Dion Almaer

Software, Development, Products

Web

One browser to rule them all?

Sizzy is the latest custom browser for a particular niche, this time design. Blisk is another that targets developer use cases. Ironically, it’s tagline is “One browser to rule them all” when, in fact, maybe it paints an alternative picture.

Time for an Eclipse

I remember a trip that Ben and I took to Ottawa. It was in the winter, and happened to occur at the same time as a visit from Obama (so, you know, in the good old days ;). We were visiting the core team at IBM behind Eclipse (and SWT and OSGI and ….) such as Steve Northover. The topic was web based IDEs, since we were working on Bespin and they were building Orion.

They were great to talk too, because they have so much experience in the world of tooling, having worked on them for decades.

One of the lessons I learned was that Eclipse was originally a foundation. If you look at the layers: SWT as a native widget toolkit, OSGI as a way to dynamically modularize, and Eclipse as the IDE bits…. you had a way to customize and build an IDE. Maximum flexibility.

But many Java developers downloaded Eclipse and used it. Many appreciated it, but many also found it far too confusing (Perspectives?). The IDE platform was being used as the end product. Since then, custom IDEs have been build with Eclipse, using the power of the platform but delivering a custom and opinionated view for it’s users.

I reflected on this as I played with niche browsers and wondered….

What if we had more browsers in our lives, not less?

What most think of as their “browser” is the Web platform with a product surrounding, and integrating with it. The main feel of the browser hasn’t felt that different for awhile. You still see the URL bar up top, still use tabs, etc.

A browser expected to be baked into an operating system, but we still see new browsers looking to innovate and find their own niches, such as funding models and verticals. So far, the browser itself feels familiar.

Unless you consider the “app browsers”. The apps that deeply embed the Web as a core part of their experience, such as Twitter, Facebook, Google’s Search app, and on and on. These have taken a particular view that is less of a blank slate that allows you to put in a URL (well, or search, or leap from a new tab page that has a feed too… ok there is some innovation there!).

Imagine how a browser would be different if it was oriented in a particular way? E.g. a developer browser that didn’t focus on speed for users, but on getting you as much data to help you debug and develop?

Just as with Eclipse, there are many ways to get there. You can customize through plugins, or you can have a seperate distro that is fully setup and ready.

It does make me wonder though…. can we find a new bar that allows for much more innovation in the product space, while we all work together to push the web platform forward, in a way where developers can ship to reach as many users as possible.

What would you like to see?

The Doomed Rewrite

It just happened again. I spoke to a company, with some great engineers, and they just experienced the doomed rewrite.

I remember the days of the Monty Hall Rewrite, which is a situation I would much prefer to DOOM. With Monty Hall, you run into the following situation:

  • A website uses a given tech stack. It feels legacy, and the team gets to a point where it is time to consider a rewrite, to wipe clean the technical debt. This is a very expensive decision, and often the better path is to iterate, but there does often come a time
  • A new website is created, using a newer, shinier, tech stack
  • There is a comparison made between the two, which often isn’t very fair, as it muddies the water based on the fact that the difference isn’t just the tech stack. You have all of the domain knowledge and learnings from the older version(s).

The doomed version, when you choose door three, follows a similar path, but the ending isn’t as happy.

You are not Google, is a great post that basically describes the important value in taking the time to understand that you should validate that you are choosing the right tool for the job. It focuses on backend infrastructure, but the same arguments can be made in the world of frontend.

Just as it is important to understand the problem that Cassandra was solving (database writes for the Add to Cart action), it is important to think through the front-end needs (e.g. what are Facebook’s biggest needs with React, or Google’s with Angular, or Lit, etc).

You want to create the right balance for your needs, and they are varied.

For example, the scenarios below are not the same:

  • You have an existing business at scale, and need to be able to build something that results in higher quality, developer velocity, and will scale with your growth
  • You are creating a new product, and need to build an experience that will find product market fit. Quality attracts, so you don’t want use a stack that will hurt you from finding this fit, but if everything takes off like a rocket ship and you need to rewrite…. that is a win condition

The doom scenario that I am seeing far too often these days relates to the first scenario. A great business is in place, but technical debt has caught up to the team, and they want to take a chance to rewrite in a modern stack that will result in a beautiful PWA experience that will scale to all of their users use cases.

