Transcript

[Banjo music]

MANTRA: Just Build Websites!

Dave Rupert: [fanfare trumpet announcement] Ta-da! Episode 600! Here there, Shop-o-maniacs.

Chris Coyier: Oh!

Dave: I'm Dave Rupert and with me is Chris Coyier! Hey, Chris!

Chris: Hey! I woke up, did 600 sit-ups.

Dave: Six hundred pushups.

Chris: Took 600 shots.

Dave: Six hundred shots.

[Laughter]

Dave: Can you believe you've been staring at my dumb face for 600 weeks in a row?

[Laughter]

Chris: Sure can't.

Dave: Oh, man. That's a lot.

Chris: It doesn't feel... It doesn't feel any different, though, does it? It feels just... But 12 flippin' years. You know the math, if you just... you know just round off a year to 50. You know?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Fifty. Fifty.

Dave: That's about--

Chris: Five times twelve.

Dave: With a Christmas in there, and we've missed one show, I think, in the whole entire fricken' time.

Chris: Yeah, pretty much.

Dave: And we also don't record super far ahead. Maybe the most is like three weeks - or something - we've ever done.

Chris: Most ever? And that's been a while.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, we are. We're just a couple of days before you're listening to this, which I kind of prefer because we do news-ish sometimes.

This show will not be the news. I think it might slip out here and there just because it's fun to connect things to current events sometimes, but yeah. Dave had a great idea here.

Twelve, we're 12 flipping years into this.

00:01:41

Dave: [Echoing] 2036....

Chris: Yeah, now we're going to imagine what life is like in that year, which it just blows my mind a little bit. There is some chance we're doing this show. I don't know.

There's every chance we're still working - like suckers.

Dave: [Laughter] Not me. My plan--

Chris: No, you're out?

Dave: My plan, yeah. I don't know. Sell a kidney. Buy a Ferrari. That's it.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: That's my plan, man. That's the plan.

Chris: [Laughter] That's pretty good... pretty good. So, that's Dave's plan. That's his prediction is that he's not even quite sure if there is a Web. [Laughter]

Dave: Nope. No Internet.

Chris: There could or couldn't, but Dave won't know.

Dave: Just kidney shops on every corner.

[Laughter]

Dave: I'm just kidding. No.

Chris: Yeah, but for the rest of us who might be using our keyboard still, will there even be keyboards?!

Dave: Ooh...

Chris: In the year 2036. We're doubling it. We've been on the air 12 years. Let's double it. What's the Web like in 12 years from now? That year is 2036.

We asked. We asked on Mastodon. We asked in Discord. We asked on this show. Lots of you wrote in, replied, did stuff, wrote blog posts.

We're actually going to open with a blog post from Sam Beil who has a nice Berkshire-mode kind of website. Just a little Times New Roman. Looking good, Sam. I like it.

Dave: Fast.

Chris: It's probably the fastest-loading website in the world.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: He wrote up 12 predictions. In a lot of cases, we did get lots of multiple predictions from people. We'll probably not go through everybody's entire list (for the sake of time), but pluck and choose some really good ones from people. And I really appreciate when people did a blog post. I love blogs. They're the best.

Dave: Love blogs. Never getting tired of people blogging.

Chris: Yeah. The word is cheesy, but it's like you wrote some stuff down and you put it at a URL. Whatever you want to call that is fine with me.

00:03:46

Chris: His number one prediction, I love. "The rollback of cookie banners. Cookie banners are a mistake. We all know it. Let's do the right thing next time." Oh, I so hope you're right, Sam.

Dave: I need this to happen. It's so bad. It's atrocious.

Chris: Truly. It doesn't do any of what it was supposed to do. What do you think about civil disobedience here? Bad plan? Can they be rolled back through the power of the people or is it too risky?

Dave: I mean maybe. I think all it takes is a browser that ships a cookie banner killer by default.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Which I think Arc does.

Chris: Are you listening, Arc? Yeah.

Dave: With U-block origin has that, actually, which they ship with.

Chris: Mm-hmm. I know Ghostery has some in, too, to attempt to fight them.

Dave: But I mean it's just kind of like it is -- What is the Cory Doctorow word? -- enshittified the Web.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: And so, we need to roll that back. I hope that happens. It would take all of Europe getting its crap together, and that seems less [laughter] likely. But you know, to roll back GDPR.

00:05:03

Chris: Here's a wild card, "The return of undo. Do you remember the Ctrl/Cmd+Z keyboard shortcut from desktop apps? You’ll be able to enjoy it in most of the web apps you use, too. Even outside of text fields."

They do work in text fields if you type some stuff and hit Cmd+Z. There's some kind of metric for how much of that it's going to kind of roll back, so it works a little bit on the Web. But if you perform actions, drag things around, click things, open things, close things, whatever, there's every chance it doesn't work on the Web.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: And it could. If developers decided to code that in, that could work. I famously remember Redux, the state library that shipped with React--

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: --because of its kind of immutability of dispatching actions that it became easier in that kind of context. Kind of interesting.

Dave: You could scrub back (right) the whole state.

Chris: Yeah, you could. Yeah. It was just kind of a side effect. They built it into the dev tools for it, and it was neat to see. I didn't use it all the time. But if you were building that actual feature, you could.

I also think of my app, Git Tower, which it was not that long ago they shipped it for that app, which is a desktop app, not a Web app. But it meant that whatever you did in Git, you could roll back. Like if you committed some files you didn't mean to, you could Cmd+Z and it would uncommit them. So, rather than learning the Git command to uncommit them, they built in the reversal of stuff with the Cmd+Z function, which I thought was pretty cool. High five to them.

Dave: How far does this go? I follow somebody on Mastodon. Can I go, "Oh, Cmd+Z, undo that"? Do you think that would do what you think?

I think of shake to undo. I do that on the iPhone every time I get. [Laughter]

Chris: Mm-hmm. I only do it when it doesn't work.

Dave: Oh, yeah.

Chris: It pisses me off.

Dave: I'm pretty good at... yeah. I just always try it. I'm like, "Does this work?"

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: I'm just going to shake my phone angrily like a 70-year-old man and see if it undoes something. But sometimes it does, and it does the right thing.

I'd be curious. Yeah, shake to unfollow or something like that. [Laughter]

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Now I'm getting... Go to somebody's profile and shake it.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: And then it just sends them a buzz in their pocket. [Laughter]

Chris: Uh-huh. That reminds me. I used some analytic software one time that would specifically alert you to sessions where they did something obviously kind of angrily or frustratedly.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: I think they called it "rage click," or something.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: You'd click 12 times. It'd be like, "You should look at that user because they're pissed at you." [Laughter]

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: For some reason, I thought that was clever.

00:07:54

Chris: Sam also mentions no new passwords. There weren't a lot of people that talked about passkeys or anything like that, but I think a lot of us would freakin' love that because they are nice.

Dave: Now that passkeys is out and I'm starting to see it, like, "Hey, do you want to use a passkey?" I see that more and more often.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: I think it's just a matter of time before that flips. That would be really cool.

Chris: Gets better. Yeah, it sure would. I could see some spring cleaning in the next couple of years of apps. I think we'll just do that as a little sprint.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Reducing login friction is good for stuff like churn and sign-ups and stuff like that. It's just kind of a free way to turn the numbers up a little bit on your app, and I could see people doing that.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

00:08:40

Chris: Twelve predictions in Sam's post. We'll link to that, of course. There are some technology picks in there, too. Those are a little more straightforward, I think, but those are fun to think about, isn't it?

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: These are just predictions, so they're just predictions, but I'm going to tell you React is not going to be the king in 12 years.

Dave: Yeah!

Chris: It's already starting to fade from social graces a little bit. In 12 years, it definitely won't be. [Laughter] To pick what will be now, I think, is also foolhardy.

