Matt Zeunert is back with his latest “year in review”, 2025 In Review: What’s New In Web Performance? Always a good way to sort of “reset” your brain, to make sure we know where we stand going into the new year… :-)
One of the awesomest features mentioned in Matt’s list is Rick Viscomi‘s Baseline Timeline! I have been looking for something like this since I learned about Project Baseline…
And speaking of Baseline, the Google team has created a CSS Wrapped page for 2025 that highlights and demonstrates what features have made it to the web in the past year, though many are still Baseline: Limited availability…
Brecht De Ruyte digs into Google’s list a little more deeply, showing how those features can be used IRL.
I recently tripped across the Learn with Jason series on CodeTV. This week I started digging in and just love this paired-programming session with Jason Lengstorf and Chris Coyier as they Recreate a Cool Shuffling Effect in Pure CSS! Love the appreciation of finding another dev doing something cool, the persistent acknowledgement of Toni Lijic‘s work, and then these two just digging in to try to figure out how they would do it, rather than simply copying and stealing Toni’s work…
Three great articles in a row from the Web Performance Calendar:
- In Web Performance 2025: The Shift from Optimization to Prediction, Fabian Krumbholz explains how SpeedKit is using AI models to inform Speculation Rules, and using RUM Reports to help implement the up-and-coming Compression Dictionaries to help close the gap on near-instant page rendering (note both are currently still Baseline: Limited Availability).
- In The Anatomy of a Web Performance Report, Edwin Molina Hernández helps break down his WebPerformance Report, and illustrate how a good report is like telling a story, starting with the context, then a snapshot, then getting into the details.
- And finally, in The Inconvenient Truth: How Web Performance Case Studies Undermine Our Relationship with Business, Martin Michálek discusses how citing a weak case study can really cripple good-faith with stakeholders. He then walks through what to look for when choosing your next source. Good guidance next time you reach for something from WPOStats to help prove a point!
Semantic Art is an AI-powered search engine for real-world art samples, where you search for… a mood…
We’ve all had people tell us that everything has to be “above the fold” if we want a user to see it right? Well, Christopher Butler makes the case for “maybe not”… In his piece, The Rhythm of Your Screen, he states that Length is not the problem; lack of rhythm is
.
Amit Sheen really shows off with this “holographic” card… This looks so freaking cool!
Todd Libby bemoans an increasing lack of the lang attribute on site html elements. Wow, that is sad, because it is such an easy bit to just add to your site template and be done with it! And, lest we forget, the lang attribute can also be added to any HTML element, in case some random phrase/sentence/paragraph is a different language. This is basic accessibility, folks…
Serges Goma‘s FFConf presentation (YouTube) is truly delightful… Lovely energy, informative, entertaining and thoughtful… More, please.
And finally, ’tis the season for giving, and, as web development practitioners, what better way to give than to build things that are as inclusive as possible (you wouldn’t want to be excluded, would you?)… Steve Faulkner writes about the reasons to choose semantic HTML elements over non-semantic HTML elements with ARIA roles, citing the First Rule of ARIA:
If you can use a native HTML element… or attribute with the semantics and behavior you require already built in, instead of re-purposing an element and adding an ARIA role, state or property to make it accessible, then do so.
And goes on to state very good reasons why, including a link to all the things that ARIA does not do… And in case you are now saying something like, “But how do I know what semantics HTML elements provide?”, well Jens Oliver Meiert has you covered with his HTML Semantics: The Short Descriptions of All 113 Elements, where he lists all 113 HTML elements, and quotes the HTML spec’s first paragraphs for each. And in case you are now saying something like “But how do I know if all the browsers support those semantic HTML elements?”, Mr. Faulkner has you covered (again!) with his HTML5 Accessibility guide, which lists the current accessibility support status of HTML5 features across major browsers
… So, no more excuses!
Happy reading,
Atg