Hi
The last few weeks were packed with client projects, volunteering at a conference and preparing things for our trip to Thailand in a few weeks.
I found little motivation to write this list during those last few weeks, but I was still reading and collecting a few articles that I found worth sharing. So, let’s get this thing started again.
Frontend Development
🤓 Should your website be under 14kb?
If you work on the web, you probably (hopefully) care about the performance of the sites you build. But have you ever heard about this 14kb limit which stems from the way TCP handles packages, the so called TCP slow start algorithm? I certainly didn’t.
Definitely something to consider to cut some milliseconds off your loading time.
endtimes.dev – Why your website should be under 14kb in size
🧐 Are classes bad?
An interesting take on the weaknesses of CSS classes and what we could do to improve things like styling states with CSS. While I wouldn’t call classes “harmful” and am not sure if I agree with all of the proposed solutions (isn’t styling with data-attributes considered slower than with classes, for example?) I still like the general idea of the article and it got me thinking.
Keith Cirkel – CSS Classes considered harmful
🔥 CSS isn’t broken
Somewhat related to the above, Chris Ferdinandi makes some great points on the reasons why he dislikes Tailwind CSS and also some words on CSS architecture in general. Couldn’t have said it better.
GoMakeThings / Chris Ferdinandi – CSS isn’t broken: Tailwind, utility classes, and CSS architecture
0️⃣ Zero values without units in CSS math functions
Miriam Suzanne dives into the best practice of leaving out units for values of 0 in CSS, and why that can be a bad idea in some cases. Namely inside of a CSS math function you should always use 0 with a unit to prevent errors.
OddBird – Not All Zeros are Equal
WordPress
💸 Pricing Models for WordPress Products
Jon Christopher is trying something “new” in terms of pricing for his Product OrganizeWP. He stopped selling subscriptions, but instead is going to sell each major new version, like software did in the old days. As someone who sells a WordPress plugin as a subscription myself, I obviously have a lot of thoughts about this and look forward to see how this plays out for him. I can totally see where he’s coming from and can imagine customers will generally like this model. On the other hand, as he mentions in his post as well, it forces you to think much more about what to put in major versions, as you need to convince your customers anew for each version.
Jon Christopher – Rethinking WordPress Product Pricing Models
🧐 NewsletterGlue removed free plugin from WP.org plugin repo
Another interesting move from the WP plugin space. I can understand the reasoning behind it for Lesley and can imagine it will work out well. For us, I’d say the slow and steady stream of free users coming in from the free version is an important part of our marketing efforts, even though it’s impossible to determine how many of them would have found out about us without being in the free WP repo. But it’s definitely an interesting and something we keep an eye on and I wish Lesley and the Newsletter Glue team all the best with their decision to pull the plug on the free version!
WP Tavern – Newsletter Glue Closes Free Plugin on WordPress.org
Other / Random
💸 Why Friendly doesn’t want investors
This post resonated very well with me, as it put into words some of the things I have in mind about outside investments VS bootstrapping a business. If you know me, you know I am and always was a proponent of bootstrapping. The first point of Stefan is that “Investors enhance the risk of failing”, which is something I never thought of in this way, but it’s so obviously true. Taking on money takes you on a completely different path of “need to grow” much more than anything else, like serving your existing customers for example. If you think about taking outside money or bootstrapping, this post should give you some things to think about.
Friendly – Why We Don’t Want Investors – And Maybe You Don’t Either
🥂 Have a great weekend