Dave: I mean if you can, you're rich.

[Laughter]

Dave: But yeah, it's funny. Yeah, he has Svelte won't become the new React - won't become - and it's going to be better that way in the sense of, like, Svelte can do its own thing.

If React does diminish, then the pressure to be a React clone goes down. You can be your own thing at some point.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: Deno is going to replace Node. I like that. I like that because it's very bullish. It's very, like... It's a line in the sand. I can respond to it.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave: Deno is doing some cool stuff.

Chris: We'll see.

Dave: I'm curious.

Chris: I do like thinking about the runtimes thing. It makes me think about, so Mozilla is doomed, right? I feel like the writing has been on the wall for a long time. They already exist upon the teat of other companies - or whatever.

Dave: They... Did you read the blog post this last week?

Chris: What'd it say? That's not true?

Dave: Uh... We're in trouble. [Laughter] No, it just basically said, like, "Hey, it's really hard to keep up with other browsers." I forget who had made that sentiment on Twitter, but it was just the idea that the cost of building a new browser is so high because there are so many features.

Chris: Right.

Dave: And Chrome is shipping so many things into production. It is so incredibly expensive to be a competitor browser.

Chris: Well, it also is when every business choice you make is like, "We're going to get into the fediverse. Can we form a team around that?" Or should you have taken that money, time, and effort to compete in this race with browsers?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: I don't know. Not that I know the right answer business-wise, but they took browser people and they fired them. So, you can't just do that and then, in the next minute, say, "It's hard to make browsers." Well, you need the people that make browsers to make browsers, so--

00:11:18

Dave: Yeah. Do you think--? Chris, maybe somebody already mentioned this, but do you think we have Firefox in 12 years?

Chris: No.

Dave: No?

Chris: No way.

Dave: Yeah, I think it's a Chrome thing. I bet it's Chrome.

Chris: Yeah, but Apple won't give up either. They're too bullish, so it'll be Google versus Apple for a long time.

But what could be nice, though, is if runtimes didn't stop... there stopped being so many runtimes and that somebody just kind of won. And it looks like... you know how - whatever - Cloudflare workers is V8. V8 is just part of an open-source thing. I kind of prefer that. Can we evolve one good runtime and put that runtime lots of places?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: That would be cool city. I don't like thinking about, "What's the difference between Deno and Node? Oh, I see." Imports are slightly different - or whatever.

Dave: Right. Right.

Chris: I don't want to think about that. I want to be like the master runtime is everywhere and I use it.

00:12:18

Dave: That was a good post. Definitely, go check out Sam's post. Justin Peacock, he came full circle and asked ChatGPT--

[Laughter]

Dave: --what's going to happen in 12 years.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: ChatGPT did its ChatGPT thing. We're not going to read the whole thing.

Chris: Pretty positive, I'd say. It was a chipper ChatGPT that day. I think it's funny because I was so nervous that this was low-effort podcasting to have everybody else do the work, and Justin is like, "I will also do--"

[Laughter]

Dave: I will match your low effort.

Chris: Yeah. [Laughter]

Dave: And raise you one. The first one, of course, is Advanced AI Integration. Of course, the AI is going to have you start thinking about advanced AI integration.

Chris: Sure. It thinks websites will be more personalized. Yeah, through AI. Is that right? Why is...? Hmm...

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Maybe.

Dave: What do we got? We got some ultrafast loading speeds. [Laughter]

Chris: Yeah. That was my favorite, only because I'm imagining it being trained on blog posts on Sprint.com and T-Mobile and stuff.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Saying, like, "5G is here! 6G is coming! It will be so fast. It's like a Lamborghini of networks!" You know?

There's just lots of text out there talking about how fast networks are. Probably a lot less text looking at data and showing how slow crap actually is. So, of course, a LLM is going to be like, "Yeah! The future is fast, buddy!"

Dave: Right. Right.

Chris: So much crap reads like that. That's reductive, so still.

Dave: Right.

Chris: But of course, it thinks it's going to be fast. It's not telling you... Nothing on this list is telling you how much worse the Web is going to be.

Dave: It's kind of funny how you just say, "Blazing fast," enough, and then the AI is going to be like, "Yeah!"

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: "Blazing fast!"

Chris: Blazing fast, that's it.

Dave: Ultra-fast, even. Yeah.

00:14:11

Chris: Mm-hmm. There's a lot of positivity. At least, I saw several things in our grand list about how accessibility will be kind of solved. I'm like, there is no evidence of that. Not that I want that to be true. I know for sure you don't. You're more dedicated to it than I've ever seen you.

It just doesn't seem like... Why would an LLM think that accessibility is just going to be better all of a sudden?

Dave: Well, yeah. I think it's just, "That would be cool," is kind of the idea. There has to be a move towards it, and maybe there's an idea of... I'm not saying the LLM thought of this. It just autocompleted its way to victory.

But there's maybe an argument browsers - or something - could maybe start fixing websites for you (given enough power). I don't think that's good or happens and overlays are bad. But I think looking in the 12-year timespan, that could be true. I don't know. But that would be hard to surmise.

Chris: I would hope so. I would hope so, and in the same way that a large language model can look at tons and tons and tons of text and then output stuff that is useful, for sure.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: But it could learn from lots and lots and lots of websites and what people do on those websites and then help people that need help use them.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: They're like, "Ooh, I see this label isn't... This input isn't labeled, but I just know what it is because I'm trained on every website in the world. So, I'm going to help you do it," even though the developer dorked it up.

Dave: I think, yeah, I feel like if you could just be like, "Hey, browser. I'm red-green color blind. Can you just fix it? Any site I go to, can you fix it for me?" It could go, "Oh, yeah. I'll figure that out." That would be cool, but I don't know if it's going to happen.

00:16:11

Dave: The last one on Justin's list was blockchain integration. Chris, tell me your large language model trained on 2022 data without telling me your large language model trained on 2022 data.

Chris: I just get so angry at stuff like this.

Dave: Wee...

Chris: What is it then? Show me one use case. That's always been my talking point (I think I've mentioned on this show). I just want to see it. I'm not a dummy.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Show me a use case where a blockchain-integrated website is better than one that isn't - or something. Just a use case that some dummy like me can understand.

And then I'm looking at that and then be like, "See. I'm holding both of those two websites in my hand. I can see how the other one is better."

Dave: International crime, Chris. [Laughter]

Chris: Show me. Yeah. Crime is way better. Yeah.

Dave: Doing crimes.

Chris: It's crimes that you don't get in trouble doing. [Laughter]

Dave: Simple. Why did no one think of this? This is an innovation.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Idiots.

Dave: Dummies.

00:17:13

Chris: All right. Good-bye, ChatGPT. We'll ask more language models. You know I use Bard more just because I'm always logged into the Google machine. So, I tend to go to websites where I know I'm going to be logged in.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Where if I go to OpenAI, I don't use it enough that--

Dave: Your session is good? Yeah.

Chris: --I'll probably have to log in, and then I'll have to re-navigate to where I'm going to go. I'll probably have to use the little dropdown menu to pick GPT-4 instead. I'm like, whatever. Bard just is sitting there and it works.

Dave: Yeah. I don't really use it at all. I don't know. I could probably start using it. I used Notion's AI a few times but Notion's AI is now annoying me enough I installed Obsidian.

[Laughter]

Chris: Oh...

Dave: I'm considering a jump. Sorry, Notion. Thank you for sponsoring the show.

It was the annoyance. It was just like... I just sort of need to write this. I don't need to have things suggested at me. That was kind of the frustration I was experiencing.

Chris: Tell me about it.

