Slides: Advanced CSS Performance Tooling
These are the slides from my CSS performance tooling talk, presented at CSSConf.eu earlier this month.High-performance sites need to feel instant and deliver the goods in < 1...
Blog
You can find my latest AI engineering articles on Substack, leadership on LeadDev, or browse my topic guides and personal blog posts below.
Personal Blog
Video: JavaScript Memory Management Masterclass
The video from my talk at London WebPerf about finding and fixing memory leaks in JavaScript is now up. Covers DevTools, V8 & more. I hope it is useful.
Slides: JavaScript Memory Management Masterclass
Presented at at the Google WebPerf Special (London WebPerf Group), August 26th 2014.Efficient JavaScript webapps need to be fluid and fast. Any app with significant user interac...
Component Interop With React And Custom Elements
Today we'll look at how to wrap React components using Custom Elements, allowing us to interop with Web Component-based libraries using the DOM as a simple configuration API. Si...
Offline Browsing Secrets In Chrome
If you travel, you've probably found yourself stuck with zero network connectivity on more than one occasion. This sucks, especially if you just want to look up a few previously...
Front-end Choice Paralysis
Cross-posted from my article on the Pastry BoxA problem we regularly face in this industry is an abundance of choice. We have a plethora of tools, frameworks, languages, abstrac...
Video: Componentize The Web! talk from LXJS
Web Components are ushering in a HTML renaissance, encouraging us to think about how we can bring back the declarative simplicity of HTML to the components we write to...
Automating Web Performance Measurement With PSI For Node
Cross-posted to HTML5RocksWeb performance can have a huge impact on your entire user experience. If you’ve been looking at improving your own site’s perf lately, you’ve probably...
Detect, Undo And Redo DOM Changes With Mutation Observers
I’ve been wondering why DOM Mutation Observers, which can monitor changes to one or more DOM elements and return a report of what changed, aren’t used more often in the wild. Mu...
Data-binding Revolutions with Object.observe()
A revolution is coming. There’s a new addition to JavaScript that’s going to change everything you think you know about data-binding. It’s also going to change how many of your ...
Gulp And Grunt Tasks For Performance Optimization
Delays in performance have the potential to impact user engagement, experience and revenue. Thankfully, Google's 'Make The Web Faster' team recommend a set of best-practice rule...
Deal with something once.
Cross-posted from my article on the Pastry BoxIf a task can be done in less than two minutes, do it right now.I find myself consciously procrastinating more than I would like. I...
The Web's Declarative, Composable Future.
The way that languages in the web platform evolve are in direct response to the pain caused by complexity. Pain is generally a bad thing and so it's with better patterns and pla...
Spring-cleaning Unused CSS With Grunt, Gulp, Broccoli or Brunch
[caption id="attachment_6609" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The tough economic times on Tatooine hit everyone hard, including the Jawas.[/caption]Delivering a fast experience...
Environment-specific Builds With Grunt, Gulp or Broccoli
[caption id="attachment_6536" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianneudorff/9109932159/[/caption]The dev, staging and production vers...
Ghostbusting For Front-end Developers
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! We’d like to avoid that, right? Well, today we’re going to talk about how to improve the accuracy of your front-...
Yo Polymer - A Quick Tour Of Web Component Tooling
In the HTML5 Rocks write-up and videos for my talk "yo polymer", I walk through Web Components - an exciting new set of web platform features that will change the way you build ...
Full-Stack JavaScript With MEAN And Yeoman
IntroductionA trend proliferating amongst prototypers in the Angular community is full-stack JavaScript development via the MEAN stack.The acronym stands for: (M)ongoDB - a noSQ...
Use Your Terminal From Inside Chrome DevTools
I just wrote an article for HTML5Rocks on a new DevTools extension that allows you to use your terminal directly from inside Chrome. This is a huge milestone for in-browser prod...
Browser-Sync: Sync Scrolls, Clicks, Forms And Edits In Multiple Browsers For Free
I recently wrote a guide on tools for synchronized cross-device testing; useful when you’re targeting the multi-device web. One of the tools I didn't come across at the time was...
Mobile Web Development Tooling (Slides)
In my mobile web dev. tooling slides, we dive into the options available today for cross-device development, testing, and performance evaluation of multi-device webapps. Underst...
DevTools: Incrementing CSS values under-the-cursor
Chrome DevTools supports some useful keyboard shortcuts for easily incrementing or decrementing CSS values under-the-cursor. Shortcuts are available for both the Sourc...
Rendering Performance Case Studies (G+, Flickr And More)
Miss my workshop at Velocity Europe? The slides are now up!. These days our users expect smooth scrolling, buttery smooth animations and interactions, especially on mobile. We n...
Slides: Automating Front-end Workflow
Writing a modern web app these days can sometimes feel like a tedious process; frameworks, boilerplates, abstractions, dependency management, build processes..the list of requir...
Substack
Future-proofing your Software Engineering career
Practical strategies for engineering careers in the future
The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding
A field guide and why we need to rethink our expectations
User-centric engineering
Engineering with user empathy is the foundation of great products
There is no right time. Just time and what you do with it.
How to thrive in imperfect conditions
Comparison is the thief of joy
Navigating comparison with mindfulness
Focus on what you can control
Actionable advice for empowerment
10 lessons from 12 years at Google
My lessons learned along the way.
LeadDev
Grow your influence like a leader, not a boss
Extending your influence past your immediate circle isn't as straightforward as you'd like to hope. But there are a few strategies you can employ to help.
How to build an effective technical strategy
Building a tech strategy requires a lot of moving parts. Learn about what routes to take and whether decisions should be top-down.
How to keep up with tech trends and upskill sustainably
With so many developments in the tech world it's difficult to keep up. Here are some strategies to stay on top of your upskilling.
Navigating competing priorities as an engineer
How can you prioritize when everyone's ask is an urgency and you don't have time to fit it all in?
Managing the chaos of context switching
It's time to examine the good, the bad, and the very ugly elements of context switching. Even better, we'll take a look at some strategies for managing it.
Focus on outcomes over outputs
Software engineering teams should focus on outcomes over outputs to deliver the best user and business value.
What makes an effective software engineer?
Being a good software engineer is not necessarily the same as being an effective one. Here, Google's Addy Osmani identifies the ten key traits of effective software engineers.