Just a Spec

Web developers and content authors have a rich array of tags to chose from as they build experiences using HTML. Learn about some of our favorites young and old which may pique your curiosity, as well as enjoy a spirited refresher on the importance of writing semantic and accessible HTML.

Hosted by Jared White & Ayush

Witness the rise of the Fediverse! In this episode we talk about early attempts at building decentralized social networking protocols for the web, the modern effort to craft a true W3C-published standard, challenges at scale with building out ActivityPub-based services, some of the new companies and infrastructure adopting ActivityPub, and what Meta’s upcoming entry to the Fediverse could mean for the future of decentralized social media. Note: we recorded this episode prior to the meltdown of Reddit, so we will not be covering the sudden rise of the "Threadiverse" with software such as Kbin and Lemmy. A topic for another day!

Hosted by Jared White & Ayush

Show Notes:

• Early social networking protocols:
  • OpenSocial
  • OStatus
  • Pump.io
• Finally: ActivityPub!
  • Uses Activity Streams under the hood
  • and JSON-LD
  • and WebFinger
• Mastodon: How to implement a basic ActivityPub server
• Understanding ActivityPub
• Sample Python code
• Track Fediverse growth at FediDB

A whirlwind tour through the history of CSS, where it's landed today, and the myriad of goodies we can expect in the very near future. And do we still need pre/post-processors in this day and age, or can we just, like, y'know, write vanilla CSS?! Also, shockingly, Roy Kent makes an appearance on the show with an epic rant about Tailwind CSS. You're not gonna want to miss this!

Hosted by Jared White & Ayush

Show Notes:

• Zach Leatherman: Pay HTML/CSS devs what they deserve
• A Brief History of CSS until 2016
• Sass - Wikipedia
  • Sass and Native Nesting
• CSS Specificity Wars Over? All Hail Cascade Layers (video)
• The CSS Podcast with Una Kravets and Adam Argyle
• Container Style Queries
• CSS HD Gradients
• Classless CSS
• The Three Laws of Utility Classes

Not just a great Enigma song, shadow and light is the theme today as we dive deep into an exciting new frontend web specification: Declarative Shadow DOM (DSD). Having just landed in Safari as well as Chrome (crossing our fingers for Firefox support soon!), DSD has the potential to transform how we build UI for the web. We also take the opportunity in this episode to wish the World-Wide Web a happy birthday, which was gifted to the public 30 years ago, and to touch on some of the highlights as well as the perils of having a global information network.

Hosted by Jared White & Ayush

Show Notes:

• 30th anniversary of licensing the web for general use and at no cost
• Comments by Coralie Mercer of the W3C
• Declarative Shadow DOM (WebKit blog)
• Declarative Shadow DOM (Chrome blog)

In our kickoff episode of Just a Spec, we take a look back at the early use of forms on the web to facilitate messaging and payments, the introduction of XMLHttpRequest which started the Ajax revolution, how JSON-based API calls began to veer away from the spirit of progressive enhancement, modern page update techniques which still take advantage of form mechanics and HTML transport, and promising new specs like FormData and ElementInternals which propel "vanilla" form technology into the future.

Hosted by Jared White & Ayush