Andris Svarcs

Friday Issue 153 React gets its own Foundation, someone built an x86 CPU in CSS (no JS!), and Cloudflare rebuilt Next.js in a week with $1,100 in Claude tokens. Also, robot vacuums and 1995 Batman Forever web design.

React gets its own foundation, Firefox ships a safer way to inject HTML, and Cloudflare rebuilt Next.js in a week for $1,100. Also, someone made a working CPU in CSS. No JS. The new Friday issue is live.

www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

Friday Issue No. 152 Stretchy CSS text, time-travelling art with chill beats, box-sizing worship, and Solid.js mimicking React vibes. Frontend fun at its weirdest.

Config-driven UIs, TS 6.0 going Go powered, Next.js escape hatches, CSS going full Pantone, and Cloudflare turning HTML into Markdown for agents. Components are about to kill “pages” for good.

www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

A Broken Heart Or, getting a 100x speedup with one dumb line of code.

Who would know that a tiny emoji can take 1600ms to load, right?
allenpike.com/2026/a-broke...

Friday Issue No. 151 Yarn goes Rust, Node gets faster in places you might not expect, and Gatsby quietly turns up with React 19. On the CSS side there is a gorgeous chat bubble, a CSS only light show, and a Wallace and Gr...

Yarn goes Rust, Gatsby is back with React 19, CSS does a full light show, and Firefox ships an AI kill switch and real web platform goodies. New Friday issue is live.

www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

I have one crazy wish for all the apps that add AI as an amazing improvement: they would also add an AI Kill switch, so I could firmly remove AI if I don't care about it in their App. Is it too crazy?

Rethinking “Pixel Perfect” Web Design — Smashing Magazine Amit Sheen takes a hard look at the “Pixel Perfect” legacy concept, explaining why it’s failing us and redefining what “perfection” actually looks like in a multi-device, fluid world.

Oh, Pixel Perfect! I thought that term was long gone. I probably work in a happy place, but I haven't heard that term for a long time. It's all about patterns, grids and adaptation to any size. Good advice in the post, though.
www.smashingmagazine.com/2026/01/reth...

Friday Issue 150 Issue 150 already. This week is a perfect snapshot of how far front end has come, from nostalgic jQuery 4 vibes and Temporal finally making Date feel modern, to wild 3D CSS cards, SVG filters, Markdow...

It feels like a milestone achieved with this post. This is what happens when a silly habit of collecting #frontend links becomes an obsession. :)
Anyway, another good collection of posts this week, with jQuery 4 at the top, along with loads of other topics.
www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

Not All Browser APIs Are "Web" APIs | Polypane When we talk about "the web platform", we often treat it as a unified, standards-based system: browsers implement features from the same specifications, even if…

When the web is free, but the APIs are a bit different. Really good post.
polypane.app/blog/not-all...

GitHub - abiosoft/colima: Container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup Container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup - abiosoft/colima

I tried Colima on Mac, and I find it much more fun to use than Docker. Fast, simple and does all I need.
github.com/abiosoft/col...

The Hydrant Directory A Public Domain design resource created from public infrastructure

This is all about hydrants and colours. Never thought about this kind of combination, but somebody did, and somehow it looks great :)
www.dayroselane.com/hydrants

It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons Looking at the first principles of icon design—and how Apple failed to apply all of them in macOS Tahoe

From those icon screenshots, I can assume that multiple design teams are working in silos.
tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-i...

Friday Issue Nr.149 This issue leans quietly optimistic and pleasantly nerdy, with JavaScript award season, and CSS finally getting Pinterest-style layouts without heroic hacks. Between front-end archaeology in the Nurem...

Happy Friday!
This year starts with JavaScript Rising Stars, a new TypeScript-flavoured UI framework and a couple of tools that make local development and API work less of a slog. #frontend #css #javascript

www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

AI CEO – Replace Your Boss Before They Replace You Stop working for humans. AI CEO delivers algorithmic thought leadership, with instant decisions, and zero ego. Replace your boss before they replace you.

By the way, do you give a name to your AI? I call mine "Dave". I know that I'm not alone on that. Even this website calls AI as David :)))

replaceyourboss.ai

Collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Design Discover a variety of dark pattern examples, sorted by category, to better understand deceptive design practices.

Collection of dark patterns on the web. Amazon's Audible is an absolute winner in my eyes. To cancel them, you must love playing detective and click loads of things till you get out of the subscription.
hallofshame.design/collection/

Putting Spec Kit Through Its Paces: Radical Idea or Reinvented Waterfall? Spec-Driven Development promises reliable, specification-led software generation, but in practice I found the workflow slow, heavy, and less effective than iterative prompting. This post walks…

Really interesting experiment building an app by using SDD approach with Agents and how far you can get. However, more important question is if this is the best approach at all.

blog.scottlogic.com/2025/11/26/p...

