All the stale things (JS Party #115)

Divya leads a deep discussion with Jerod, KBall, and Nick on what’s stagnating in browsers. What has remained the same in browser tech over the last 20 years that remains a pain point in working with browsers? For example - Focus in browsers hasn’t changed much in 20 years. Why is that and how do we go about making all the stale things in browser tech better?

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Featuring:

• Divya – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Bluesky, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Segment 1: APIs that were not developed

• [Proposal] Focus Traversal API
• Input elements are still terrible; CSS appearance property
• Container queries
• Dates still suck, but they are being fixed
• Luxon
• Web Components (RIP?)
• BUT Shadow DOM
• Consistency of CSS Properties BUT Houdini
• Button cursor — why do still have to do button { cursor: pointer; } ???
• SVG amazing but still 2nd class citizen
• Accessibility should be down in the browser

Segment 2: Hypothesizing

• Why didn’t these APIs get anywhere?
• What would’ve needed to happen for them to have progressed?
• Browser wars; the move towards chromium

Segment 3: Shout-outs!!

(in order of appearance)

• KBall: Rachel Andrew’s CSS Grid articles: Understanding CSS Grid: Creating A Grid Container and Understanding CSS Grid: Grid Lines
• Jerod: Justine Haupt’s open source DIY rotary cell phone
• Nick: Tatiana Mac’s talk titled How Privilege Defines Performance
• Divya: Understanding the ECMAScript spec, part 1

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!