Web Development Reading List #175: GraphQL, IndexedDB2, And An Open Ethical Internet

With GraphQL, FQL, and IndexedDB2, we have new tools at our fingertips that allow us to build products that are not only more flexible but also faster. With this week’s Web Development Reading List, we’ll dive a bit deeper into these promising technologies and combine this with thoughts about the openness of the internet, ethical choices, and building inclusive products. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Further Reading on SmashingMag: Link

• The WAI Forward¹
• How To Design Better Buttons²
• 4 Effective Strategies To Estimate Time For Your Design Projects³

News Link

• Chrome 57 just hit stable, now the Chrome developer team announced Chrome 58 beta⁴. It includes IndexedDB2.0 support and improvements to iframe navigation. Among the smaller changes are also auto-pause/resume of video on Android when the window is in the background and the fact that HTTPS is now required for the Web Notifications API.

General Link

• Matthias Ott points out that it’s about time that we take back control⁵, reclaim our digital future and rebuild the web so that it, finally, becomes a web for everyone. And with growing surveillance and even bigger data consolidation by a few big private players, it’s now up to us to recognize the errors we make and amend our decisions accordingly to create a better web — a web that is more accessible, more private, and more independent.
• Quincy Larson wrote an essay about why the future of the open internet and our way of life⁶ is in our hands. By comparing the history of TV, radio, and telephone, he explains why it’s up to us to prevent that the internet goes through the same cycle of commercialization and privatization as the technologies that came before.

⁷

Tools & Workflows Link

• Loren Sands-Ramshaw wrote a two-step guide on GraphQL (Part 1¹⁰, Part 2¹¹), a relatively new query language that has better performance and is easier to handle as REST.

Security Link

• The Chrome team concluded an investigation on the Symantec Root Certificate Authority¹² and now discusses when and how to distrust the entire authority due to having misissued over 30.000 certificates. If the entity is mistrusted, GeoTrust, Thawte, and other certificate authorities will be affected by the decision as well since they’re operated by Symantec.

Privacy Link

• Whoops, there we go: As expected, the US Senate voted to allow Internet Service Providers to sell customers’ private data¹³ to third parties without opt-in consent. What a world we live in, where money seems to be everything that counts.

HTML & SVG Link

• Sometimes a user interface requires a clear “On”/“Off” switch. It’s usually a great idea when you want to show optional settings but indicate more as a checkbox does by default and in a simpler way as two radio options could provide it. Heydon Pickering now shares the technical approach to building semantic, accessible and easy-to-use toggle buttons¹⁴.

¹⁵

Work & Life Link

• Alex Castrounis shares why estimating software development tasks by time and time tracking don’t work and how you can still get pretty accurate estimations¹⁸ to calculate the progress and a deadline for a project.

Going Beyond… Link

• It’s interesting to see that a growing number of people now seem to ask themselves how to do good work, and I think it’s because we realize that current developments are so bad that we as individuals think about what we can do to improve our society again. Mike Monteiro is one of those people who care deeply about ethics¹⁹, now he explains why ethics can’t be a side hustle²⁰ and why you can’t shuffle yourself out of responsibility if you’re doing a non-ethical job as your main work. It’s true that you have to start somewhere, and doing simple things in your daily life can already help to improve our society, but, in the end, if you’re getting paid for non-ethical work, you’re actively helping and promoting this work. And nothing can make this undone.

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://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/07/the-wai-forward/
2. 2 https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/a-quick-guide-for-designing-better-buttons/
3. 3 https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/06/effective-strategy-to-estimate-time-for-your-design-projects/
4. 4 https://blog.chromium.org/2017/03/chrome-58-beta-indexeddb-20_21.html?m=1
5. 5 https://matthiasott.com/articles/going-indie-securing-privacy
6. 6 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08
7. 7 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08
8. 8 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08
9. 9 https://medium.freecodecamp.com/inside-the-invisible-war-for-the-open-internet-dd31a29a3f08
10. 10 https://www.compose.com/articles/use-all-the-databases-part-1/
11. 11 https://www.compose.com/articles/use-all-the-databases-part-2/
12. 12 https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/eUAKwjihhBs/rpxMXjZHCQAJ
13. 13 https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/senate-republicans-vote-to-allow-isps-to-sell-your-private-data
14. 14 http://inclusive-components.club/toggle-button/
15. 15 http://inclusive-components.club/toggle-button/
16. 16 http://inclusive-components.club/toggle-button/
17. 17 http://inclusive-components.club/toggle-button/
18. 18 http://www.innoarchitech.com/why-software-development-time-estimation-does-not-work-alternative-approaches/
19. 19 https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/11/web-development-reading-list-158/#work-life
20. 20 https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-cant-be-a-side-hustle-b9e78c090aee#.8p7pyqrw1
21. 21 https://wdrl.info/donate
22. 22 https://wdrl.info/costs/

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