Also: Seven reasons why you might not want/need remote UI rendering — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) When I first read the definition of micro-frontends, I didn’t “get it.” Specifically, when I read Cam Jackson’s article on martinfowler.com and Michael Geers’ mini-site micro-frontends.org, I was still asking myself questions like: Are we already doing micro-frontends? We’ve been…

Interop between them is possible, but it’s a hassle — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) In Node 14, there are now two kinds of scripts: there are old-style CommonJS (CJS) scripts and new-style ESM scripts (aka MJS). CJS scripts use require() and module.exports; ESM scripts use import and export. ESM and CJS are completely different…

A bluffing word game. It’s Liar’s Dice, played with Boggle letter dice. — This game works best with three to five players. Here are the rules. At the start of the game, randomly deal Boggle letter dice to each player. …

How and when to cheat on semantic HTML accessibility guidelines — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) I’ve been spending the last month or so updating some legacy HTML to support screen readers. Screen-reader software can read a web page aloud, allowing visually impaired users to understand and interact with the page. The problem is, sometimes the…

Google’s new “Speed Update” search ranking factor is too little, too late — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) Google uses hundreds of different factors (“signals”) to decide which web pages to show at the top of Google Search results. In January, Google announced that in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking signal for mobile searches. …

Technical explanations allow candidates to demonstrate their technical skills and social skills at the same time — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) Discuss on Hacker News Discuss on Reddit Interviewing engineers is a hard problem. Every interviewing technique has vocal detractors who say, “I would never work at a company that used that interviewing technique.” …

IFrames cause all of AMP’s problems, but they provide unbeatable performance. Fixing this is hard, but possible. — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) Discuss on Hacker News Discuss on Reddit A lot of people hate AMP, and now that Google has announced AMP for email, the AMP haters are out in force again, and understandably so. I’m aware of roughly two categories of…

I’m afraid you’ll have to learn the entire Service Worker API along the way. — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) In a previous article, I explained how and why Service Workers break the browser’s Refresh button by default. But nobody likes a whiner! In this article, I’ll document how to fix the Refresh button. Getting this right requires an intimate…

Service Workers are like apps. You can’t safely upgrade an app while it’s still running. — Dan Fabulich is a Principal Engineer at Redfin. (We’re hiring!) tl;dr: By default, users have to close all tabs to a site in order to update a Service Worker. The Refresh button is not enough. If you make a mistake here, users will see an outdated version of your site…