10 ms·

Web Fundamentals

204 points by olalonde 10y ago

wnevets 10y ago
I just wanted to say I enjoy the video series on that page, Totally Tooling Tips.
iLoch 10y ago
"Web fundamentals", headlined by Web Push Notifications. Good to know where Google's head is at.
- mawburn 10y ago
  Yeah, it's a little weird and out of place. I thought it was a page about PWA Fundamentals. You'd figure they would start off with an opening statement of what "Web Fundamentals" means exactly, instead of some random feature.
  - kinlan 10y ago
    We are constantly updating the site (it's been live for two years now), and that was one of the newest areas that has come through. We manage all of this on github (https://github.com/Google/WebFundamentals https://github.com/Google/WebFundamentals) and love getting feedback on what we need to improve!
    - asurma 10y ago
      In addition to that, the Home section shows new content. We try to cover everything – from the basics to new APIs on Web Fundamentals.
    - kinlan 10y ago
      But yes, we should sort this to make it clearer
    - SiVal 10y ago
      "Fundamentals" does not mean "the newest thing that has come through". It means almost the opposite. It's your site, but if I meant fundamentals, I would call it fundamentals and start with fundamentals: HTML and CSS. If I meant building on the fundamentals, I would write about the standard uses of JavaScript to bring HTML and CSS to life. If I meant "newest things", I would call it a blog and talk about the newest things: recently implemented and incompletely supported APIs, such as notifications. Some of the newest things are very interesting as what they are: new things. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any reason to label a site "web fundamentals" and lead with something that has never been fundamental to the Web unless the agenda of "web fundamentals" is something other than teaching web fundamentals.
      - kinlan 10y ago
        It's a good point. We chose to aim this at already practicing web developers and show them the best practice. There are already great HTML, CSS and JS resources over on MDN and we had no intention of competing with them. The home page needs some work, clearly and we can sort that.
- earldouglas 10y ago
  I'm surprised Web "fundamentals" doesn't begin with HTML.
  - typaux 10y ago
    Knowing how to write HTML in 2016 is so passé, everything is abstracted on so many levels that nobody actually knows how to make a website.
ssn 10y ago
Missing: "managing web projects". Anybody has a good reference on this? Including managing teams from different backgrounds and details on documentation and artifacts that support web projects?
- ilaksh 10y ago
  I think the title of the article (strike that, I mean the section heading above the title) is a bit misleading because it implies a wider context than was intended. But in that wider interpretation of the title of course the management is key. I am wondering though, aren't the most important aspects of managing web projects shared with managing other types of (technology) projects?
- kinlan 10y ago
  Heh, I actually wanted to include something like this in the original site. The very first version of the site we had a massive IA planning doc and guide, style-guides, mocks, prototypes, user-stories and user-profiles (the type of developers we wanted to write for). I've still got all the information. I don't think we will end up getting this on to our site right now, but I would love to see it. Edit: Spelling.
  - mhoad 10y ago
    Any chance at all of getting that out "unofficially"? I would love to see that and I think a lot of us would get a huge amount of value from that.
    - kinlan 10y ago
      Let me try somethings...
- dbg31415 10y ago
  So much of this would depend on the budget, and size of the project. What works great for an enterprise site... is total overkill for a small project. Likewise... it's seldom one person, or even one team, that does everything end-to-end... so like... maybe your role is only to get to UAT, and their team will take over for security screening, performance testing, hardening, launch... Do we include what dev, design, devops, marketing, sales, legal teams all care about? I'm sure that's not even a complete list of teams... At an agency I worked for a few years back we had a sheet called "Getting to Done" -- looked something like this: * General Web Project Overview - Google Sheets || https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rGSHT2kZQCahDqoQkryLJ1b3rEq_uVLEX2Qe10RCxB8/edit https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rGSHT2kZQCahDqoQkryL... I've got a huge file on process, with sample documents... but every time I sit down to put it all together into something that can help new hires I hit a wall around who it needs to be written for. What size of company, what focus of the site, what department of the company, what role on the team...? I think the sample "technical alignment" document we used when taking over a web property was about 15 pages worth of questions... and we still had to verify all that stuff and look at the code and various metrics. Point being this stuff is all a learning process for everyone... best practices evolve, technology evolves, standards evolve... if you manage web projects it's more about ongoing learning rather than memorization / repetition.