00:18:12

Dave: Yeah, I don't use AI that much. There was that little device, the Rabbit R1 or something that people were talking about. Teenage Engineering designed it. MKBHD reviewed it.

Chris: Did they design it? They do amazing designs. Yeah, it was funny because everybody bought it and nobody even really knows what it does yet. [Laughter]

Dave: Yeah. To me, it was interesting because it looked like a Pokadex, like in Pokemon, like, "What Pokemon is this?" "That's Pikachu. It has lightning attacks."

That would be cool. That would be cool if I was that curious, Chris. You know what I mean? Like, "Oh, man. What's that in my yard?" Beep-boop-beep. "It's a squirrel." "Oh, wow! That's cool!" [Laughter] It's like, "That's a North American gray squirrel."

Chris: It is looking? Does it have a camera on it?

Dave: It has a little cam, yeah, so it can do an image recognition.

Chris: I like that. Even better would be like, "I'm watching and you're not."

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Like, "Ooh..." or if all of a sudden... I wouldn't even be mad if a computer was like, "Dave. Dude, there's a fox in your yard. Go look." You know?

Dave: See, that would be cool.

Chris: "Hey, thanks."

Dave: That would be cool because - whatever - I've got cameras pointed at my house or yard. Or if my security camera would be like, "Hey, dude. Watch this video of these raccoons getting into your trash cans. This was cool. It's kind of cool." You know? Wouldn't that be cool? That would be cool. Let me have that feature.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: Anyway--

Chris: Right. But even more contextual, too, like, "Hey, Dave. Most people don't like raccoons in their garbage, so here are five known strategies."

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: "Here's a link to a strap that you can put over the top of your garbage cans to make sure it doesn't fall over."

Dave: Wouldn't that be cool?

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave: Wouldn't that be?

00:20:07

Chris: Maybe that was part of it. Wasn't the Rabbit thing supposed to be able to use bots or something, too?

Dave: Yeah, so it would be like, "Hey, Rabbit. Get me an Uber to the airport," or something like that. It would go hit Uber's APIs, bill you, and come back and say, "It's on its way." So, you didn't have to open up Uber. You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to go through the UI manually. They have a large action model.

Chris: I notice nobody is advocating for AI-specific APIs, like, "Design your API such that an AI will be easy to use." You know?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: If anything, I think people don't want to do that. They want the AI to just use whatever you'd built for anything else.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: That certainly would be more convenient. But yeah, it might be the time to start advocating for, like, "Can an AI not use my API, please?" You know that robots.txt kind of thing.

Dave: Right.

Chris: Is there a robots.txt for don't touch my API, please?

Dave: Yeah, I don't know. I think if you want to be... I think it would be cool. It has Uber, but can I get Lyft because I like Lyft; I don't like Uber, the company? How do I do that? How does that work? I don't know.

Chris: Hmm...

00:21:27

[Banjo music starts]

Chris: This episode of ShopTalk Show is brought to you in part by Jam. That's jam.dev. Awesome URL. Go to jam.dev/shop.

It's a really clever bug-reporting tool, and it's for internally on teams. Imagine you're in Slack with a fellow developer and they send you a thing, like, "Oh, on the item page, that's broken," or something.

I'm super guilty of sending this to people I work with. Just thinking in my head, like, "Oh, well, just go to the item page and look. Then you'll see the error, too, if you're on my branch or you've pulled master or whatever."

But maybe they don't see it. That's not enough information. What if it was effortless to still be that lazy but also give that other developer all the information they could need to make sure that they can reproduce that bug because it's just as easy as taking a screenshot?

If you see the bug, and it's visual in some way, which that's my job in the world, you drag a screenshot over it in the browser, and then you can optionally annotate it, like point at it or write something if you need to or whatever. But you don't even have to do that. By virtue of you having done it in the browser, you get all this additional information, like all the console output is there.

If there's an error in the console, which is highly likely in a JavaScript application, they'll see that (without you having to remember to screenshot that or copy and paste it or whatever), and the network requests, and all the information about the browser that you are in at the moment, and version, and on what operating system and device, and all that stuff. Reproduction steps. You can add comments to it, too.

But what you have to do is just take a screenshot quick and be like, "This is a bug." Effortlessly small. What a clever product. Then that becomes the bug report. Check it all out at jam.dev/shop. I love it!

[Banjo music stops]

00:23:29

Chris: Okay. Hector here responded on Mastodon to our plea for the future. A real short one. HTML and CSS.

Dave: Gold star, Hector.

Chris: Don't doubt it, actually. It hasn't changed in a very, very long time. There doesn't seem to be technologies that are really threatening it at the moment. Definitely not a styling language that's trying to give CSS a run for its money - not even close. So, I just don't doubt that it'll be around in some characteristic.

Now, if a lot of stuff changes, it can still come along for the ride.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: You know? I just don't see it being like, "Oh, that technology was specific to--" Even, I mean, screens, yeah, but... Sure. I guess if screens went away, it would be less useful.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: But it's kind of for designing what stuff looks like. Probably going to stick around.

Dave: You know what's funny is I think about 12 years ago, right?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: The state of CSS was pretty bad. Ther was some WebKit animations going on. Those were fun. But they were WebKit only.

There was some... We were all struggling how to figure out... figuring out how responsive design worked. That was kind of what was going on.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: Twelve years ago CSS and this year's CSS are radically different, man. Stuff is dropping in the browser every year through interop work. You're not waiting around 17 years for features now. Things are happening super-fast or, I guess, coordinated would be the right term.

A big difference in CSS in the last 12 years. So, if we can continue that moment and keep going forward--

Chris: Yeah. It's clearly capable of change.

Dave: I guess 12 years ago was CSS 3, I guess. Maybe it was kind of a hot one 12 years ago. But then there was a big dearth in between.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I do actually think so, though. It feels weird to be like, "Oh, those are antiquated languages." But they're not really.

Dave: Yeah. I hope HTML picks up as fast as [laughter] CSS did. It gets more....

Chris: Yeah, that's tricky. I do like the idea that it's the slowest to move on purpose, but that doesn't mean never move.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: It's so funny when it does. It's such big news, like, "HTML gets a search element." It's like the chillest change ever.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: It's just like a div that has a role on it, essentially. That's all it is.

Dave: You can add a name attribute to details and now it's an accordion.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: It's like, "What?!"

[Laughter]

Chris: Then the blog posts are like, "That's a bad pattern, though, actually."

Dave: That's awful. Take it out.

Chris: I don't disagree.

Dave: HTML has failed.

Chris: Yeah. [Laughter]

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: People are productive.

Dave: To be fair. Maybe. Yeah.

00:26:34

Chris: Well, have we even mentioned the VR/AR thing yet? I don't think we have.

Dave: We haven't. We've got a few people who wrote in about augmented reality.

Chris: It just so happens that it's the news of the day as well because of the Apple device dropping. Apple has a way of stealing news cycles like that, don't they? They're certainly not first-to-market with any of this stuff. But now their very expensive device is dropping.

Now, will it even be around in 12 years? I mean today's news is usually not a good... is not particularly suitable for thinking that far ahead. But it feels like futuristic.

Dave: Yeah. As somebody who wears glasses on my face every fricken' day, sure. Give me something that kind of spices that up. Give me a health meter [laughter] so I can see how many hearts I have left in the day.

Chris: Yeah?

Dave: That's what I want. Turn my life into a video game.

Chris: I feel like also... Part of me feels like such a dork wearing it, but we just went through a couple of years where we changed the social norms of what's okay to be on your face. I mean it became absolutely required to be wearing a mask for a while to slow down the spread of the god-darn pandemic. That was weird for a while and then became very not weird.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris: It was just expected and normal. And there is maybe possibly a world in which wearing a dumb thing on your face is normal.

