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Happy Monday, party people!

Heyoooooo! The last week has been super busy because I talked to a lot of people as part of my job hunt. A huge thanks to everyone for reaching out and pointing me to job opportunities.

This time Web Weekly includes:

  • a new web development baseline
  • resources on ARIA live regions
  • tips on how to onboard at a new company

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

On a personal note

Cron interface showing how to share availability.

I'm becoming an interior designer these days. Have you tried the Ikea kitchen designer? You can do 3D kitchen modeling right in your browser. It's surpsingly good!

Other than that, I'm trying a new calendar app after juggling multiple Google calendars daily. And I'm amazed by Cron. It's keyboard first, supports a command palette, looks beautiful and includes much-needed Calendly functionality. It's in closed beta right now, but I highly recommend signing up for it!

Nothing made me smile this week...

Tja (that's German for "well..."), even though it's been a good week, nothing cute or funny passed my way. 😢

Send the good stuff over for next week, friends!

A new baseline for web development

 TL;DR:The baseline for web development in 2022 is: low-spec Android devices in terms of performance, Safari from two years before in terms of Web Standards, and 4G in terms of networks.

Internet Explorer is officially retiring in June 2022, big players such as Google Search stopped supporting it, and the declining IE usage statistics show that it's about time to retire it for good.

But what's the new baseline if it's not Internet Explorer? Alan Dávalos collected valuable statistics leading to a new recommendation.

Define the new baseline

Should you respond to recruiter emails?

I’m telling you that the absolute very best time to talk to a recruiter happens when you’re not looking for a job.

I have to admit that I have ignored recruiter emails for years, but after reading Alex Chesser's post "Career Advice Nobody Gave Me: Never Ignore a Recruiter", I changed my approach. Alex gives valuable advice and shares a copy and paste auto-respond template to use. It's an excellent read to level up your career.

Reply to recruiters

Are we live?

If you have an interface where content is dynamically updated, and when the content is updated it does not receive focus, then you likely are going to need a live region.

Do you use live regions in your sites and applications? Live regions inform assistive technology about screen and interface updates. Scott O'Hara explains how to use them.

Implement live regions

How to onboard a new job

How to spend your first 90 days

Onboarding a new job is challenging. You're nervous, don't know the people and have no idea about existing processes. Different companies also use different onboarding tactics.

But here's the thing: no matter how structured (or unstructured) an onboarding flow is, you can still break out of it and set yourself up for success.

For example, listen to all the conversations around you, watch out for important folks, and then introduce yourself. It's essential that people know you. And it's even more important in a remote setting.

This onboarding checklist includes this and more tips. It's one for your bookmarks!

Onboard with style

Caching is complicated

Caching headers are surprisingly complex and often misconfigured. Here we look at some key cache scenarios and recommend the ideal headers to set.

Getting the most out of your caching strategy is incredibly complicated. Simon Hearne published an extensive guide to HTTP caching headers. If you want to learn more about immutable, cache-control or Etag, this post is for you.

Level up your cache game

Pretending to be someone else

the new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

This story is wild! 🤯 Alison Green describes a situation in which a company hired someone only to find someone else showing up at the job. I couldn't even imagine that this is a thing these days.

Read a fascinating story

Using GitHub as your CMS

Swyc on Twitter: Moved SwyxKit to use GitHub Issues as default CMS:  https://github.com/sw-yx/swyxkit/pull/9  You can now publish a blog just by posting a github issue, together with images, emoji reactions, and comment support!

Swyx shared details about his last website redesign. As usual, it includes many small tips and tricks, but what stands out is that he uses GitHub issues as his CMS. That's an interesting idea.

Use GitHub in creative ways

Important, important, important

Una on screen explaining CSS cascade and specificity

This week I learned a surprising little fact about CSS !important from Una Kravets. It turns out that the order of the cascade for !important CSS properties is inverted when it comes to user agent, user and author stylesheets. Sounds odd?

Learn more about it (and CSS cascade layers) in Una's video. 👇

Learn more about !important

30 seconds of knowledge

30 seconds of knowledge - Ticker - Renders a ticker component.

If you're looking for a quick way to learn about random code practices, the "30 seconds of knowledge" browser extension might be right down your ally. Every time you open a new tab, you'll discover a new code snippet.

Learn something with every new tab

TIL recap: String.prototype.normalize()

const word = 'über';       // displayed as 'über' console.log(word.length);  // 4  const alikeWord = 'u\u0308ber'.normalize(); // displayed as 'über' console.log(alikeWord.length);              // 4  console.log(word === alikeWord); // true

Did you know that you that JavaScript strings have a normalize method? Now you do. :)

Normalize all the strings!

If you learned something new, no matter if small or big, old or new, documented or not, I'd love to include more learnings in this newsletter. Send me an email, and I'm happy to share your discovery!

Three valuable projects to have a look at

A new Tiny Helper

Icones interface showing various icon libraries.

If your process of finding icons includes googling "free icons", you might consider Icônes helpful. It lists various icon libraries, and you can snatch and copy an icon right on the site.

Find your next icons

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

A quote to think about

If I care about a topic, I can be a little hotheaded. But I'm working on it. This week's quote is here to remind you to stay calm, too.

The ability to stay calm and polite, even when people upset you, is a superpower.

A song that makes you stop coding

Cover: Angelo Ferreri - More People In Many Ways (Javi Bora Remix)

The first beats of this electro track are super trashy, but I'm all in for a rolling baseline with mixed-in samples. I hope we'll be able to dance this summer!

Listen to "More People In Many Ways"

Thank you for reading!

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

If you're not a subscriber, you can change that! 😉

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

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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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