Weekly Web Roundup - 04
Tags: javascript, discuss, css, webdev
Published: 2018-01-26 15:26:22

---
title: Weekly Web Roundup - 04
published: true
description: The fourth weeklyweb roundup with articles on CSS, JavaScript, inspiration and more
tags: javascript,discuss,css, webdev
---

Bang bang! Another week is over so it’s time for another roundup. First of all I’d like to thank everyone for the amazing support, I didn’t expect writing about my twitter favorites would be so popular. To spread the word, I’m making a mailing list and a website with RSS feed. I’ll also continue to publish on dev.to so you don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll let everyone know when the site is ready, in the meantime, let’s get on with this weeks glory!

- [Week 03](https://dev.to/ardennl/weekly-web-roundup---week-03-5d74)
- [Week 02](https://dev.to/ardennl/weekly-web-roundup---02-1f39)
- [Week 01](https://dev.to/ardennl/weekly-web-roundup---01-15d6)

## News

- Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s) are coming to iOS 11.3 and that’s kind of a huge deal. Apple has had little incentive to support PWA’s, as they might cannibalize on app-store revenue. They still decided to give it a go and it seems we’ve got a long road ahead of us, as [Maximiliano Firtman](https://twitter.com/firt) describes it: [Cupertino, we have a problem](https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-are-coming-to-ios-11-3-cupertino-we-have-a-problem-2ff49fd7d6ea). 
- Talking about PWA’s, [Firefox 58](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/58) landed and now supports PWA’s for Android. Mozilla also started updated [their docs on PWA’s](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Progressive) so it seems they’re serious about it. Since the Quantum release I’ve been using Firefox as my main browser again and I’m not disappointed. The CSS grid tools are the best out there and it has some great features. I haven’t gotten used to it on my Android phone yet, but maybe this release will change it.
- [Trent Walton](https://twitter.com/TrentWalton) analyzed the Alexa top 50 websites list for third party scripts and what he found will probably not surprise you. Or it might still as it's pretty gruesome. [Third-Party Script Prevalence on Alexa Top 50](http://trentwalton.com/notes/2018/01/23/third-party-script-prevalence-on-alexa-top-50.html)

## CSS

- The best way to get comfortable with CSS Grid is to use it a lot. There’s a great article on bitsofco.de covering the [recreation of the Github contribution graph with CSS grid](https://bitsofco.de/github-contribution-graph-css-grid/). By the way, I’ve been reading amazing articles on bitsofco.de for a while now, assuming it was some sort of big establishment seeing the domain name is so damn cool, but it’s actually all written by the amazing [Ire Aderinokun](https://twitter.com/ireaderinokun)! You better add her to your to-follow list!
- IBM also jumped on the CSS-Grid train and published [CSS Gridish](https://github.com/IBM/css-gridish), an Open Source tool that takes in CSS grid specs and spits out a sketch file, CSS/SSS and has a chrome extension for testing. I haven’t tried it yet but it sounds pretty cool!
- Custom CSS properties are great. I also believe that many people have a hard time getting into them because they've got SCSS and are afraid of browser support. [Getting Hardboiled with CSS Custom Properties](https://24ways.org/2017/getting-hardboiled-with-css-custom-properties/) breaks down CSS properties and an easy way to provide fall backs. Written by [Andy Clarke](https://twitter.com/Malarkey)