00:28:02

Dave: Well, have you seen teenagers lately, Chris? Have you seen teenagers?

Chris: [Laughter] I haven't. Not a lot of teens in my life.

Dave: They all wear headphones. They're all just walking around with headphones all the time: restaurants, parks, school.

Chris: Yeah?

Dave: They've got big, bulky headphones on.

Chris: What are the social norms, though? They don't fly airplanes, for example. I always feel bad for stewardesses when they've got to come by and, like, wave at you for you to remove your headphones. Then you talk to them.

Dave: Right. When I was a kid, I would wear headphones, but it was like two little sticks with Sharp speakers on the end. You know? [Laughter]

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. [Laughter]

Dave: Covered in foam. But it wasn't like this isolated world. But these kids just wear them all the time. I would have to take them off to talk to people. Kids just wear them all the time.

But anyway, it's really interesting to me just how that... And it's just normal for them. And I'm like, if I saw adults wearing headphones this much, I would be like, "What's up? What's going on? Are you into podcasts? What's going on?" [Laughter]

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You wonder where the value is. That's the question everybody is asking, right? Is this going to change everything because there's some extreme amount of value that it delivers?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: It could happen. We just don't know yet. Is gaming actually going to do it? I don't know. It doesn't seem to have done it so far. But still, you can imagine that entertainment of some kind is a major reason to wear this thing.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Is it because it turns your small physical space into feeling like it's much larger because of the trickery it's doing with your eyes? Does it make you more productive in some way? Does it feel more connected to other human beings in some way that's important to you? It's just yet to be proven.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: We'll have to know, but the Web could be a big part of it. I mean we're asking. Did we specifically say the Web? Maybe it was just implied because of this show.

Dave: Maybe. Yeah.

00:30:01

Chris: Not to connect it too much to the news of the day, but here I go again. We've seen there was a little news cycle about companies kind of refusing to build apps specifically for it for the launch. Clearly meaning, like, "We just can't prioritize this right now." You know? "I'm not going to build an app for the 30 rich people."

Dave: For 12 people, yeah.

Chris: "To buy this thing."

Dave: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Apple feeling kind of salty about it - or whatever. But to me, it makes the Web feel more valuable in a weird sense in kind of, I don't want to build an app just for this. That's kind of the point of the Web. It's always resisted that. It's like, you should build on the Web and other things should support websites. If you're going to do anything, offer specific APIs to that thing that you help bring to the Web - or something.

I don't want to build an app just for this. I want to build a website.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: And the website should work great in it. I guess we should read what people actually had to say.

Dave: Yeah, so we got some responses. We're actually going to go step into the future and have--

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: --and AI read it here just so we aren't... you don't get tired of our voices. But anyway, that's going to be our wonderful editor Chris Enns making that happen.

Chris Silverman, a very talented artist over on Mastodon, wrote in and said--"

00:31:19

AI Chris Silverman: I'm wondering if spatial design will be more of a thing. I don't mean 3D or VR since I think the virtual rooms thing is a gimmick more than anything else. I'm imaging designs where elements could be pulled off a page and moved into the surrounding space, like a webpage, except it's a collection of objects that could be detached and examined and browsed individually. The iPhone played a major role in responsive design. Maybe the vision does something similar for spatial.

Chris: Hmm... I'm onboard with Chris. I think there is something there.

Dave: I think that's very astute. In AR, space is free, right? I guess you have space, but for me to add more monitors, it costs money. For me to add more real estate, phone real estate to my phone costs money, big amounts of money.

Not with a virtual computer. You know what I mean? A fully AR, immersive computing environment.

Chris: Hmm...

Dave: I can put a monitor anywhere in my room. It's very interesting. How you visualize something doesn't have to be a tree view of a GitHub repo. It could be a fully exploded look at your codebase and you walk through and touch the file you want to work on.

Chris: There are some obvious advantages to that that is cool. Yeah. There's not a big sheet of glass in your room that you have to mount and take care of and wipe down. It's just on your face. It's still a piece of glass. It's just a little smaller.

Dave: If you sneeze, it's just going right into your room. It's not going on your monitor.

Chris: Yeah. [Laughter]

Dave: It's going... [Laughter]

00:33:02

Chris: That's on the list of advantages, for sure. What I like about Chris's idea here is that I think of e-commerce, for sure. I'm not going to buy something based on your blurry JPEG - or whatever. [Laughter] I want to see a 3D model of it. There'll be some way to take a real object that exists and scan it in quick and send it over to me through the Web.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Now I have the model, and I'm looking at your object in great detail. I'm about to buy an audio interface. I can see the ports on the back. I can feel what it weighs, see what the color is exactly - that kind of thing. I can imagine a future in which they look back at our time and be like, "You just bought stuff? How did you buy stuff? You didn't even look at it before you bought it?"

Dave: You ordered it online, and then you returned it because it didn't fit?

Chris: Yeah. [Laughter] Yeah.

Dave: Weird. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. On the same AI or, sorry, AR line, Andrew from the D-d-d-d-discord writes in.

00:34:13

AI Andrew: My first thought is that for sure there will be at least one new device renaissance akin to the iPhone, and I guess VR/AR must be it, maybe. And I think that alone will have so much impact on where and how the Web is used and also developed.

So, my first insight is get good at three.js now. Wrap your head around 3D basic scenes, objects. Physics dusts off 3js-journey.com. I think front-end could definitely see that realm of UI become a commonplace we are all visually developing in.

Chris: Yeah, so producing these models that exist in VR/AR because, yes, you can look at 2D stuff in there. I think that's maybe what the Apple Vision Pro is teaching us, though, is that 2D in 3D is still cool.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: While we await for more 3D.

Dave: Well, I think that as 3D... If 3D becomes cool, people are going to start putting 3D on their websites. Then you're going to look like all 2D. It's going to be like the color problem. You've got your basic RGB color profile. You're not P3 over here.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: I think the same thing will be like 2D-3D, maybe.

Chris: I do think that's going to be around to some degree. It would seem weird to me if, in 12 years, it just disappeared. Wouldn't it? We had a weird little flirtation with VR/AR, and then we just dropped it. No, that doesn't seem... that doesn't seem right.

I'm cool with dropping blockchain. [Laughter] This is more likely. It seems more likely we'll have headsets on of some sort. God, it'd be sure cool if they'd look just like the glasses you're wearing right now, though. Wouldn't it? That would be better.

Dave: Yeah. It would be cool if they just said, "Hey, people with glasses, maybe you can just have super glasses."

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: Not sunglasses, which I can't wear with my normal glasses.

Chris: And we know that it just changes a lot because it's changing input modalities and that's when the Web changes the most, right? When tap came around - or whatever - not having a mouse, not having a physical keyboard, that was a big deal for the Web. We had to think about that quite a bit.

Now if it changes again because you still don't have those devices but you are pinching things, you're looking at things and blinking and stuff, now we've changed input modalities again and that will have an influence on the Web, surely.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah, the look and pinch stuff on the Apple demo video they put out was kind of the most, like, "Ooh... Do I like--? How is that?" That's interesting because you don't have to pinch the actual thing. You can just pinch in your lap and it's like, "Yeah, I knew what you were looking at." Very interesting.

00:37:07

Chris: The way that people interact with their tech, there's a lot more talking already.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: There are a lot of people (of all ages, new adopters and old) that talk to their phones. They talk their text. They ask questions with their voice. They issue commands and that kind of thing.

That is very likely to exist in all forms. You do it at home. You do it on your phone. And you're probably likely to do it on the thing on your head, too. That's from Jose.

Dave: Yeah. Jose, over on Mastodon, wrote in and said, "More interactions with voice, apparently." And I thought that was probably true.

Chris: Probably.

Dave: If we're heading into augmented computing.

