 in JavaScript, frameworks, server-side JS, tooling, CSS, developer ecosystem, and AI tooling.
Show Notes 00:10 Welcome
01:10 Syntax Brought to you by Sentry
02:00 Types in JS will have real movement
05:10 Temporal API will ship in 1 browser
06:38 Perf tooling gets easy for everyone to understand
07:32 CSS continues to get better where you need less JS
08:35 The year of the server in frameworks
10:32 Svelte v5 is very fast
SvelteKit • Web development, streamlined
12:04 Astro is going to have a good year
Astro
4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea (Salma Alam-Naylor, Scott Tolinski, Eve Porcello)
14:22 React server components
dai-shi/waku: ⛩️ The minimal React framework
Waku
19:45 Remix moves away from page-based loaders, to component loaders
20:52 Hono will become more ubiquitous
Hono - Ultrafast web framework for the Edges
23:23 Node will introduce TypeScript support via loaders
24:48 We will see a route matching Proposal move ahead
URL Pattern Standard
26:34 Bun releases full node compat
27:34 We will see a new Linter + formatter entirely replace
Language support | Biome
HTML support · Issue #1326 · oxc-project/oxc
Prettier · Opinionated Code Formatter
31:44 New TypeScript typechecker
32:42 Lightning CSS pops - or does it?
34:37 You’ll hear more about Rspack and Turbopack
35:55 Vite isn’t going to release anything big in 2024
Vite | Next Generation Frontend Tooling
36:55 CSS contrast-color will land in chrome
37:27 Relative color will land in all major browsers
37:48 Scroll animation landing in 2 browsers
38:40 The year of CSS discovery
41:20 Safari will Ship 3 missing PWA Support
44:10 Firefox usage will continue to slip
47:43 Paid Arc features
47:55 More XR web experiences as Apple releases in Vision Pro
49:07 AI Tooling
Galileo AI
v0 by Vercel
Transformers.js
51:07 Small Models that run in the browser
52:08 Apps get sherlocked by OpenAI
53:24 On prem corporate AI
54:15 Sick Picks
Sick Picks Scott: ISO100 protein power, Weekend at Bernie’s
Wes: Roborock S8 Pro Ultra Vaccum + Mop
Shameless Plugs Scott: Syntax Newsletter
Wes: Wes Bos Courses
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711: The Surprisingly Exciting World of Print + PDF CSS
Monday, January 1, 2024 • Duration 32:12
In this episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk about things to consider when printing something from your website or app including loading CSS only for printing, using units in CSS, CSS counters, creating a PDF, naming pages when printing, and more.
Show Notes 00:25:15 Welcome
01:27:04 Syntax Brought to you by Sentry
01:52:00 Examples of how Wes uses print CSS
03:42:16 Using it for invoices or receipts
05:08:24 Delivering a book as a PDF
05:42:16 How do you load CSS only for printing?
10:41:08 Using units in CSS
11:29:15 CSS Counters
MDN: CSS Counters
body { counter-reset: chapter; /* create a chapter counter scope */ } h1:before { content: "Section " counter(chapter) " "; counter-increment: chapter; /* add 1 to chapter */ } h1 { counter-reset: subchapter; /* set section to 0 */ } h2:before { content: counter(chapter) "." counter(subchapter) " "; counter-increment: subchapter; } h2 { counter-reset: section; font-size: 23px; } 14:31:10 Named Pages
@page title { @top { /* no header for title pages */ content: “”; } } @page chapter { @top { content: “This is a chapter page”; } } 15:27:09 Margins, Headers + footers, Page Numbers
18:01:18 Debugging Print CSS
19:57:18 Getting into a PDF
Docraptor
Playwright
Puppeteer
JSPdf
24:45:04 Other Things to consider
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710: A Passwordless Future Passkeys with Anna Pobletts
Friday, December 29, 2023 • Duration 55:33
In this supper club episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott talk with Anna Pobletts of Passage about passkeys, how passkeys work, how to implement passkeys on your website or app, what the recommended UI is for passkeys, what happens to your passkey if you lose your phone, and more.
Show Notes 00:32 Welcome
01:36 Why do we need something like Passkeys?
03:34 What are Passkeys for?
10:04 What took us so long to get to Passkeys?
11:07 Where’s the two factor part of Passkeys?
13:08 How are Passkeys phishing resistant?
14:44 What happens to your Passkey if you lose your phone?
18:40 What’s the password recovery workflow like with Passkeys?
23:08 Having a backup device helps a lot with Passkeys
24:58 Why companies should use two factor or Passkeys
29:26 What are the standards and tech behind Passkeys?
32:38 What kinds of companies are implementing Passkeys?
34:34 What is the recommended UI for telling users about Passkeys?
39:17 How do you implement Passkeys on your app or website?
41:47 1Password open sourced low level libraries
47:34 What does the future look like for Passkeys?
51:07 Supper Club questions
53:44 Sick Picks
1Password
Have I Been Pwned
1Password Watchtower
Passkeys.directory
passkeys.dev
FIDO Alliance - Open Authentication Standards More Secure than Passwords
Sick Picks Cascadia
Shameless Plugs Passage by 1Password
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