#web-dev

• Mon, Nov 10, 2025. XSLT is deprecated in Chrome. So the <script> tag in XML will become the new way of rendering RSS/Atom. This is one of the rare "break-the-web" changes from browsers. Simon Willison #html #web-dev

• Mon, Nov 10, 2025. WebPerl runs Perl in the browser via WebAssembly. Simon Willison #html #web-dev

• Sat, Oct 25, 2025. Before founding a place to do good, work in a place that does good and learn. Ben Werdmuller #best-practices #future #web-dev

• Fri, Aug 29, 2025. CloudFlare AutoRAG lets you index any website and expose it as an API + Chatbot with a model of your choice. This is available on the free tier, too. The API follows NLWeb, Microsoft's open standard for LLMs and MCPs to interact with websites in natural language. #cloud #code-agents #web-dev

• Tue, Aug 19, 2025. Gemini API includes a url_context tool to explicitly scrape websites. API #web-dev

• Sat, Aug 16, 2025. Browser Chat. Command line chat app to interact with the browser. Like Claude Code + Edge Copilot. #web-dev #very-hard
  • The user opens a page on Chrome/Edge with remote debugging enabled (http://localhost:9222/json)
  • On the command line, they run uv run llmform.py --dir ~/notes --dir ~/personal
  • This uses the DevTools to list the open tabs and allows the user to pick the tab to interact with. (They can change that, or pick multiple tabs) The user can also specify the tab name partially/fully on the command line.
  • The user provides a task, e.g. "Fill the form". If so, it reads the form fields in the tab. For each of the fields, it searches through the provided directories (--dir) for text content useful to fill the field, and fills it and prints a report of what was filled (with level of confidence and possible alternatives) and what was not.
  • The user can continue the chat on the CLI to suggest additional sources to provide answers, that the app uses to search / fill in answers.
  • The user can suggest replying to the emails on GMail using the local notes.
  • Or adding calendar entries on Google Calendar using a conference agenda from another tab. etc.

• Sun, Aug 10, 2025. CSS nesting can be used with media queries too! Julia Evans #html #web-dev

• Tue, Aug 5, 2025. defuddle can be used in the browser to get the main content from web pages. A replacement for Mozilla Readability. # #document-conversion #html #markdown #web-dev

• Mon, Jun 23, 2025. XConvert is a convenient online app to compress .webm videos. Not great design but fairly good compression. #document-conversion #web-dev

• Tue, Jun 10, 2025. Browserbee is a Chrome extension that lets you chat with your browser. Like Cursor/Windsurf but for browsing. #web-dev

• Wed, Jun 4, 2025. Web bench evaluates LLMs in web development. Claude Sonnet remains ahead. #github #html #llm-ops #web-dev

• Mon, Jun 2, 2025. DeepWiki creates docs for humans GitHub repos. Example. It's verbose, human-facing, and does not understand the nuances of context and implications. Context7 creates llms.txt for LLMs. Example. It's concise, example-oriented, and works only if there are code snippets relevant (e.g. API calls) that can be generated from the codebase. Like creating an llms.txt automatically, e.g. https://context7.com/textualize/textual/llms.txt #github #markdown #web-dev #ai-coding

• Mon, Apr 14, 2025. The dynamic between domain experts and coders has changed. Now, rather than domain experts pitching ideas to developers who build the apps, developers are creating interfaces that allow the domain experts to shape the app. Ref #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Thu, Apr 3, 2025. CSS Speech is a W3C spec that lets you control how screen readers should read pages. No browser support now, though. #html #speech-to-text #web-dev

• Tue, Mar 25, 2025. Cursor with Claude 3.7 Max seems surprisingly good at generating multi-page sites at one shot. Potentially, it can edit large repositories of code as well at one shot. If that's the case, the way we write code will require higher order thinking skills: broad sweeping changes rather than micro edits. #ai-coding #code-agents #dev #github #html #markdown #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Mon, Mar 24, 2025. I tried Open WebUI with its Knowledge feature. In short, it sucks. Due to the RAG technique as well as model quality. When I passed it my notes about Straive and asked who Straive's clients were: #chatgpt #web-dev
  • Open WebUI with Gemma 3 found one - after multiple attempts
  • ChatGPT with o3-mini-high got 5 (missing nothing.)
  • ChatGPT with GPT 4.5 got 4
  • Gemini with Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking got 3
  • Gemini with Gemini 2.0 Flash got 3 (with a 4th wrong answer)

• Sun, Mar 23, 2025. I've settled on squoosh.app for image compression using WebP. I'm exploring FreeImage.host for image hosting instead of Imgur for WEBP support. FreeImage.host also seems reliable, retains file sizes, and supports hotlinking. #hosting #image-generation #web-dev

• Sun, Mar 16, 2025. Monolith downloads web pages as a single HTML file by embedding content. #document-conversion #html #web-dev

