Off The Main Thread

In this episode, Jake goes through some of the newer features of the View Transition API, along with some vaguer ideas that are planned for the future. Resources General view transitions docs Custom entry and exit transitions hasUAVisualTransition  so you know when the UA has done its own transition view-transition-class view-transition-types Cross-document view transitions  to wait for a particul...

In this episode, Surma talks about a presenation-maybe-soon-to-be-a-proposal "JS0", which explores the idea of splitting JavaScript into two specifications: JS0, focusing on security, performance and capabilties, implemented by engines; and JSSugar, focussing on developer productivity and syntactic sugar features implemented by build tools. Notes & Corrections: Yes, I know, people still  do  have...

In this episode, Surma talks about the Stage 2 proposal "JavaScript Struct", which introduces fixed-layout objects and the ability to share them between realms. Notes & Corrections from  Shu : Surma was slightly wrong about why private fields were originally considered problematic for sharability. The problem occurs when a class can be evaluated multiple times: function makeClass () { return class...

After talking about Bazel in one of our previous episodes, we are now looking at Nix, a build system that has been getting increasing attention lately. Resources: OTMT Bazel episode Surma's  video on Nix Eelco Dolstra's  PhD Thesis Nix & NixOS A  branch  of  Squoosh  using Nix Nixpkgs manual Comparison  of size and freshness of different package managers Home Manager Nix pills

We're finally getting a   element we can fully control with CSS! A bunch of other stuff needed to be added to the platform to make it work, and the good news is we can use it a lot of them independently of  . Resources: Chrome's article on the new  , and how you can provide feedback. The CSS appearance property . Nope, I still don't know what it does. The Popover API . "On popover accessibility: w...

Chrome is experimenting with exposing an LLM to the web platform. Jake and Surma dig into how the API works, and whether something like this could work on the open web. Resources: The explainer ChatGPT functions Chrome's initial vague docs about the feature Gemini terms of use The EURion constellation WebNN

Luca  found a hidden Chrome extension that is installed by default in Chrome and most Chromium derivatives. Surma and Jake dig into what this extensions does and how reasonable it is to get angry about it. Resources: Luca's original tweet thread The extension's  source code Discussion on blink-dev The original  PR  that introduced the extension Brendan Eich's  response Brave  PR disabling the exte...

In this episode, Jake and Surma chat about web components. Why they were invented, what they're useful for, and how they would improve. Resources: Surma showers his eyeball . The old custom elements 'v0' spec . The old shadow DOM 'v0' spec . The old HTML imports spec . The initial version of Polymer . Lit  (formally lit-html). HTML attributes vs DOM properties . Issue looking at ways custom elemen...

In this episode, Surma shares with Jake all the things he learned reading up on source maps and DWARF. Resources: Jake's Jericho triangle source-map-explorer Hacker News comment by Joseph Shorr on the origins of source maps The Source Map "specification" EvanW's source map visualizer Wikipedia: VLQ DWARF specification llvm-dwarfdump gimli addr2line bundlephobia Wasmphobia WebAssembly Debugging Chr...

In this episode, Jake and Surma chat about the complexities of adding common framework patterns into the web platform, and work that has been done on that so far. Resources: Michael Jackson's tweet . Is WebAssembly magic performance pixie dust?  - Surma's investigation into wasm performance. defaultValue  reflects the  value  attribute . The  value  property is complicated . HTML template instanti...

In this episode, Surma talks about web apps that (partly) abandon the DOM and use canvas instead, to take rendering matters into their own hands. Figma is one popular app that uses this approach, while Flutter is an entire app platform that went with this technique to provide portability. Jake and Surma discuss the tradeoffs of building apps this way. Resources: AI text-to-speech having a stroke S...

In this episode, Jake chats about the latest EU ruling that requires Apple to allow other browser engines on iOS, and how Apple is reacting to it. Resources: Microsoft vs the EU Microsoft vs the US BrowserChoice.eu IBrowse Mobile operating system market share Web platform tests dashboard The internal Apple email about HTML5 The Open Web Advocacy group The EU digital markets act Safari is "three br...

In this episode, Surma shares what he learned while getting started with the Bevy Game engine, Entity Component Systems and why they might be useful for the Web. Jake rounds up the newest JavaScript language features that landed in TC39's Stage 3. Resources: Bevy Game Engine Bevy Rendering Pipeline Buffer-backed Objects , a library by Surma to store objects in  ArrayBuffer Surma built  Boids  with...

In this episode, Jake investigates whether the existence of build tools is a symptom of the web being underpowered, or if they are part of the solution to make the web better. Surma shares his experience of learning about Bazel and how it can be used to build web projects. Resources: Touching cloth . Emirates silly class . Yes, we have done  "The big build tool bonanza"  before. Jake: Although "Te...

In this episode, Surma talks about the "GPU" in "WebGPU" and how this new web standard makes programming for the GPU more accessible. Jake talks about how different browsers approach standards and their perceived ideologies around what they prioritize. Resources: Surma's  blog post on WebGPU A  13-part blog post series  on the architecture of GPUs. The  OpenGL internal state object  explained Dawn...

(This is an episode from our previous podcast HTTP 203, originally published on June 29th, 2022) In this episode: - Surma changed jobs. - The Shopify interview process. - Pair programming vs pair problem solving. - Surma's also doing bits of work for Deno. - The complexities of testing image codecs. - Jake forgot to tell Ada how HTTP 203 filming ends, so it almost never did. - Keeping animations f...