Prioritizing users in a crisis: Building the California COVID-19 response site

Pivoting From React to Native DOM APIs: A Real World Example - The New Stack

One dev team made the shift from React’s “overwhelming VDOM” to modern DOM APIs. They immediately saw speed and interaction improvements.

Yay! But:

…finding developers who know vanilla JavaScript and not just the frameworks was an “unexpected difficulty.”

Boo!

Also, if you have a similar story to tell about going cold turkey on React, you should share it with Richard:

If you or your company has also transitioned away from React and into a more web-native, HTML-first approach, please tag me on Mastodon or Threads. We’d love to share further case studies of these modern, dare I say post-React, approaches.

kdzwinel/progress-bar-animation: Making a Doughnut Progress Bar - research notes

This is a thorough write-up of an interesting case where SVG looks like the right tool for the job, but further research leads to some sad-making conclusions.

I love SVG. It’s elegant, scalable and works everywhere. It’s perfect for mobile… as long as it doesn’t move. There is no way to animate it smoothly on Android.

Designing for different devices | Government Digital Service

A behind-the-scenes look at how Gov.uk is handling mobile devices. Spoiler: it’s responsive.

I found this particularly interesting:

When considering the extra requirements users of different devices have we found a lot in common with work already done on accessibility.

Moving on from React, a Year Later

Many interactions are not possible without JavaScript, but that doesn’t mean we should look to write more than we have to. The server doing something useful is a requirement for building an interesting business. The client doing something is often a nice-to-have.

There’s also this:

It’s really fast

One of the arguments for a SPA is that it provides a more reactive customer experience. I think that’s mostly debunked at this point, due to the performance creep and complexity that comes in with a more complicated client-server relationship.

Website Speed Test

Here’s a handy free tool from Calibre that’ll give your website a performance assessment.