• Sat, Mar 15, 2025. htmlq and pup query HTML. They're like jq for HTML. #github #html #markdown #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Sat, Mar 15, 2025. What makes client-side computing on the browser powerful is #cloud #html #server #web-dev
  • There's nothing to install
  • Private by default: data stays with client
  • Speed: no latency

• Sat, Mar 15, 2025. LibreOffice is now on WASM. ZetaJS provides office in the browser. Has a CDN (that was down from our IP). 35M packaged binary. 100M of in-memory file-system loaded. #document-conversion #html #markdown #web-dev
  • Useful for: Document conversion, Thumbnail generation, Text extraction, Merging / splitting documents

• Fri, Mar 14, 2025. For LLM UIs, Open Web UI seems most popular. Run via WEBUI_SECRET_KEY=... uvx --python 3.11 open-webui serve #llm-ops #web-dev Text generation Web UI is less so. KoboldAI, LMQL, LM Studio, GPT4All, etc are far behind.

• Fri, Mar 14, 2025. Apify is a cloud scraper platform. Here's how they optimize their AI Web agent - Source: #ai-coding #automation #code-agents #html #optimization #prompt-engineering #web-dev
  • Remove redundant tags and attributes (e.g. accessibility, etc.). Explore readability.
  • Add a unique gid to each element.
  • Add the screenshot WITH a "Set of Marks" - "SoM" (read research paper) highlighting important clickable elements.
  • Code output is brittle. Use tools / DSL - e.g. visit_url(url), click_element(text, gid, tagName), etc.

• Sun, Jan 26, 2025. A WebAssembly compiler that fits in a tweet deconstructs a piece of JS that creates a tiny WebAssembly calculator. It's a great walk-through of JavaScript compression tricks and how WebAssembly works. Simon Willison #html #web-dev #write

• Sat, Dec 21, 2024. What to use for hosting: ChatGPT #chatgpt #cloud #github #hosting #html #server #web-dev
  • GitHub Pages: Static websites, medium files
  • Cloudflare Pages: Static websites, global delivery
  • Vercel: Frontend frameworks (e.g. Next.js) with high DX and ISR, small files
  • Netlify: JAMstack projects, minimal back-end, moderate files
  • Glitch: Small static projects
  • Render: Full-stack apps requiring databases and server-side compute
  • Firebase Hosting: Small sites, limited large files
  • Archive.org: Public archival, large files
  • Google Drive: File sharing, large files
  • Dropbox: File sharing, moderate files
  • Cloudflare R2: Static assets, large file delivery

• Thu, Nov 28, 2024. HTMX focuses on HTML over JS. Like server responses being HTML snippets not JSON. But I need front-end over back-end. Client side apps. HTMX doesn't help much there, e.g. templating, or just plain JS code. #html #web-dev
  • htmx client side templates do can convert JSON to HTML.

• Mon, Nov 18, 2024. A HTML quine: A page that, when rendered as HTML, shows the HTML source code of the page! #github #html #web-dev

• Mon, Nov 18, 2024. HTML is all you need shows examples of using HTML for notebooks instead of Jupyter, Observable, etc. #html #markdown #web-dev

• Wed, Nov 6, 2024. WebContainers are a thing and Bolt.new uses them! #future #web-dev

• Fri, Oct 11, 2024. HTML for People is a nice introduction to HTML. #html #web-dev

• Sun, Apr 14, 2024. Browsers also natively support blurring and face tracking. via #web-dev

• Sun, Apr 14, 2024. W3C is exploring ways to allow web pages to train LLMs, to flag content as AI generated, etc. #future #html #web-dev

• Sun, Apr 14, 2024. Harpa.ai is a well designed Chrome extension / plugin that can chat with or automate any page. #web-dev

• Wed, Apr 3, 2024. CSS nesting is now available in browsers #html #web-dev

• Sat, Mar 30, 2024. TechEmpower web server benchmarks place Rust servers on top #hosting #prompt-engineering #server #web-dev

• Sun, Mar 3, 2024. Making a tool more usable, e.g. a video, can have a 10-100X impact. Yet every developer thinks it's redundant #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Sat, Mar 2, 2024. You can use slots to stream HTML out of order! #future #html #prompt-engineering #web-dev

• Fri, Feb 23, 2024. htmz is a fantastic way to load HTML into elements! #future #html #markdown #web-dev

• Sun, Jan 7, 2024. In-browser playgrounds has compiled WASM versions of Python, PHP, SQLite. #github #html #web-dev

• Fri, Jan 5, 2024. Gemini is an alternative to the Web. Sort of like Gopher, but recent #chatgpt #future #web-dev

• Sun, Dec 10, 2023. v0.dev creates web pages from code. Example. #dev #future #github #html #markdown #web-dev