WebDev Digest August 2019
Tags: webdev
Published: 2019-09-05 20:31:52

---
title: WebDev Digest August 2019
published: true
tags: webdev
canonical_url: https://www.stefanjudis.com/blog/monthly-digest-august-2019/
---

Hello everybody! 👋

I hope you had a good summer and took the chance to take a break! As we're now entering the time with wind and rain, I want to send you articles that you can read over a sweet tea. Enjoy!

## How do you reach the perfect performance score in Lighthouse

Maybe you're like me, and you're running Lighthouse on your sites to see how the rating of your websites is. For my site, it's currently a `98` performance score.

While this is still pretty good, I always wondered what I need to do specifically to reach the `100`. Lighthouse gives you a lot of helpful tips, but it doesn't tell how it calculates the score. 

If you're curious what metrics you have to improve, you'll find answers in this [Google Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Cxzhy5ecqJCucdf1M0iOzM8mIxNc7mmx107o5nj38Eo/edit#gid=283330180).

## What happens when you open a newly installed browser for the first time

How much does your browser communicate back home, you ask? [Jonathan Sampson did helpful research](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1166005813548396549) on what different browsers (Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, Chrome, and Firefox) do when you open them for the first time. Very interesting!

## iTerm got a nice update

I switched back and forth between [Hyper](https://hyper.is/) and [iTerm2](https://www.iterm2.com/) several times over the last few years. I like Hyper because it looks great and is nicely extensible, but it always felt a few milliseconds slower than iTerm. With the latest iTerm update a reduced look entered the stage, and you can enable a beautiful status bar, too!

![iterm2 running in reduced mode including the new status bar](//images.ctfassets.net/f20lfrunubsq/7xFh1udKOQr9abKwcSA19I/1418c45d6aabf637cd29f29eea8afd6c/terminal.jpg)

If you're using a Node.js version manager and wonder how you can display the currently used Node.js version in the status bar [this article](https://www.nicksays.co.uk/iterm-tool-versions-status-bar/) by [Nick Jones](https://twitter.com/nickj89) will help you out.

## How to discover your unknowns

The "dangerous knowledge-comparison" is very present in our industry. It's always about what we know or don't know. [This article](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-discover-your-unknown-knowns/) by [Alon Kiriati](https://twitter.com/akiriati) is an excellent read advising how to deal with the feeling of "not knowing enough".

## This month I learned

### How to create your custom JavaScript repl

I'm a person that prototypes a lot in the Browser or Node.js console. I learned that you could [build a custom Node.js repl with just a few lines of code](https://www.stefanjudis.com/today-i-learned/how-to-create-your-own-node-js-repl/). A custom repl can be very helpful if you have a complex Node.js app. You can set up a quick-to-run entry point that provides you all the needed application state so that you can prototype away!


### `caption-side` controls the position of a table caption

The `caption` element in tables is rarely used in Web Development. It provides you with a way to label your tables, but it has one gotcha. The spec defines that `caption` has to be [the first element in a table](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/caption). This makes it hard to style and hard to fit with design requirements.

Did you know that there is a `caption-side` CSS property? [You can use `caption-side` to control the position of the `caption` element](https://www.stefanjudis.com/today-i-learned/caption-side-controls-the-position-of-a-table-caption/). This property might be useful if you're captioning your tables.

### Select multiple tabs in Chrome and firefox

A very short one – I learned that you could [select multiple tabs in Chrome and Firefox](https://www.stefanjudis.com/today-i-learned/select-multiple-tabs-in-firefox-and-chrome/). This feature can be very convenient if you want to mute or pin several tabs at once.

## The talk of the month

A few months back, I attended NDC Oslo, and ["Shaving my head made me a better programmer"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KwQLrwXl34&list=PL03Lrmd9CiGe9QtFC8LRRqknzpKgcrWpe&index=164) was such a strong talk! [Alex Qin](https://twitter.com/alexqin) describes her journey in the tech industry. It's a scary, emotional, and eye-opening talk! 

Highly recommended!


## A quote to think about

Currently, I'm reading ["The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier](https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897). It's an excellent read, even if you don't want to become a manager. The following sentence profoundly resonated with me.

> Being an introvert is not an excuse for making no effort to treat people like real human beings.

For background: I feel quickly tired after too much human interaction, which leads to me not being my best self. Sometimes I have to push through to treat people like they deserve it.

## A song that makes you stop coding

I discovered ["Jungle" by Tash Sultana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8phH0k5HI) on YouTube and oh well... It's a hypnotic song, and the living room performance is just amazing!

And that's it friends. 👋 Have a great September!