Web Development Reading List #167: On Team Retreats, Immutable Cache, And Eliminating Clearfix Hacks

When working in a team, we focus so much on the work, that we often forget that we all have something in common. Something that is so obvious that we underestimate it: we all are human beings. And well, if we want to grow as a team and get better at what we do, we should embrace this fact more. In fact, I just came back from a week-long team retreat where we had team activities, team games, and sessions and discussions about how we can achieve just that.

We figured out how much we value diversity, we realized how different the English language and its words are perceived by people from different countries, and we’ve seen short talks on various topics like work-life-balance but also on technical stuff like Docker or intercepting any computer’s traffic with a Raspberry Zero. So if you have the chance to work in a team, use the opportunity and exchange views and share information with your co-workers. Work is part of your life, so why not make it a lovely part?

News Link

• Say hello to Firefox 51¹. It ships unprefixed ::placeholder, broader ES2015 support, WebGL 2, IndexedDB v2, and tabindex for SVG. Scripts served with an image/*, video/*, audio/* or text/csv MIME type are now blocked.
• Samuel Reed shares how Google Chrome 56 will make throttling of background tabs more aggressive², what this actually means and what the plans for Chrome 57 are.

General Link

• Firefox has been supporting Immutable Caching³ since version 49. Now they share how efficient the technique is⁴ for Facebook and other big sites that are frequently visited by the same people.

Tools & Workflow Link

• Anne van Kesteren shares tips on using SSH securely in the context of a CI service⁵ such as Travis CI or Circle CI.

Security Link

• Joschi Kuphal explains how to implement HPKP with Certbot⁶, the Let’s Encrypt client.
• In response to the recent MongoDB ransom attack, Mattias Geniar shares his thoughts on the return of unauthenticated, unfirewalled protocols⁷.

Web Performance Link

• Mazdak Hashemi gives insights into Twitter’s infrastructure⁸. They focus mostly on the large amount of traffic and the challenges that come with it.

HTML & SVG Link

• SVG icons often have one problem: They don’t align well to the text surrounding them. Elliot Dahl explains how to fix that⁹.

¹⁰

JavaScript Link

• Sara Soueidan shows how to build a fully accessible help tooltip¹² and why CSS-only methods sound neat but often aren’t.
• Mathias Bynens shares what’s currently happening at the TC39 in regards to Regular Expressions¹³ and shows what the proposals could look like and what problems they would solve.

¹⁴

CSS/Sass Link

• Rachel Andrew explains the new display property value flow-root¹⁷ that was added to Chrome and Firefox (both Nightly/Canary only) and why it will finally replace the old clearfix hacks that we’re currently using to fix parent box sizes when floating inner elements.

Work & Life Link

• Lara Hogan on how to hold better meetings¹⁸. A concise list of tips and tricks to make your meetings a lot more efficient and interesting.
• With tons of productivity articles out there, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or even bad about how you get work done. But each one of us is an individual, and, thus, productivity is not only a subjective matter but also has a personality¹⁹.

Going Beyond… Link

• Ben Sauer questions the use of digital media for everything²⁰ and asks himself if embracing paper to share information in a team is a better idea.

And with that, I’ll close for this week. If you like what I write each week, please support me with a donation²¹ or share this resource with other people. You can learn more about the costs of the project here²². It’s available via email, RSS and online.

— Anselm

Footnotes Link

1. 1 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/51
2. 2 http://blog.strml.net/2017/01/chrome-56-now-aggressively-throttles.html
3. 3 https://wdrl.info/archive/137/bits-up-cache-control-immutable
4. 4 https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/01/using-immutable-caching-to-speed-up-the-web/
5. 5 https://annevankesteren.nl/2017/01/secure-secure-shell
6. 6 https://jkphl.is/articles/certbot-http-public-key-pinning-hpkp/
7. 7 https://ma.ttias.be/return-unauthenticated-unfirewalled-protocols/
8. 8 https://blog.twitter.com/2017/the-infrastructure-behind-twitter-scale
9. 9 https://blog.prototypr.io/align-svg-icons-to-text-and-say-goodbye-to-font-icons-d44b3d7b26b4
10. 10 https://blog.prototypr.io/align-svg-icons-to-text-and-say-goodbye-to-font-icons-d44b3d7b26b4
11. 11 https://blog.prototypr.io/align-svg-icons-to-text-and-say-goodbye-to-font-icons-d44b3d7b26b4
12. 12 https://sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/
13. 13 https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/es-regexp-proposals
14. 14 https://sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/
15. 15 https://sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/
16. 16 https://sarasoueidan.com/blog/accessible-tooltips/
17. 17 https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2017/01/24/the-end-of-the-clearfix-hack/
18. 18 http://larahogan.me/blog/better-meetings/
19. 19 https://superyesmore.com/productivity-has-a-personality-8d71d90938e9a85b64bb67dcfe06012c
20. 20 https://slapdashery.org/thinking-with-paper-6e1064b1c67a
21. 21 https://wdrl.info/donate
22. 22 https://wdrl.info/costs/

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