Digital Dispatch #44
Hey there, and welcome back to DD! We’ve got an exciting lineup for you this week: diving into the latest from CSS Wrapped 2024, hot takes on Tailwind 4, writing modern JS without a Bundler, and more!
You’re Not Creating Enough Prototypes
Design systems are extremely powerful when it comes to quickly creating prototypes. In this article, David Darnes shares their personal experience of using design systems to create prototypes and the real benefits.
CSS Wrapped 2024
“2024 has been another amazing year for CSS” said the Chrome Dev team, and they’re not wrong. We can finally animate to height: auto, we can style <details> into accordions, we can have scroll-driven animations, we can position items next to each other easily with anchor positioning, and so much more. If you’re into CSS and the web in general, and if you could only read one article on the topic, let this be it.
Thoughts on Tailwind 4
Tailwind 4 is around the corner—the team released v4 beta just recently—with a ton of new features and exciting changes. In this article, Naman Goel goes through some of the most controversial ones and shares their opinions (and sometimes, concerns) for each.
Next-level frosted glass with backdrop-filter
You might be familiar with using CSS’s backdrop-filter to create a frosted glass effect, but did you notice that the effect almost always lacks one or two crucial details? Let’s see what they are and how to create the slickest, most realistic frosted glass effect ever.
Advent of TypeScript
Just like any advent calendar, Advent of TypeScript is a set of 25 TypeScript challenges, one for each of the first 25 days of December. Are you a TypeScript wizard (and if yes, who hurt you)?
React v19 is now stable
React 19 comes with new features like new hooks, form actions, ref as a prop, a use() API to work with promises, native support for document metadata no matter how far you are up the component tree, and many other cool stuff. It also comes with some breaking changes, but breakages are normal in the JavaScript world anyway so we won’t talk about them here.
Why TanStack Start is Ditching Adapters
As a framework user, you can just deploy your JavaScript full-stack powered-by-[X] app using a service like Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages. You might not be aware, however, that for this to happen the frameworks sometimes need specific “adapters” for these services. In this article, TanStack Start’s author Tanner Linsley explains why he’s ditching adapters and what his framework opts to use instead.
Writing Modern JavaScript without a Bundler
Modern web development enables us to move faster, ship fewer bugs, and make great web apps. This article is for those times when you just want some quick prototyping without the hassle of a bundler. You know, just like those times when you want to hand-wash the clothes instead of using the washing machine (read: never).
Don't Look Down on Print Debugging
Print debugging is often looked down on as an unsophisticated way of debugging issues with your software. In this article, the author argues that you shouldn’t dismiss it outright as it has some advantages.
Harper – The Grammar Checker for Developers
Describing itself as an open-source alternative to Grammarly, Harper is designed to be memory-friendly, fast, private, and completely free. You can use it as a language server and through Web Assembly, and there are integrations for Visual Studio Code, NeoVim, Zed, and Obsidian. Mini fun fact: it’s named after Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mocking Bird.
Silicon Valley is trying to fix climate change with balloons. But will it work?
Two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs came up with the idea of sending sulfur dioxide balloons high up in the atmosphere. When it reacts with water, sulfur dioxide will form a haze of tiny droplets of sulfuric acid, which reflects sunlight, and voilà: no sunlight, no climate change. Will it work, though? Remains to be seen.
Phan fact
Marie Curie was not the only prominent female scientist of her era. Lise Meitner, an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist, made groundbreaking contributions to the discovery of nuclear fission and co-discovered protactinium. However, while Curie received two Nobel Prizes, Meitner was often overshadowed. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize 49 times —19 for Chemistry and 30 for Physics—but never won.