The new stack is assembled, and a small prototype is built against the legacy APIs. It works! Full steam ahead! Fast forward to the launch of the new version, and oops….. it’s kinda slow.

Lighthouse is run for audits, and WebPageTest shows you The Truth in The Trace, and the team has that sinking feeling. The good news is that there are some quick wins: some preconnect, prefetch, and preloads help the cause, images are squooshed, etc.

“There are 44 copies of Object.assign polyfills!”

— Default pit

But this isn’t enough. There’s just way too much JavaScript. Unfortunately, it really is far too easy to npm install yourself to large dependency chains that all bring in polyfills and just a ton of code. It’s time to go back to the drawing board, and see what needs to be re-architected. Just when you were ready to build off of the new base, you have to work on fixing the foundation, and you have that dreaded thought….. do we need to rewrite the rewrite?

This is when I start to tear up. All of that work, and you aren’t at the promised land at all.

How do you avoid this?

You need to start with a performance budget, and stick to it as you grow. Make sure your architecture scales as the app builds (e.g. each new page doesn’t add to a huge bundle that has to be loaded at once. Code split FTW).

Choose the right tools for the job. If you are a content site that averages 1.2 pages per user session (you know who you are 😉…. don’t load the entire world up front. Just show the content. Think about the areas of first load and separate that from subsequent loads. E.g. if you have more of an app, follow the Netflix pattern and have a super lean home / login that then loads up “the app” once there is time (users take time to read…. that’s great Idle time to do work!).

It’s never been a better time to build a web app that can scale to users across feature phones, smart phones, tablets, desktop, and more. If you hit the quality bar you have happy users coming to you from search and social…. and your loyal users will add you to their home screen, from the browser or store.

There is a lot we can do to make great experiences occur as more of a side effect of the toolboxes we have available, but even still: Run. Lighthouse. Early. And. Often. And then you will be set up to brag about your successful Monty Hall rewrite.

Want to learn more about getting started? Check out web.dev!

Almaer.com Reopens For Business

As the Web turns 30, I reflected on what made, and makes, it different and great, and this lead me to thinking about when Medium started. I really appreciated the approach-ability of the user experience, how it helps authors focus on content, and also helped people find an audience.

There was an option of hosting your medium content on your own domain, but that went away, which was the first moment I thought about bringing my content back to my own site.
As I see the simple clean article experience become one of pop-ups and up-sells and web vs. app differences, it was finally time to make the switch, and thus I am posting on blog.almaer.com as the canonical location, and will syndicate on Medium and elsewhere as appropriate.

It is shocking that it took me this long, to be honest, as your own domain is something quite special on the Web and Internet. For publishers, who aren’t just writing as a hobby as I do, it is a business model decision.

Although it obvious differs for different companies, I tend to be the biggest fan of the approach where:

  • By regularly creating great content, your loyal customers will subscribe directly, as they are investing not just in a one off article, but rather invest in future reporting.
  • Any time you syndicate content, you are using it as customer acquisition into the subscription business, and can of course monetize through advertising.

You have to go into this knowing that users may be trusting the aggregator and giving them subscription as the source for great future content.

Restaurants vs. Food Delivery

I liken this a little to restaurants and food delivery. If a punter comes to your restaurant, you own the entire experience. You are best set to make it great and build a loyal customer that you may even know by name over time.

If you have excess supply, maybe you want to be on DoorDash/Caviar/UberEats etc. These customers are browsing and may not feel like going out, and you have a chance to experience your wares. If you believe in the quality of your food, maybe they will be impressed and will want to come in. You don’t control the experience in the same way, and these customers may not be the type that wants to go to you directly, no matter the quality, so it is also important to acknowledge that (and how much you can make from the food itself…. akin to the ads). Maybe you make enough from the transactions that the extra reach is fully worth it. The restaurant could even become a showroom of sorts….. but this is a dangerous position to be in. How sticky are these diners to you?

Your own home on the Web, with your own domain, is your restaurant. Your loyal users want to hang out there with you. Those are the users that would like a high quality PWA. You can think through how to drive traffic to you, or how to get value from your content living in other experiences, but it feels good to see more people starting to really think about this…. and it was certainly time for me to make the switch, even for my lil old blog.

The right thing to do, is the right thing to do.