Chris: It feels very natural when it's a good job. There's uncanny valley stuff involved. When it does a bad job, I feel like it makes people just hate it. You're like, "That's not what I meant at all. Why aren't you understanding? I never want to use this thing again."

But when it works really flawlessly and you don't even have to think about it, you don't have to activate it, potentially, you can see that world being very natural. It's a sci-fi thing, you know, spacemen walking around a spaceship just effortlessly interacting with the ship's intelligence.

Dave: Right. I guess, yeah, the goal is to get there. In the idea of new tech, we have a bunch of entries, and we could probably just rapid-fire through them. Does that sound good? Just tell me when to stop, but we'll--

Chris: Please. Please. Yeah.

00:38:41

Dave: Okay. We've got Ian Tindale who writes in.

AI Ian Tindale HTML 5 will be thrown out because it is now purely the tool of app capitalism. CSS will rot in complexity that no one person understands. There'll be no JavaScript. Nobody trusts it or likes it anymore.

Everything will be HyperFlex ML-7 only based on SVG2 plus XHTML2, but don't look it up. It doesn't exist. I just made it up for the purposes of this post.

Dave: I think Ian's got a negative outlook on life.

[Laughter]

Dave: But you know... I think the idea that it's complex and no one trusts it, maybe that has some legs.

Chris: That's funny. It would be. The most out-there stuff that we didn't really get is maybe there is a literal new technology that renders interactive experiences that we use. Nobody really wanted to say that.

Dave: Hmm... Yeah.

Chris: I feel like there are little baby pushes towards it with stuff like Flutter or whatever that wrote to Canvas and stuff. And it had its own new syntax of how things worked that was not really based on HTML or CSS. It could happen.

Dave: I've been looking at working on this C++ UI library. I'm trying to fix something for some people.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Fix some accessibility bugs. I wanted to apologize to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript because--

Chris: [Laughter]

Dave: --it is way better. This stuff is a mess, dude. That world is way bad or just hard. They're doing backflips to try to get cross-environment rendering, and the Web has solved it. Anyway, think about that.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Gaz Shaw writes in, "Servers on hoverboards!"

Chris: That seems obvious. You know?

Dave: I mean, yes. Duh! Yeah. Duh. Mayank, I'm going to go with Mayank.

Chris: We know you. We love you.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Great writer.

Dave: Wonderful writing.

Chris: It's an excellent blog post this year.

Dave: Mayank writes in.

00:40:44

AI Mayank: PWAs might be more common. iOS will allow other browser engines. React will still be around. Maybe with Web component support, finally. And this list on htmlhell.com will hopefully be shorter.

Chris: PWAs, maybe. What I like about that is a broadening of "build once, run everywhere."

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Which I'm not talking about these apps that are like, "Build a website and then we'll compile it to native apps," thus that it runs on Android and iOS "natively," and stuff. There are some... People did some great effort there and I like that those things exist. But I mean build once as a website, run everywhere as a website.

Dave: Two situations. My daughter has an alarm clock from China. I had to install an app to make the alarm clock work. Yikes. This stinks. And so, if she wants to turn the alarm on and off, I have to use the app to turn the alarm on and off for the next day. It's silly. It should just be a QR code that links to a website that - whatever - Bluetooth to the thing. It's way over the top.

I have another one, like a plugin. I have a plug, like an automatic home, Apple Home plug--

Chris: Yeah...

Dave: --that has an app I had to install. Please, stop. Just give me--

[Laughter]

Dave: Make it a website. Anyway, that's my rant there.

Chris: There is a lot of that, isn't it? My Xbox, recently, the first thing you have to do is install an app on your phone.

Dave: To use an Xbox.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: That's also a computer that is in your house. Yeah. Makes sense.

Chris: Makes sense. [Laughter] Makes sense.

iOS will allow other browser engines, that's hot in the news right now, but it's appropriate that we're on a year's timeline because people have been asking for it for years and years (if you didn't know this). I always say that because I do find it amazing sometimes that people don't realize that whatever browser it looks like you're using on iOS, it's really just Safari. Whether it's an in-app browser or Chrome or Firefox or whatever, it's really just Safari under the hood. People don't like that. They think it fosters innovation and stuff. I don't necessarily disagree. I also think it's going to be awfully hard.

Apple has never really quite said why. They just don't say stuff like that. They just are the law and that's the way it is.

But we've seen them kick their feet screaming doing other things. I'm doing a bad job of not connecting the current news to very far-out predictions, but they are allowing or being forced to allow kind of the side-loading of apps in the EU and saying, "Yeah, but if you do it, you need to do your own accounting. You need to continue to give us exactly the same amount of money ... people signing up that way that would have through the iOS store anyway. And potentially, we can still deny the ability to side-load that app. It still has to be reviewed." That's the most kicking and screaming way to possibly allow that kind of thing.

I imagine that level of kicking and screaming would be similar should they be forced to allow other browser engines onto iOS. They'd make it so painful to do that companies would question even doing it at all.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nah, I mean that's going to... I'm sure it'll work out the way people want it to. But it could also be, "Careful what you wish for," because it might kill Safari. I don't know. Who knows? It's a very interesting world to see what happens.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave: But you might get a Firefox out of it, so who knows. Who knows what the future holds?

Chris: [Laughter]

00:44:36

Dave: Sue writes in. It may be my favorite one. Frantically fixing y2k38.

Chris: [Laughter]

Dave: I don't know, Chris.

Chris: Because it'll be 2036, right? It'll be two years away, the epocalypse.

Dave: And I'm going to try to retire by 2038, now that she's reminded me. In 2038, some computers are going to run out of numbers to reflect Unicode time, so the epocalypse is upon us. You will have to... They won't tell time right, and that's a bad thing for a computer. [Laughter]

Chris: It is a time computing problem that leaves some computer systems unable to represent times after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. So, yeah, we don't really know what's going to happen.

Just like y2k, nobody was quite sure what's going to happen. Are banks going to shut down - whatever? Then that date, if you are too young to remember that, famously came and went without any real problems at all. So, we'll see.

Dave: Yeah. We'll see how it goes. Yeah, the Unicode, like the binary string for, like, 01111 for a date timestamp will be bigger than the current time or than would fit into the 32 digits.

Chris: We are so dumb as computer people, aren't we? Just why?

Dave: Just naïve, man. You're like, "How many letters in a last name? Six?"

[Laughter]

Dave: Sounds right. R-U-P-E-R-T, yeah, I nailed it in one shot. C-O-Y-I-E-R. God dang! We got it!

Chris: I even think about the new color stuff that we talked so much about this year. Remember with the new color space - whatever.

Dave: P3? Yeah.

Chris: P3. Why does that sound awkward to me now? Anyway, that's the deal. They're like, there are more colors. And you're like, "Well, that's great. How many more? Is it all of them now?" They're like, "No! Not all of them."

It's like 20% more. And you're like, "But why stop there? What if they make more monitors and the monitors are capable of even more colors? It's like, why don't you just solve it all the way now?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Like UUID did, they just solved it. You know?

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: There are more UUIDs than if you tried to fill the known universe with grains of sand - or something. Cool! Solved problem.

Dave: Yeah. We thought about it really hard and came up with a really big one. [Laughter]

Chris: Yeah. [Laughter]

Dave: Whereas, yeah, it's got six more colors. You have to update your computer.

Chris: Yeah. Very weird. What about, let's do Tyler's here.

00:47:17

AI Tyler Sticka: The line between Web and native will be blurrier than ever. The dominant frameworks of the 2010s will occupy a jQuery-like place of high usage while seeming anachronistic. 3D elements will be more common as VR and AR devices become just prevalent enough in certain contexts. Environmental impact will be a key aspect of performance analysis tools instead of an external datapoint. Designers and developers will still be siloed more often than not because they're humans.

