
Cool Links Vol. 3: September, 2024
4 min read
Links to the best stuff I've read or watched during the month of September, 2024
A chronological view of everything I've posted here, since the beginning of time (or the blog's inception, whichever comes first).

Cool Links Vol. 3: September, 2024
4 min read
Links to the best stuff I've read or watched during the month of September, 2024
An Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers
I’ve complained about Safari multiple times in my posts and social media, and I’m not alone. This document pretty much aggregates all the issues Safari has been causing for years and how users (and devs) often have no choice of browser to run to when Safari decides it doesn’t want something to work.
I am 100% in favor of browser engine diversity, and definitely don’t want Chromium to be the only option out there. But Safari (and WebKit, its “heart”) is not a fair competitor because the majority of its users (on iOS and iPadOS) don’t have the option of using something else. And when Safari has time and time again had issues with the implementation of new APIs and, even worse, had issues with having old APIs working in a completely different way from other browsers, we have a problem.
And to make it all worse, Apple clearly has financial incentives to make Safari lag behind. A limited web experience means the only way to provide your service to users on iOS is by releasing an app… on Apple’s App Store. They can’t monetize web browsing, so why make it work well?
Building the Perfect Logo Strip
This article dives into how the author built a logo strip (i.e. a grid of company logos with varying widths and heights) and the techniques they used to make their weight nicely distributed, way beyond what most people have done in the past (including me). I’ll definitely be using that next time!
This one is absolutely brilliant and nothing I can say about it will make it justice. Open it on desktop for the full effect.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve argued with a lot of people in the past over if a specific color was blue or green. This quick test makes you categorize some colors into blue or green, and then how “green” you are compared to the rest of population. I’m not sure if there’s any scientific data to back any of that up, but it’s still a fun test to take.
For the record, my boundary is at hue 171, which makes me greener than 75% of the population.
On being a "Javascript Framework Developer"...
I feel like more and more web developers are becoming “Framework Developers”, which means they only really develop with one specific (or maybe two) JS frameworks. This is a problem because these frameworks often change how you interact with web technology. In the end, everything gets compiled to HTML, CSS and JS, but when your dev environment is so different from that, it’s hard to understand exactly what you’re building.
If you already know HTML, CSS and JS, then you can make that association while you’re learning the framework, and things happen naturally. When the opposite happens, though, the path is more difficult.
A HTML, CSS and JS developer can learn any framework (and jump between them) with relative ease, while a React developer might have a hard time working with Vanilla JS or Svelte, for example, because they only learned the React way of thinking instead of how browsers interpret the code.
I do use a JavaScript framework (Svelte) on my website and personal projects, but I’m glad I learned the underlying technologies before diving into any framework. Having that foundation has allowed me to work professionally with a lot of different stacks (Vanilla, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte) while still keeping my foundational skills intact.
Responsive app switcher or carousel UI with CSS view()
This CodePen uses pure CSS and its new-ish features to create a really neat card stacking effect! It uses Scroll Snapping (widely available) and Scroll-based animation (Chromium only for now) to both style the card stack and make sure they behave correctly.
A semi-serious, semi-satire, but fully incredible short video that talks about ReactJS and how and why it became the most popular web framework. Definitely worth the watch, especially if you don’t like React. Make sure to read the transcript for some added Director’s notes.
Tár
Reviewed on Sep 28, 2024
It’s one of those movies where you spend a good chunk of its duration wondering if it’s going anywhere. But you can’t look away, it draws you in. And then things click.
Amazing acting, photography, and sound. Not easy to understand but worth the effort.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Reviewed on Sep 20, 2024
I never watched the first one, but this sequel is a very good time! It’s never afraid to be fun and never takes itself seriously, which is a breath of fresh air nowadays.
It’s far from being a cinema masterpiece, but it’s 105 minutes of pure entertainment. Great soundtrack too!
Grave of the Fireflies
Reviewed on Sep 14, 2024
Just as beautiful as it is sad. What a movie. 🥺
Oddity
Reviewed on Sep 07, 2024
Wow, a horror movie that’s actually good! Really knows how to build up tension, keeping you on the edge of your seat for most of it.
Story is good enough to keep you interested, and it doesn’t feel like it needs to explain everything, which to me is really important to make horror work.