In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that now runs the Internet Thirty years later, JavaScript is the glue that holds the interactive web together, warts and all.

Who would have predicted that this scripting language would become a mainstream programming language?
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...

Friday Issue Nr.148 This week’s issue leans festive and slightly chaotic in the best way. Between JavaScript turning 30, Svelte and CSS advent calendars, and a hall of fame for dark patterns that makes Audible look like ...

JavaScript is officially 30, React is patching a critical RSC security hole, TypeScript 7 is taking shape under the "Corsa" codename, and TanStack is back with a new AI SDK and a bit more news in this #frontend issue.
#css #javascript

www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

Critical Security Vulnerability in React Server Components – React The library for web and native user interfaces

"For a typical SPA or CSR-focused app today, use React 19.2.1 and do not enable experimental/advanced RSC features until your stack’s maintainers have shipped and documented fixes for CVE‑2025‑55182."

react.dev/blog/2025/12...

Yeah, that is a bit ironic. The service which provides stability is down. However, the service seems to be running fine. The dashboard is just not available, at least by looking at my sites.

<100ms E-commerce: Instant loads with Speculation Rules API Boost storefront speed by prerendering and prefetching with the Speculation Rules API, plus framework fallbacks, to make key e-commerce pages feel instant.

Interesting concept about those speculation rules API, however, my worry is that in the end it will eat more RAM then my second personal computer.

blog.sentry.io/less-than-10...

una.im | Range Syntax for Style Queries Learn how to use the new range syntax for CSS style queries and the if() function.

Those range queries are super cool. Una wrote a fantastic post about it in detail. The thing is, not so long ago, all this logic would be in JavaScript to add new classnames based on data received and now it's simple #CSS

una.im/range-style-...

[css-grid-3] Masonry Switch Syntax · Issue #12022 · w3c/csswg-drafts In #11243 we ended up resolving to: Re-use the grid-* properties for templating and explicit placement. Adopt the item-flow proposal (in principle) for flow control. See #11480 With that context, I...

I wonder if the naming of the Masonry is the longest event in CSS history 🙂 Anyway, after long discussions, it seems that the name is display: grid-lanes
github.com/w3c/csswg-dr...

Friday Issue Nr.147 Angular 21 drops Zone.js, TanStack DB gets clever with query driven sync, CSS goes full programming language with subgrid, ranges and weather based cards, plus Cloudflare postmortems and yet another s...

www.shvarcs.com/news-archive...

Angular 21 is out, TanStac DB edges towards 1.0 with query-driven sync, Speculation Rules, fantastic post on #CSS subgrid, Masonry layout probably has name (finally) and other news around #frontend #javascript

Kasparov at Washington security forum: NATO doesn’t exist, it’s fake. Ukraine is only country doing what Alliance was built for Ukraine is dying every minute, fullfilling NATO's destiny, he said. Still, it's not a member of the Alliance.

Ukraine is the only country deterring the war that NATO was created for, with Russia, said Garry Kasparov, Russian activist and world chess champion

The West “owes Ukraine everything,” but instead debates deals that are forcing Ukraine into capitulation
euromaidanpress.com/2025/11/27/k...

I'm old too. I did exactly that. I wish I did long time ago but it is always good time to start now.

Monotype font licencing shake-down — Insanity Works tl;dr Don’t try to shake-down a typography nerd with your dubious, automated claims about his employer using unlicensed fonts. How it started It started with a LinkedIn InMail message…

I guess some companies would rather pay money than research and figure out the issue, since the number of people and hours involved to determine which fonts were used where and which licenses were obtained is real detective work.

www.insanityworks.org/randomtangen...

Basically, this post is solid proof that CSS is a full-scale programming language 🙂 A modern approach using grids, subgrids, round(), mod(), and loads of calculations.

9elements.com/blog/buildin...

Researchers Develop 'Mind Captioning' Using Brain Scans and AI The technique generated captions as participants watched videos.

We are living in the future, where, soon enough, you will be able to control devices with your mind. Well, at least they can't read your secrets (yet) from your mind.

www.extremetech.com/science/rese...

Why startups choose React (and when you shouldn't)—Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians’ team blog React dominates with 88.6% of startup funding, but 85% of these projects are dead. We analyze funding patterns, GitHub activity, and ecosystem health across React, Vue, Angular, and Svelte.

Actually, the post reviews React, Vue, Svelte and Angular. There are some interesting findings, and my favourite is that Svelte maintains the highest satisfaction, which I agree with.

evilmartians.com/chronicles/w...

My best to to Cloudflare team! #hugops