Chris: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I can imagine that where we look back on jQuery now and it's like, "Nobody uses that," yet it's on 80% of websites - or something. Can't you see that happening with the React and friends of today? Be like, "Nobody uses that," but it powers every website you use.

Dave: Yeah or it's going to be in every admin tool is just littered with it.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: And no one wants to reinvest to modernize the admin tool. Yeah, I think so. Tyler Sticka is from Cloud Four. A big thinker, so obviously, I think these have some weight behind them. I like the 3D elements thing. Agree with that. Environmental impact, I sure hope so.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: You think about 2036, there are some big environment milestones. 2030 is a big one, and we're already seeing it. I don't know if you're following--

Chris: Because governments are cracking down and putting dates on stuff, is that why?

Dave: Putting dates on stuff and then, like 2035, I think, is the big 1.5 degrees C jump is expected. And so, infrastructures will start crumbling, perhaps.

Chris: Right.

Dave: Maybe that'll heat up the whole, like, got to be environmentally responsible.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: Who knows? Very interesting.

Chris: Indeed it is. Tyler agrees on the 3D elements being just kind of common things to grab and hold and play with and stuff. I agree with that. I also think it aligns with what makes the Web bigger. There's this line that goes up that's like, "Websites just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger." You know? There have been reasons for that. It's been, like, we ship higher resolution images and JavaScript frameworks that come out that (admittedly do much more) need more JavaScript to do those things and, thus, pushes up bundle sizes and all that stuff.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: What's going to keep that line going up? We don't want it to keep going up, but, historically, it will go up. I think the easiest to point to answer is just a lot more 3D stuff happening.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Obviously, a 3D model being heavier in size than a flat JPEG is - or whatever.

00:50:09

Dave: I'll rapid-fire some of these here. Paul Armstrong agrees with Tyler.

"React has been moving into jQuery status. Environmental impact will be a factor, as finally shift to third-party services, hosting spaces. Hope is a worldwide government-regulated requirement."

That would be great. Well-informed and backed by science, of course.

Jack comes in with, "More languages compiled to Wasm and more languages begin to work on the Web." That would be cool to see.

"Increasing regulation makes traditional app stores less profitable." I think we're seeing that kind of right now play out.

"Native app platforms have budgets and teams reduced by execs to focus on more profitable ventures." Ooh... That's interesting. That's a hot twist. I like that. You see the change, and then you see the twist that happens after that.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: That'll be a boom for Wasm because now that people are back to not making app stores, they'll make more binaries and put them on the Web.

"Then accessibility advocates beg industry just to use HTML, CSS, and JS because Wasm Web apps are way worse for accessibility." Oh, interesting. Again, you saw the conundrum.

Chris: A little twist.

Dave: Yep. "Website app debate is settled by 'Does it use Wasm or not?'" Interesting. Yeah.

Chris: [Laughter] Funny. Yeah, maybe. It does seem like a big thing. But Wasm isn't yet a threat to UI and interactions.

Dave: There is not much. Yeah, HTML generator Wasm. But there could be. Maybe in the future.

Chris: Yeah. It can generate HTML on the back and return it, but it's not replacing the rendering pipeline. You know?

Dave: Right.

Chris: But we'll see. It is very fast. And if it needed to produce Canvas or something, or it powered some other kind of interaction mechanism, maybe. But that doesn't seem super likely.

Dave: Yeah. I just don't do systems languages that much to where I think of opportunities to use Wasm. Does that make sense?

Chris: Yes, it does.

Dave: I'm not like, "I've got all this Python. I just wish I could use it on the Web."

Chris: I mean it comes up and, even though we kind of do at CodePen, there are a lot of server-level processing that happens. We tend to think of it abstractly, like, maybe someday we'll just ball the whole thing up and then can deliver it. You know?

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: But that's about as deep as I think about it. I don't think of, like, what is this little thing that I can Wasm right now? I'm just like... I don't know. Maybe that's short-term thinking, but I do want to do it.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: But I tend to think of it as, like, "We'll just do that at some point." [Laughter]

Dave: Is it easier to build a Lambda that does it? You know? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Ooh... maybe Wasm replaces Lambda. There's my prediction.

Chris: Yeah. Even then it's like we do so much stuff with Go, for example, which is compiled and it turns itself into a little executable. Isn't that kind of already the benefit of Wasm?

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Other languages that deliver ... couldn't do? The early days of Wasm, what we mostly thought of as, like, "Oh, now I don't have to rewrite this code in a language that Web technology can use." It's a stopgap rather than anything more than that. But it's clearly changed vibes.

Dave: I know Photoshop getting rewritten in Web components on the Web was only because Wasm exists. That's a huge one.

Chris: I had wiped my laptop, and I didn't bother to install it on a particular laptop because I'm like, "Ah, it's just too much. I don't need all of Photoshop on this little thing." But then I needed it.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: I needed to edit something. All of my many years of Photoshop muscle memory could do easily in that software. Well, guess where I did it. On the flippin' website because it really is just Photoshop on the Web. It's absolutely amazing.

Dave: Incredible.

Chris: What else do we got?

Dave: Wolff writes in.

00:54:17

AI Wolff: My prediction: The Web will have a heavier focus on accessibility and be more inclusive for users with diversibilities. NLP integration will allow apps to be human-focused.

Chris: Now we see where ChatGPT got its thing is reading your toots, Wolff.

Dave: [Laughter] You did this.

Chris: Yeah. Maybe, though. There are an awful lot of people that work on the Web right now going to get old. [Laughter]

Dave: For sure.

Chris: You know what I mean?

Dave: Yeah. Yeah, so maybe when we leave, everyone can do cool stuff. [Laughter]

Chris: I just mean I feel like - whatever - maybe this is reductive, but the very olds of today didn't grow up building websites.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: They just use what got built for them. But now that there's this generation of people who have built for it, they'll be more mad [laughter] at websites as they get old. They'll be like, "Yeah, y'all need to fix this."

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: And I know how to do it. I'm just old now, so you do it.

Dave: Yeah. No. Hopefully, there's more focus on accessibility here. I would like to see that happen rather than people just fricken' - I don't know - doing it bad. That would be great.

00:55:30

Dave: Speaking of doing it bad, Scott Smith writes in. "The average JS bundles will near one gigabyte."

Chris: One gigabyte, wow! He could be right. You know? Who knows. But maybe--

Dave: I don't think he's not wrong. You know what I mean?

[Laughter]

Chris: Yeah. JS might be questionable. Maybe just say average bundles. Maybe there'll be other stuff in that bundle that pushes it that high. It sounds like I'm talking about the 3D model. Maybe I am, but maybe it could be other stuff, too. Maybe it's Wasm stuff or offline stuff.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: We now ship databases to people. I don't know.

Dave: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if we're sending Wasms, it might get one gigabyte. I got Google Fiber, two-gigabyte fiber coming into my neighborhood soon.

Chris: Oh, I want it.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: I still struggle with our crap.

Dave: It's going to be changing the world.

Chris: Fiber me!

Dave: Fiber me!

00:56:33

Dave: Dan replying to Scott Smith says, "I hope in 12 years Web-dev will have a reasonably good standard lib so you don't use a gig's worth of stuff coming over the wire. I'm not caught up on... blah-blah-blah."

Chris: Yeah. Standard lib is cool. That means that you don't need to ship stuff because the browser already has it. You know?

Dave: That's one of my hopes, man. If we could have 20 custom elements that are there if you want them, that would be sweet. You know? They don't have to be all the way sold through HTML. They just have to be in the browser by default. That would be cool.

Chris: Yeah. I mean there are navigation APIs that are starting to cook that solve, like, "Do you want a more SPA-like experience?" for good reason that they'll kind of help you do that.

