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Dobré Ráno, party people!

I'm a little late with this newsletter this week because I spent my weekend on a boat, in a beer garden and in a Karaoke bar. And all that led to a very slow Sunday. 🙈

Other than that, I'm participating in leadership coaching right now, and last week I learned about a new approach to decision-making. My coach and I discussed three ways/lenses to look at conflicts, decisions and the world.

  • The reverse lens: “What would the other person in this conflict say?"
  • The long lens: "How will I look at this problem in six months?"
  • The wide lens: "How can I learn and grow from the situation?"

I really like this approach of considering "the bigger picture" and will try to use it going forward. Let's make less hot-headed and short-sighted decisions!

Before we jump into web stuff, let's start the week with animals wearing sunglasses. 😆

Picture of an Orangutan paired with the headline "I accidentally dropped my sunglasses in the orangutan enclosude at a zoo in indonesia"

This week's Web Weekly includes:

  • thoughts about web components and frameworks
  • info about SameSite cookies
  • how to apologize

... and, as always, GitHub repositories, a new Tiny Helper and some music.

Ready? Steady. Go!

CSS font editor in Chrome developer tools

CSS font controls in Chrome DevTools

Thanks to Umar's Developer tips newsletter, I learned that Chrome's developer tools now include a Font editor. I love these tiny but handy features!

Enable Chrome's Font editor

Other's people's desks

Three screenshots of peoples desks

I can spend hours looking at other people's setups and desks. Maker Stations is a collection of desks and home stations to find inspiration for designing a beautiful home office.

Design your workstation

JavaScript Jabber on Core Web Vitals

Opinionated Core Web Vitals

Dan Shappir dropped some severe knowledge about Google Core Web Vitals in the recent JavaScript Jabber podcast. Did you know that SVGs are not considered in the Largest Contentful Paint metric? 🤯

If podcasts (and web performance) are your thing, this episode is golden!

Listen to JSJ

Enabling CSS selectors

You want enabling CSS selectors, not disabling ones

There are countless ways to write CSS. Silvestar Bistrović shared that he prefers writing enabling CSS selectors instead of overwriting other rules. I 💯 agree!

Write enabling CSS

How SameSite cookies help to prevent CSRF

Note: Chrome will make an exception for cookies set without a SameSite attribute less than 2 minutes ago. Such cookies will also be sent with non-idempotent (e.g. POST) top-level cross-site requests despite normal SameSite=Lax cookies requiring top-level cross-site requests to have a safe (e.g. GET) HTTP method. Support for this intervention (“Lax + POST”) will be removed in the future.

Simon Willison described a somewhat weird Chrome behavior, CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) and SameSite cookies. It's a very valuable read on cookies and web security.

Learn more about SameSite cookies

Can we have custom CSS media queries, please?

CSS code: @custom-media --narrow-window (max-width: 30em);  @media (--narrow-window) {   /* narrow window styles */ }

You might be aware that you can't use custom properties in CSS media queries (such a bummer!). This week I learned that the CSS media query spec level 5 (it's still edited) defines custom media queries.

I can't wait to see the cross-browser support of this new feature. Luckily, you can use it today, thanks to PostCSS.

Start using custom media queries

Should web components bundle a framework?

I used this technique in my own emoji-picker-element. If you’re already using Svelte in your project, then you can import 'emoji-picker-element/svelte' and get a version that doesn’t bundle its own framework, ensuring de-duplication. This saves a paltry 1.4 kB out of 13.9 kB total (compressed), but hey, it’s there.

Nolan Lawson described his approach to shipping web components. His question: should a web component include an entire framework?

My web components don't include a framework, but Nolan's way of providing different files (with and without frameworks) is very interesting.

Evaluate your approach to web components

What's a good apology?

Franchesca Ramsey looking into the camera

No matter the intention, we all screw up... and that's okay! It's important to apologize and learn from it. But what makes a good apology? Franchesca Ramsey shared ways to apologize meaningfully.

Improve your apologies

The problem of disabled buttons

Example UI showing a disabled button with a tooltip explaining why things are not valid.

Oldie but goldie; I came across Sandrina Pereira's article on disabled buttons twice this week. She explains why disabled UI is not great and how you can make your forms better.

Get rid of disabled buttons

Reminder: HTML is effective

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML

Speaking of inclusive websites, Terence Eden's post is a good reminder that not everybody is using the latest and greatest phones and computers browsing the web.

There's only one thing that works best on old and crappy devices: it's simple HTML.

Read more about crappy devices

Reader shout out 💙

A few people reached out and shared some online tools to get over 400 listed tools on tiny-helpers.dev. Thank you, everyone!

Three valuable projects to have a look at

A new Tiny Helper

Form giving you advice on what to do when you discover a phishing site.

What should you do when you discover a phishing site? I had no clue where I could report these sites. phish.report helps out here!

Report phishing sites

Find more single-purpose online tools on tiny-helpers.dev.

A quote to think about

This week's quote is some wisdom by Edgar Lechaudel. Remember to take care of yourself!

Do not forget that self-discipline is not just about hustling, it’s also knowing when to give yourself a break.

A song that makes you stop coding

Kaleo – Way down we go

This week I came across KALEO's powerful song "Way down we go". Man, this guy has a great voice!

Listen to "Way down we go"

Thank you for reading!

And that's a wrap for the thirty-first Web Weekly! If you enjoy my newsletter, I'd love you to tell others about it. ♥️

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Stay safe, and I'll talk to you next week! 🎉 👋

PS. I heard the cool kids use RSS. You can find multiple feeds on my site.

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Stefan standing in the park in front of a green background

About Stefan Judis

Frontend nerd with over ten years of experience, freelance dev, "Today I Learned" blogger, conference speaker, and Open Source maintainer.

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