kinlan 10y ago
Owner of the site here: We do need to update the landing page, we've gone through many updates over the two years that this site has been out and I think this page doesn't explain what Web Fundamentals site is. Our goal with this section is to explain the fundamentals of web development from the platform upwards with opinionated best practice guidance. We are constantly adding new content for new areas of the web (like push notifications) and refactoring guidance as we learn more of how this is used in production (things change, but we base the initial guidance off how we have used it).
- austincheney 10y ago
  The site is called "web fundamentals" and looks to be educational. Unfortunately, it is severely flawed due to a bias. The site is immediately and inherently skewed towards interaction and programming. This mistake (though incredibly common) is really really bad. At the core to have the web all you need is two things: an application protocol and a document structure format. The public web standardizes on HTTP and HTML for those two qualities. This site does not address these two most primary qualities explicitly. The implicit assumption is that these qualities are not themselves important and instead necessary trivialities who technical qualities can be indirectly surmised through study of more interesting derivative works. This is a big mistake that makes learning these technologies far hard than it really needs to be. Don't assume the technologies are simple or that people will just get it right, because they won't. If I were teaching a class on web fundamentals I would start with XML Schema. Don't laugh, I am being serious, just hear me out. Learning XML Schema is important because it forces the student to learn the importance of structure and design in the crafting of human consumable information, which is really what the web is all about. It also teaches the student about node types and node relationships that is directly reflected in the standard DOM methods. Equally important it also teaches the student about application scope. XML Schema (and thus XML and HTML) features lexical scope for its scope model in exactly the same way that JavaScript does. I cannot express enough just how important this single quality is to understanding JavaScript. For people coming from languages like C#/C++/Java this really seems to be the most challenging experience to wrap their heads around, but it is absolutely essential to understanding that language. After XML Schema I would teach the DOM. I would teach this even before teaching anything about JavaScript. Understanding the DOM from a high level is a conversation of relationships and abstract modeling more than programming. Many web developers never get this and they forever suck as a result. This subject is so much easier to understand when separated from writing methods in a programming language and then so much easier to apply once the student gets to the programming part. None of these principle standard technologies are hard to learn. They just need to be taught in the right order and expressed through practice. Security standards are hard, but web standards are easy. Yet, most developers I have ever known always fail on the easy stuff. If you, as a potential educator, aren't taking these technologies seriously then neither will your prospective students.
wyck 10y ago
Web Push Notifications are Google Fundamentals when using Firebase. A more appropriate title.
- kinlan 10y ago
  We are not saying to use Firebase although there is a firebase JS lib. If you use Chrome on Android it connects to FCM (which is backed by firebase product but it's not the same, it was called Google Cloud Messaging), if you Mozilla it connects to their push service. That's the way the spec works, the browser controls what push service you connect to.
  - kinlan 10y ago
    To be clear our guidance is to follow the spec.
ucarion 10y ago
In case someone reading this can fix it, there's a typo: > App install banners make it easy for users to add your app to their home screen with a single click, and is an indication to the user that the app their adding, meets an important quality bar. "their" should be "they're", and there shouldn't be a comma after "adding", I think.
- ebbv 10y ago
  Specifically the second "their".
divbit 10y ago
Might want to debug that in safari...
- divbit 10y ago
  Wait - looks the same in firefox, maybe just my internet sorry :)
  - divbit 10y ago
    eh, loads perfect in chrome, but this is what I'm seeing in safari / firefox: http://imgur.com/a/reN2K http://imgur.com/a/reN2K
    - divbit 10y ago
      That said, thanks for the site, looks like something I probably need to read :)
ffwacom 10y ago
"Web push notifications allow users to opt-in to timely updates from sites they love and allow you to effectively re-engage them with customized, relevant content." Christ, opting into these things has always been a mistake for me.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
You people complaining this isn't about fundamentals have your priorities skewed. The web today is all about selling things and web developers finding their next gig. Those are the only fundamentals the web cares about today.