Dave: View transitions is obviously huge.

Chris: Right. What do you need to ship? You need to ship the stuff that's really, really, really bespoke for your business, like the data and the images and stuff. That stuff is still going to be big. But yeah, you can imagine a world in which you're shipping less code because the platform is so good.

00:57:41

Chris: Brad Frost did blog a thing recently about a worldwide design system thing. I think we're going to pull him on the show to talk about it. That would fall into the standard lib bucket, too. A little different because I don't know that Brad is advocating that it gets baked into browsers. But maybe.

Dave: Yeah. I mean if it's Web components, it has a better chance. [Laughter] There you go.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember... How did that work? There were some APIs that were like you could write an import statement in JavaScript.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Chris: But where do you get imports from? They're always from a file, right?

Dave: Right. Right. Yeah.

Chris: This was an import statement that it didn't pull from a file. It pulled from the browser. It was something like a local storage replacement or something that was flagged in Chrome then eventually scrapped.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris: It was kind of like an async version of it or a KV store or something that was a little cleaner or something. It was just a trial run. But I remember the way that you used it in JavaScript is that you had to write an ESM import at the top and then the where you get it specifier was from the browser.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: It was like, "Wow! That's cool."

Dave: Wouldn't that be cool? Just import from standard or STD or SDK:my-element - or something like that - or tab element.

Chris: Yeah, because it makes the ultimate, you know, the website smaller in a way. It makes a little less sense on the Web because if it's an API and you're baking it into the browser, why can't you just use the API? Why do you have to import it? Which I think is a fair question. But standard lib is just a way that a lot of -- I mean there's a standard library in Node, right? I use Go all the time. There's tons of standard lib stuff. But that kind of makes sense to me because, ultimately, it turns into this executable and you're trying to keep the executable size small, so you're not including every API under the sun. You're including whatever you need. It keeps things small.

Dave: Yeah. Well, you think of Lodash or something like that. It's an awesome library. It has all these weird functions you probably want: group by or something like that. Although, that actually just came to Array, so that's kind of a cool new feature of Array.

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: But you have these methods inside of there: left join, join, all this stuff. And the browser, to import that, because there's an HTTP request, there's a penalty to go fetch this tiny little file. Wouldn't it be cool if these libraries with all these tiny little files were in the browser, and so you didn't have to go fetch to get a tabs element. You just kind of had one in the standard lib.

Chris: Right.

Dave: You can, of course, make your own. Right? But we have a good set of standard elements. This closely turns into "put React in the browser," which maybe, yeah. I don't know.

Chris: [Laughter] Sure.

Dave: But which React, is the question. You know? [Laughter] React experimental canary that Vercel is using? I don't think so. I don't know.

Chris: Yeah. God, that's such a big question. I like the standard lib idea, though. Maybe. I mean when I read Brad's post -- we'll have him on the show to talk about it -- my brain, it just... Maybe it says more about me. It makes me a pessimist and Brad an optimist - or something. I'm like, "Oh, that's never going to work."

Dave: [Laughter]

Chris: Then I start thinking of reasons why, but it shouldn't. I shouldn't think that way. There's a positive version of it that, if it helps the world, it helps the world.

We should end, though, with Jay Hoffman did a good job. He did his own MP3 here, so we'll play that.

01:01:27

Jay Hoffman: I think there's a lot of interesting things happening right now, one of which is a potential resurgence of the IndieWeb, which could be really fascinating, especially considering that we're entering a period where, for the first time, there are people that are building the Web that have never known a time without it. So, it's brought some challenges, obviously, along with it.

But it's also led to multiple generations who are able to seamlessly transition between their digital lives and their offline lives. They feel perfectly fine jumping between different online spaces, swiftly building communities and creating that ironic referential communication that's really familiar now for people that exist on the Web.

Social media sites, meanwhile, have shown that they really can't handle an endless scale of moderation. So, we are witnessing this new generation that is not at all deterred by this, readily hopping from one online platform to another as apps either fail or become too large.

All of which is to say, I think that, in the next 12 years, we're going to see a much different kind of website. The standard Web publication format and sharing strategies that were prevalent for the last 12 years (after the Web 2.0 era) are really breaking down in this moment. So, I think we should anticipate a Web that is more fragmented, composed of smaller groups that kind of coexist harmoniously. And maybe we're using the same technologies or similar technologies to build those things as we have been for many years, but we're building a very, very different kind of website. I could be wrong, but that's kind of my two cents.

Chris: Thanks, Jay, for all that.

Dave: That was great. Jay has that history of the Web angle to where he can look into the past and help see the future. That's very useful.

Dave: Yeah. I really like... I do think there is some kind of law of communities that is probably well established and I'm ignorant and don't know what to call it or who to credit. But when they get too big, they get badder. [Laughter]

Dave: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: There's an ideal size of them. But that somehow needs to be part of it. It needs to start small. It needs to be healthy. It needs to grow and get healthier until it gets to this point where it's too big, and then it breaks down. That's kind of the circle of life of communities of all kinds and has proven to be true on the Web as well.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: Are we doomed to that circle, or can we kind of home in on the correct size?

Dave: Yeah, that consolidation diaspora, consolidation diaspora--

Chris: Hmm...

Dave: That goes to ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, ancient Rome. There are tons of precedence for, like, this is just sort of what humans do. We consolidate, and then we peel.

Chris: Right.

Dave: I think we are heading into a stage of peel.

Chris: If the world decided ShopTalk Show was the best podcast ever and 1,000 people joined the Discord tomorrow, it just would be suckier in there. You know?

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: I want whoever is listening to this show now to be in there. We are not anywhere near that level and that's not going to happen, so I'm not trying to deter people from being in there. But when communities 10x, 100x, 1000x like that, it just is worse. There's no version of that community that gets better when that happens.

01:04:44

Dave: But I was reading a story recently where a company had grown and everyone in the company was just like, "This isn't fun anymore. It has grown too much."

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Dave: The CEO is happy because they're in a Lambo. But everyone else is like, "This just isn't fun anymore. It's different."

I remember what it was. It was about Mars Hill Church in Seattle, like a big megachurch thing.

Chris: Yeah?

Dave: It just got big enough that people were like, "I don't like this," and eventually it collapsed because it had this toxic masculinity edge to it.

Anyway, it was just a really interesting story about a community's explosive growth building up and then just collapsing. Very interesting.

Chris: If people become aware of that, though, they'd be like, "I need 2 close friends, 5 kind of close friends, 12 acquaintances, and 100 people in my professional community."

Dave: [Laughter] The recipe for life? Yeah.

Chris: That we could build tech around that, in a way, or that people might naturally--

01:05:49

Dave: I had this good quote. It's this thing called the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory by Marilynn Brewer. It's humans have two basic needs, right? One for inclusion and one for exclusion.

Chris: Oh, I thought it was string cheese and Coors Light.

Dave: Well, yeah.

Chris: [Laughter]

Dave: Actually, Bud Light is probably a great example.

Chris: [Laughter]

Dave: They went and did their trans campaign, and that was for inclusion, like, "Let's build a broader tent for Bud Light." And then, uh-oh! Now the exclusion, the people who are like, "I am not... shall not be defined by that," showed up for the exclusive edge.

And so, it's very interesting, just tribal psychology and stuff like that. I think Annie Hall said it the best. "I would never join a club that would accept me as a member."

Chris: That's Annie Hall? Oh, nice.

Dave: Yeah.

Chris: I attributed it to this old white man. But of course, a woman said it who is probably smarter and he stole it. No, no, I'm sure it's not.

Dave: Woody what's-his-face. [Laughter] The bad guy. Groucho Marx. Oh, maybe Groucho Marx said it? I don't know. I have it as Annie Hall, but that's who I think my wife says said it.

