Thanks to 20+ years of cooperation via standards, most web devs are insulated from the reality that competition (or the threat of it) makes standards possible. It's a shock to recognise that Apple has broken the system so thoroughly that SDOs themselves are at risk:
Infrequently Noted
Apple's Assault on Standards - Infrequently Noted
By subverting the voluntary nature of open standards, Apple has defanged them as tools that users might use against the totalising power of native ...
One assumption made web standards possible: competitors are free to ship differing ideas when they disagree. Until iOS, this was the norm. Apple's ban on competing browser engines changed that, and Cupertino is poisoning the roots of the tree that gave the web life:
Infrequently Noted
Apple's Assault on Standards - Infrequently Noted
By subverting the voluntary nature of open standards, Apple has defanged them as tools that users might use against the totalising power of native ...
Cory Doctorow (@npub1fdrp...lvhs) quipped: *"An 'app' is just a web-page skinned in enough IP to make it a crime to add an ad-blocker to it."*,[1] but the native rot goes deeper. Remember when FB rebuffed Apple's offer it couldn't refuse?[2] Knock me over with a feather, the "privacy wars" were all for show:
Infrequently Noted
Apple vs. Facebook is Kayfabe - Infrequently Noted
Apple vs. Facebook is, and always was, kayfabe. In reality, Apple is Facebook's chauffeur; holding Zuck's coat while Facebook wantonly surveils iPh...
 [1]:
Pluralistic: Your car spies on you and rats you out to insurance companies (12 Mar 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
 [2]: https://www.phonearena.com/news/apple-facebook-almost-worked-together_id141910
I want you, a tech-literate person, to internalize one deep fact: Apple vs. Facebook is, and always was, kayfabe. In reality, Apple is (and always was) Facebook's chauffeur; holding its coat while it surveilled everyone. How to be sure? IABs:
Open Web Advocacy
In-App Browsers: The worst erosion of user choice you haven
 Apple facilitates mass surveillance through native apps from Facebook, both directly from in-app activity, but much more insidiously, through "in-app browsers" that FB tacks onto every link you tap. And these things are *rank*.
Several times over the course of my career, specific companies have gummed up the works in web standards, leaving it to everyone else to figure that out they weren't on board with the web continuing to progress. It's bad, and we should learn to spot it:
Infrequently Noted
How Do Committees Fail To Invent? - Infrequently Noted
Conway's Law is generally discussed in the context of organisations trying to solve a problem. But what if there are defectors? And what if they co...
An extremely cool ping/pong of ideas teasing out what good browsers can do with almost no code in these posts:
1KB JS Numbers Station – Terence Eden’s Blog
dbushell.com
Play it, Sam. Play β€œSpeech Synthesis”
The one where I make the web browser read it for me
I spent hours and hours trawling through the sites of some of the world's best web developers, and despite the horrors I regularly experience in my daily work in Big JavaScript Territory, what I saw left me hopeful:
Infrequently Noted
Links? Links! - Infrequently Noted
Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.
Just published a new section on my site to capture references to a lot of the essential web performance and fundamentals-oriented webdev resources I find myself continually directing folks to. Also, lots and lots of links to blogs I love:
Infrequently Noted
Links, Resources, and Humans of Note - Infrequently Noted
Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.
The dirty JS hacker in me loves this (ab)use of `PerformanceObserver` so much:
Simple live reload for developing static sites
I've been pretty lax about keeping up with the webperf slack, but this was in the scrollback from March, and I love that it shows so directly how understanding the rendering engine unlocks better experiences for everyone, not just folks on low-spec machines and networks:
Granola
Don't animate height!