## JavaScript

- You can try [Webpack 4 beta today](https://medium.com/webpack/webpack-4-beta-try-it-today-6b1d27d7d7e2), and you totally should! I’ve been following [Sean T. Larkin on twitter](https://twitter.com/TheLarkInn) for a while now and the work that’s been done on the new Webpack version is amazing. Check out the article to see the whole list of features and improvements, or start installing and give some feedback!
- An article you might have missed (published on January 9th) but should still read is Zell Liew’s very complete story on mutability in JavaScript: *"Mutation is scary because it can cause your code to break without your knowing about it. "*. Go checkout ["Why mutation can be scary" on alistapart](https://alistapart.com/article/why-mutation-can-be-scary)
- Ken Wheeler shared a nice little [example on the React render cycle control in form of a CodeSandbox](https://codesandbox.io/s/1wvl40omj). This might be useful! 
- [Michel Westrate](https://twitter.com/mweststrate), creator of [MobX](https://github.com/mobxjs/mobx), asked why setting state in React is async and [Dan Abramov](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov) replied with an [extensive piece of information that clarifies a lot](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/11527#issuecomment-360199710). 
- Ahmad Awais made [create-guten-block](https://ahmadawais.com/create-guten-block-toolkit/), to make custom blocks for the new WordPress Gutenberg editor. It looks like a great tool and is probably very welcome in the WordPress community where not every opinion is yet aligned on the new editor.
- Here’s an article you want to keep around: [Now You See Me: How To Defer, Lazy-Load And Act With IntersectionObserver](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/deferring-lazy-loading-intersection-observer-api/) written by [Denys Mishunov](https://twitter.com/mishunov). 
- [Polka - A micro web server so fast, it'll make you dance! 👯](https://github.com/lukeed/polka). Just for the name and tagline alone this one is included. Polka is a small Express alternative that is somehow even faster! I never really thought ‘damn I wish I had something faster than express’ but I might just give it a whirl for the fun of it. Created by [Luke Edwards](https://twitter.com/lukeed05)
- [Mark Erikson](https://twitter.com/acemarke) also has a newsletter, and I’m pretty sure it’s rad. [Sign up on tinyletter](https://tinyletter.com/acemarke) if you’re interested in great articles on React / Redux by one of the Redux maintainers!
- If you’ve been wanting to get into Elm (or never heard of it before) this might be a great introduction for you. [Learning elm from a drum sequencer](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/01/learning-elm-drum-sequencer-part-1/) is a great tutorial by [Brian Holt](https://twitter.com/BHOLTBHOLT)
- Redux is insanely clever and I enjoy the grip it gives when structuring an app but I won’t be the first to say that the amount of boilerplate can be a bit overwhelming. [Henrik Joreteg](https://twitter.com/HenrikJoreteg) wrote some [great notes on how to reduce the amount of boilerplate with Redux](https://github.com/HenrikJoreteg/redux-bundler).

## Productivity

- The following article starts out as a story about a master escapist Terrier and ends up teaching us a lesson on problem solving. [Dave Geddes](https://twitter.com/geddski) his blog post [Solve it once](http://gedd.ski/post/solve-it-once/) is a greatly written piece reminding us that technical debt is something that shouldn’t exist.



## PSA’s

- There's this huge part of the web I rarely think about:
{% twitter 956442607420362753 %}
- A bit of scaremongering for the end of your week
{% twitter 956290780779315202 %}
- It's a small win, yet nice. Binding the error in a `try catch` always felt arbitrary to me
{% twitter 956209997808939008 %}
- Safari is about to step their game up
{% twitter 956236581987172354 %}

## Inspiration
- This is the best thing you'll find on the internet this week. By [Julien Renau](https://twitter.com/julien_rno)
{% twitter 956597471815217153 %}
- Great 3d info-map on the California wildfires.
{% twitter 955866896263389184 %}
- [Sarah Drasner](https://twitter.com/sarah_edo) shared her Spotify work list and it's pretty bangin'. 
{% twitter 955139601651269632 %}
- Cool CSS grid example by Jules Forrest
{% codepen https://codepen.io/julesforrest/full/rpPELZ/ %}
- Sometimes some years need to pass before you see how awesome something was
{% twitter 955526088909901831%}
- This little gradient slider totally does it for me
{% codepen https://codepen.io/egrucza/pen/LEoOQZ %}

## What I've been up to

- I've been making this huge blog post on Transpiling JavaScript. I might have to cut it down in several articles because I'm five pages in and I haven't written a word of code yet. I think it's important to get a bit of a sense of history, and also for people to realize that some of the versioning in JavaScript is just really dumb and confusing.
- Working on a weeklywebroundup.com! That will be coming up soon and will include a mailing list and RSS possibilities. If you have any other wishes, please let me know.

As always, thanks for reading and enjoy the weekend!

Arden