It looks like it's a Groucho Marx quote. I'm going to say--

Chris: Eh, whatever.

Dave: Scratch it. Fix the record. Then I guess Woody Allen used it in Annie Hall, perhaps.

Chris: Perhaps. Yeah, I've always thought that one was funny, though. It feels like the perfect humbling quote.

Dave: Yeah. But anyway, it's just interesting how the ebb and flow of building up and then going your own way because you can't be in the bar. You can't be in the noisy bar for the rest of your life. Then somebody will turn the bar lights on, and then you've got to go home. You've got to leave.

[Laughter]

Dave: And you don't want to be there when that happens because that moment is not the best one.

Chris: Yeah. I just like that Jake brought it up very widely, and we're not talking about specific sites. We're talking about how human beings behave and interact with technology, and that's kind of the important thing. The actual technology choices will follow those broader concepts.

Dave: Yep. We've been in decades of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter. Maybe we're done. Very interesting to think about.

Well, Chris, unless you have anything else for the 600, I think it's time to wrap it up.

01:08:23

Chris: Just a big thank you for everybody. That's an awful lot of episodes. Over the years, we've thought about, like, is this a stale format or anything? At least I've thought about that kind of thing. What if we started over? What if we branded out a new show? Or is that throwing away kind of a brand that you've built up over time? I think that's where we've landed. I think that's throwing away too much.

Perhaps we're not gaining a ton of new listeners because they look at a number like 600 and they go, "Eh, I'm not part of that in-group." Well, congratulations. If you're listening to this show, you are part of that in-group.

Dave: You made it!

Chris: Fortunately, Dave and I haven't bet the farm on this, so we plan to continue doing it for our in-group because it's lots of fun and we appreciate each other and you, and we're glad you're here.

Dave: Yeah. Thank you so much. I say it every week but thank you for downloading this in your podcatcher of choice. It really does mean a lot to Chris and I, and we like doing this. It's fun. It's great. We make very little money right now doing it.

[Laughter]

Chris: Yeah.

Dave: It's very much for the fun, funzies, so yeah. It's very, very great having y'all around. So, thank you.

Thanks to our editor, Chris Enns. Thanks to our transcriber, Tina Pham. We rely on y'all quite a bit, so thank you very much.

Thanks to everyone over in the D-d-d-d-discord. You really floated us for the last year or so, so we really appreciate that. It's really the highlight of my week is hopping into there -- or day is hopping into there -- and seeing what the scuttlebutt is.

Chris: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Dave: All right. On that note, thank you. Chris, do you have anything else you'd like to say?

Chris: ShopTalkShow.com.

01:10:13

AI Tour Guide: And now a quick tour through the history of ShopTalk Show starting with Episode 1.

Dave: All right. Hello, and welcome to the very first inaugural episode of ShopTalk, a podcast about front-end Web design, development, and UX with your hosts Dave Rupert -- that's me -- and Chris Coyier. Say hello, Chris.

Chris: What's up, everybody?

Dave: We each are front-end Web professionals, and we are excited to be here talking about front-end Web design and all of its wonderful, high dramatic fashions.

Chris: [Laughter] Good intro. Yeah, that's... you know.

Dave: Is that good? Did I...?

Chris: High dramatic fashions? Yes, absolutely. We're here to... We're here to talk shop, people. We're here to talk about the Web in as nuts and bolts as we can.

And I just wanted to say, since it's our first episode, that I just couldn't be more stoked to be doing a podcast. I've wanted to do one for a really long time. And now we're doing it.

AI Tour Guide: Episode 100.

[Banjo music starts]

Dave: Hello, and welcome to Episode 100 of the ShopTalk Show, a podcast all about front-end Web design, development, sound effects, all the things you love.

[Banjo music ends]

Dave: I'm Dave Rupert and with me is Chris Coyier.

Chris: Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening. And it seems like... So, this episode has some weight. It's Episode 100!

Dave: One double zero.

Chris: That's pretty good, right?

Dave: Yes.

Chris: There's got to be a sound effect for that of some kind. Maybe...

Dave: Ah... yeah!

[Ta-da horn sound effect]

Chris: That's pretty good.

Dave: Or, Chris--

Chris: Great job.

Dave: Great job.

Chris: Great job. Thanks. We don't have any big fireworks for you other than we made it. That's pretty cool.

AI Tour Guide: Episode 200.

Chris: Hello! It is Episode #200 of ShopTalk Show. Uh... There is something about those nice round numbers, isn't it? Kind of a big deal. We just did Episode 199, obviously, last week. If you haven't heard that, go back and listen. It's Dave and I reminiscing about the history of ShopTalk Show and all the awesome things that have happened with our... you know, the guests and just big, important things. It was really fun to reminisce on the history of it. Lots of stuff has happened.

I remember Episode #100, you know. And because we do this only once a week, that's, I guess, like almost 2 years ago. It doesn't feel that long ago. We had lots of big ideas for that one, just like we had lots of big ideas [laughter] for this one, and it didn't happen. We just ended up kind of doing a normal show and then doing a more special one at Episode #123, so remember that?

AI Tour Guide: Episode 300.

[Banjo music starts]

[Cheers and applause]

Dave: Hey, Shop-o-maniacs! You're listening to another episode of the ShopTalk Show ... with the champagne. I'm Dave Rupert.

Chris: [Laughter]

[Banjo music stops]

[Cheers and applause continue]

Chris: It's 9:00 in the morning here. And if I had some champagne, I'd be....

[Cheers and applause stop]

Chris: I hate to admit that I just didn't have time to run to the liquor store [laughter] this morning.

Dave: Probably not open.

Chris: But you know what? Dave can drink for the both of us here.

Dave: I'll drink for the both of us, Chris. Don't you worry.

[A couple of harmonica notes played]

Chris: Anyway, don't let that diminish from the fact that I'm very excited here. This is... In a grand tradition of milestone moments here on ShopTalk Show, we're going to have a special show for 300. It's special in that--

Dave: [Singing] On and on, a podcast to remember. On and on, a podcast to remember.

Chris: Yes! Yes! I feel good about it. It's also a grand tradition that we do something special, but not too special. [Laughter]

Dave: [Laughter]

Chris: It's not like we invited 30 of our friends to join us on a yacht while we're live recording or anything.

Dave: I will be Paul Irish impressions this episode.

[Laughter]

AI Tour Guide: Episode 400.

[Banjo music stops]

Dave: Hey there, Shop-o-maniacs. You're listening to another episode of the ShopTalk Show. I'm Dave--how works CSS4 and React--Rupert, and with me is Chris--thinking face emoji--Coyier.

Chris: Whoa!

Dave: Hey, Chris. How are you?

Chris: Inside baseball there. That's great. If anybody got that joke, you get 100,000 points. The last two, maybe more, plus episodes, we've just turned this show into, like, we're just talking about browsers. We can't stop. We can't help ourselves. It's become the browser show. In fact, I think we named 399 The Browser Show, and now that's over and it's Episode 400!! What?!

Dave: Yay!!

Dave: Woo-hoo!

[Applause]

Chris: Oh, my god. What a milestone.

AI Tour Guide: Episode 500.

[Banjo music stops]

Dave: Hey there, Shop-o-maniacs. You're listening to Episode 500 of the ShopTalk Show, a podcast all about front-end Web design and development. I'm Dave--in the shed--Rupert and with me is Chris--in the office--Coyier. Hey, Chris. How are you doing on this fantastic, wonderful, celebratory day?

Chris: I love the excitement, man!

Dave: Oh--

Chris: Hell yeah. Episode 500, it's a bid deal. Half of an M, you know.

Dave: Half a grand. This is great.

Chris: A G!