Welcome to This Week on the Front End, our weekly roundup of news from the world of the front-end web.
You can check out the other editions under the frontendnews tag, and don’t forget to check out our weekly JavaScript and .Net roundups too!
News and Views
Is your head literally exploding with all the new web development tools, trends and practices flying around? (I mean “literally” in a figurative sense, of course. 
) So it Brad Frost’s.
Apparently, artificial intelligence will make technology disappear.
Go google yourself. No, it’s not an insult, but advice from a Komando fighting a war on reputation.
Meanwhile, Medium invents a cool new way to send spam.
And Apple works out how to stop the world going around by adding an ad blocker to Safari.
Apple has decided how we are to listen to music now. O, you’re going to resist the trend, eh? Heh, yeah, right …
And here’s the latest State of the Internet report—in a pallid, semi-legible typeface that kind of says it all.
In Brief
- Burke Holland muses on [why Microsoft fell over the Edge].(http://developer.telerik.com/featured/why-edge/)
- Are we losing the Open Web? The answer seems to be yes.
- You may be an impostor, but you’re not alone.
- Wow, Opera 30 has launched #crickets
- Here’s a really interesting, long-form article on archiving the web.
- Here’s a handy roundup of what’s new in Adobe CC.
- Here’s a list of communities for women developers.
CSS
You don’t actually need media queries to create nice responsive HTML emails.
Bryan James demonstrates some pretty amazing things you can do with CSS clip paths. And so does Karen Menzes. Clip path must be paying someone.
The ins and outs of CSS animation can be a bit overwhelming, so you might appreciate this beginner’s guide to CSS animation.
:rooting for the <html> element: exploring when and where to target html over body.
Here’s a cool new CSS framework, although be warned, it’s over a week old now, so is probably out of date.
JavaScript
Mike Herchel takes his JS to break point by Importing CSS Breakpoints Into Javascript—demonstrating a neat way to trigger JavaScript based on the current CSS media query breakpoint.
HTML
After years of coding HTML email, Lee Monroe dumps his brain. I know how he feels.
If you’ve heard of Web Components but don’t really get what they’re for or how they work, this podcast discussion with John Rogerson gives a really nice, beginner’s introduction.
Apparently “HTML5 is a movement”. Well, this list of all the HTML5 specs certainly gave me a movement.
The new <details> element in HTML is pretty darned cool.
Here’s a list of all the current HTML5 bugs … for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
The new HTML5 form input types seem to have caused more downsides that benefits—at least at this stage.
Design
Here’s a useful list of tools for creating animations.
Here’s an interesting essay on fostering understanding between designers and clients. (At the bottom, there’s a free email course on Design, which is worth giving a try.)
Finally, if you are as confused as I am about what Material Design actually is, here’s a great article that makes it really easy to understand: [try to find something to put here.]
##SVG
Here’s a comprehensive update on the state of SVG animation. [Warning: could make your brain hurt.]
And here’s a bunch of SVG fallbacks. (Falls back?)
Content
A List Apart’s content model struts the catwalk.
And here’s a handy guide on writing compelling copy for the web. (Can we blame people for plagiarism when text content is called “copy”? Meh …)
Accessibility
That whining Nielsen guy is at it again, complaining that the super cool invisible text that’s popular these days is somehow bad for accessibility. Meh, who cares if you can’t see content, anyway? It’s the cool design and animations that count, right?
Hm, you know how you keep meaning to get around to learning all those ARIA roles? Well, maybe it’s not worth it, after all.
The Coolness
If you are looking for a really nice, open-source photo gallery script, check out the latest version of PhotoSwipe. It’s pretty darned cool, with no dependencies, ftw.
Off the Wall
Hehe, some poor guy posted on Hacker News asking what tools are available to make coding an HTML email work reliably across email clients. Poor bugger. Do you want to break the bad news to him, or shall I?
If you have any links you’d like me to put in the next edition, please just message me. [If the dog barks, let him sniff the back of your hand].
If you enjoyed any of these articles, or if they got you thinking, tell us about it below. Otherwise it gets lonely in here!
. Please keep it up. It’s basically a 2nd versioning newsletter I can sink my teeth into. I did like the Medium spam story link though, as well as Apple Music, the