New Front-End Adventures, 2023 Edition

Vitaly Friedman

Your instructor: Vitaly Friedman

Workshop includes:

Unfortunately, this workshop is fully sold out! But you can join the waiting list in case a ticket becomes available:

Workshop, 5×2h + Q&A • Tue & Wed, Apr 25 – May 16 2023
09:00 – 11:30 AM PT • 18:00 – 20:30 CET • Check your time zone ⏰

With HTTP/3, Service Workers, Jamstack, PWA, TypeScript, Web Assembly, AVIF, Qwik, Variable Fonts, CSS Container Queries and cascade layers, client hints, resource hints and early hints and CSS subgrid, we all are still trying to figure out just the right strategy for building websites and apps efficiently. How do we do that, and how do we achieve it within a reasonable amount of time?

What’s the state of CSS and JavaScript today? What are some of the exciting new technologies that have landed in browsers recently? How do we architect a flexible and maintainable design system? And where would we even start refactoring and re-organizing our legacy code base, or move to ES Modules in production, or use Web workers or Webassembly? Oh my, in the workshop, we’ll cover it all.

In this workshop, Vitaly Friedman, co-founder of Smashing Magazine and front-end/UX consultant, will be looking into the state of front-end in 2023, with new challenges and new opportunities, and how we can utilize all of those wonderful shiny web technologies we have available today.

We’ll also talk about dealing with legacy browsers and will cover a few dirty little techniques that might ensure that your websites and apps will stay relevant, flexible and accessible in the years to come. Beware: you won’t be able to unlearn the things that you’ll learn in the workshop!

In This Workshop, We Will Explore:

Front-end accessibility 2023, with common techniques, strategies and tooling, especially for single-page-applications,
State of CSS in 2023 (CSS Grid + Cascade Layers + Custom Properties + Subgrid),
State of JavaScript 2023, ES modules, progressive/partial (re)hydration, bundlers, tooling and how to manage performance bottlenecks for single-page-applications,
State of Web Performance 2023, with a roadmap for dealing with CSS, JavaScript, media, fonts, 3rd-party scripts, and critical CSS/JS.
Image and video optimization, techniques, tooling and formats (AVIF, AV1),
Bulletproof web font loading, with strategies and techniques, self-hosting and CDNs,
How to organize, write and maintain CSS, incl. BEM, Tailwind, ITCSS, CUBE CSS, and how to deal with specificity wars, leaking styles and global scope,
CSS Custom Properties cascade, how to use and build with it,
How to manage critical CSS/JS to optimize delivery to minimize reflows,
Localization and internationalization,
SSR + CSR, and how to navigate the space, with resumability, Qwik and Jamstack, prerendering and static rendering, static site generators and where and how they fit,
Service Workers, setting up a strategy for better caching and better performance,
Refactoring and debugging strategies,
State of HTML email, with new strategies for building cross-email client emails,
GDPR and privacy legislation, with implications for web developers,
Maintenance issues and dealing with legacy browsers,
Component-based workflow and tooling,
Common front-end challenges and solutions and important new challenges and opportunities to keep in mind.

What hardware/software Do You Need?

To get the most out of the workshop, you’ll need to bring a laptop with your preferred text editor.

Who Is This Workshop For?

This workshop is intended for front-end developers and UI engineers, and everybody else who is dealing with front-end issues. You should be familiar with CSS and JavaScript, and be enthusiastic to deep dive into technical intricacies and browser internals.

About Vitaly Friedman

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most helping companies solve UX issues or running front-end/UX workshops. He loves solving complex UX, front-end and performance problems.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over five days. Our virtual doors open at 8:45, we start at 9 AM PT.

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

Tue, April 25, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
Wed, April 26, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
Tue, May 9, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
Wed, May 10, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT
Tue, May 16, 09:00 – 11:30 AM PT

You can always re-watch the sessions at a more convenient time and follow the workshop at your own pace.

Day 1

8:45 AM ET
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
The state of the Web 2023. Modern front-end architecture, tooling, important metrics, bottlenecks and user expectations. Client-side rendering, server-side rendering and static site generators. Common front-end challenges. How can we boost our dev speed? Deep dive into refactoring, debugging, DevTools and WebPageTest to improve the development experience.