A few weeks after I pestered Ada Rose Edwards to write her first Smashing Magazine article on Progressive Web Apps I did a Skype call with her to talk about the same topic.

You can see the video and get the audio recording of our chat over at the Decoded blog:

Ada is a great talent in our market and I am looking forward to pestering her to do more of these good things.

Here are the questions we covered:

1. Ada, you just wrote on Smashing Magazine about “The building blocks of progressive web apps”. Can you give a quick repeat on what they are?
2. We’ve had a few attempts at using web technology to build app like experiences. A lot of them left end users disappointed. What do you think were the main mistakes developers did?
3. Is the “app shell” model a viable one or is this against the idea of “content first” web sites turning into apps?
4. You worked on one of the poster-child web-technology based apps in the past – the Financial Times app. What were the main challenges you faced there?
5. It seems that in the mobile space it is OK to abandon platforms that arent’ used much any longer, should that be something to consider for the web and browsers, too?
6. Progressive Web apps do away with the concept of a need of an app store. This is more convenient, but it also poses a UX challenge. Users aren’t expecting a web site to work offline. What can we do to break that assumption?
7. The wonderful thing about PWAs is that they are progressive, which means that platforms that don’t support ServiceWorkers should still have a good experience and fall back to a classic “add to homescreen” scenario. What can we do to avoid people forgetting about this and build “this app needs Chrome on latest Android” apps instead?
8. Are responsive interfaces a unique skill of web developers? Is it something we learned simply because of the nature of the platform?
9. The distribution model of PWAs is the hyperlink. You pointed out rightfully in your article that there needs to be a way to share this link and send it to others. Hardliners of the web also argue that a URL should be visible and “hackable”. Do you think this is a valid need?
10. What about Instant Apps on Android? Aren’t they a threat to Progressive Web Apps?
11. What can we do to avoid PWAs becoming the new “m.example.com”? The average web site it too big and slow to become and app. How high are your hopes that this new approach could help the web as a whole become slimmer?

The original plan at the first evening of this year’s Øredev was for me to interview Peter Sunde about the history of Pirate Bay as covered in his SmashingConf Barcelona “Technology Is Neither Good Nor Bad — You Are” talk.

As Peter couldn’t come and the massive news of the US or the voting system choosing Donald Trump as the president I quickly changed my plans. Instead, I wrote a talk explaining the very random way I got to become a professional developer and that it is our duty as privileged people now to share our knowledge with those not as lucky.

After the talk I invited a very distraught Rob Conery, author of The Imposter’s Handbook to help share some cheerful and amusing anectodes in his history. We ended up with some actionable ideas how to learn more and not listen to the inner voice that keeps telling us we’re not good enough.

Here’s the video of the hour of information on Vimeo:

The slides of the talk are on Slideshare.

Here are some of the points of the slides:

Things I learned

• Nothing can hold you back when you are good at analysing and repeating
• Everything you see on screen came from somewhere – it is never set in stone
• It is much more fun to explore and tweak than to get something handed to you
• Working in a limited/unknown environment is a wonderful challenge
• You don’t need to feel limited by the environment you target – you can use whatever you want to create for it
• The more people do this, the more best practices can be shared.

Hello View Source

• A big part of my success on the web was using view source and reverse engineering
• We all did, don’t let people tell you otherwise
• The lack of distance between creation and consumption was really down my alley…
• These days, developer tools have replaced view source
• We have incredible insight into what our code does in the browser
• Of course, not everybody is ready for this…

Here is where we come in.

• We are at the forefront of online media
• We are creators and makers – not consumers
• We have the privilege of open tools, an open platform and openly available documentation.

Getting started has never been easier…

• Using GitHub, you can host your code, collaborate, execute your projects, write collaborative documentation and books…
• Using social media we can promote these products, share knowledge and invite people to learn…

You’re building on existing solutions…

• You don’t need to start from scratch – you can contribute to thousands of existing projects – many aimed to teach people how to become a web maker.
• You don’t even need to code. You can help with UX, or document, or herd communities.

One main thing i learned in my whole career…

• You learn best by teaching
• Sharing and making people grow with you is the best feeling ever
• If you feel down and “not good enough”, create something – anything!

Use your frustration, your anger and your deviousness for good…

• What we need more than ever right now is education
• Traditional education is encumbered by privilege and costs
• We’ve been lucky – it is time we give back

The web is the most versatile and non-elite platform. Go and make your mark!

At SmashingConf Freiburg I took some time to interview Sarah Drasner on SVG.

In this interview we covered what SVG can bring, how to use it sensibly and what pitfalls to avoid.

You can see the video and get the audio recording of our chat over at the Decoded blog:

Sarah is a dear friend and a lovely person and knows a lot about animation and SVG.

Here are the questions we covered:

1. SVG used to be a major “this is the future of the web” and then it vanished for a while. What is the reason of the new interest in a format that old?
2. Tooling in SVG seems to be still lagging behind in what Flash gave us. Are there any good tools that have – for example – a full animation timeline?
3. SVG syntax on first glance seems rather complex due to its XML format and lots of shortcut notations. Or is it just a matter of getting used to it?
4. Coordinate systems seem to be easy to understand, however when it comes to dynamic coordinate systems and vector basics people get lost much easier. When you teach, is this an issue?
5. What about prejudices towards SVG? It is rumoured to be slow and very memory intense. Is this true?
6. Presets of tools seem to result in really large SVG files which is why we need extra tools to optimise them. Is this improving with the new-found interest in SVG?
7. There seems to be a “war of animation tools”. You can use SVG, CSS Animations, The Web Animation API, or JavaScript libraries. What can developer do about this? Should we learn all of them?
8. There are security issues with linking to external SVG files which makes them harder to use than – for example – images. This can be discouraging and scary for implementers, what can we do there?
9. Does SVG live in the uncanny valley between development and design?
10. Is there one thing you’d love people to stop saying about SVG as it is not true but keeps coming up in conversations?

Yesterday I went to the Excel in London for Future Decoded to learn a lot about the future of technology, finally see the DeLorian from Back to the Future and give a talk. I covered Machine Learning, its ethics, its effects on the job market and what we as developers need to do to make Artificial Intelligence work for rather than against humans.

Apparently it was more relaxing that the Great British Bake Off:

@codepo8 talks are more relaxing than w/ the Great British Bake Off. German with humor, tech expert, philosopher. 😎👌 pic.twitter.com/6faKdeAbHa

— Markus Brunner (@mabr8) November 2, 2016

Sadly, there was no video recording, but I recorded my own screencast again. The video is on YouTube

The slides are available on SlideShare.

I will repeat this talk slightly amended and more about the ethics and ideas as the Friday Keynote of the upcoming Øredev Conference in Malmø so see you there?

The lovely folks at Goto Conference just released the high quality recordings of my talks at their Copenhagen edition earlier this month.

Fixing the image problem of the web using Machine Learning was a impromptu presentation as one of the presenters had to pull out and they needed another presentation.

Progressive Web Apps – return of the web talks about what PWAs mean to the web as a platform and features lots of Star Wars references.

My next GotoCon will be in Berlin on the 14th of November.