Web Fundamentals

204 points by olalonde 10y ago

wnevets 10y ago

I just wanted to say I enjoy the video series on that page, Totally Tooling Tips.

iLoch 10y ago

"Web fundamentals", headlined by Web Push Notifications. Good to know where Google's head is at.

mawburn 10y ago
Yeah, it's a little weird and out of place. I thought it was a page about PWA Fundamentals. You'd figure they would start off with an opening statement of what "Web Fundamentals" means exactly, instead of some random feature.
- kinlan 10y ago
  We are constantly updating the site (it's been live for two years now), and that was one of the newest areas that has come through. We manage all of this on github (https://github.com/Google/WebFundamentals https://github.com/Google/WebFundamentals) and love getting feedback on what we need to improve!
  - asurma 10y ago
    In addition to that, the Home section shows new content. We try to cover everything – from the basics to new APIs on Web Fundamentals.
  - kinlan 10y ago
    But yes, we should sort this to make it clearer
  - SiVal 10y ago
    "Fundamentals" does not mean "the newest thing that has come through". It means almost the opposite. It's your site, but if I meant fundamentals, I would call it fundamentals and start with fundamentals: HTML and CSS. If I meant building on the fundamentals, I would write about the standard uses of JavaScript to bring HTML and CSS to life. If I meant "newest things", I would call it a blog and talk about the newest things: recently implemented and incompletely supported APIs, such as notifications. Some of the newest things are very interesting as what they are: new things. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any reason to label a site "web fundamentals" and lead with something that has never been fundamental to the Web unless the agenda of "web fundamentals" is something other than teaching web fundamentals.
    - kinlan 10y ago
      It's a good point. We chose to aim this at already practicing web developers and show them the best practice. There are already great HTML, CSS and JS resources over on MDN and we had no intention of competing with them. The home page needs some work, clearly and we can sort that.
earldouglas 10y ago
I'm surprised Web "fundamentals" doesn't begin with HTML.
- typaux 10y ago
  Knowing how to write HTML in 2016 is so passé, everything is abstracted on so many levels that nobody actually knows how to make a website.

ssn 10y ago

Missing: "managing web projects". Anybody has a good reference on this? Including managing teams from different backgrounds and details on documentation and artifacts that support web projects?

ilaksh 10y ago
I think the title of the article (strike that, I mean the section heading above the title) is a bit misleading because it implies a wider context than was intended. But in that wider interpretation of the title of course the management is key. I am wondering though, aren't the most important aspects of managing web projects shared with managing other types of (technology) projects?
kinlan 10y ago
Heh, I actually wanted to include something like this in the original site. The very first version of the site we had a massive IA planning doc and guide, style-guides, mocks, prototypes, user-stories and user-profiles (the type of developers we wanted to write for). I've still got all the information. I don't think we will end up getting this on to our site right now, but I would love to see it. Edit: Spelling.
- mhoad 10y ago
  Any chance at all of getting that out "unofficially"? I would love to see that and I think a lot of us would get a huge amount of value from that.
  - kinlan 10y ago
    Let me try somethings...
dbg31415 10y ago
So much of this would depend on the budget, and size of the project. What works great for an enterprise site... is total overkill for a small project. Likewise... it's seldom one person, or even one team, that does everything end-to-end... so like... maybe your role is only to get to UAT, and their team will take over for security screening, performance testing, hardening, launch... Do we include what dev, design, devops, marketing, sales, legal teams all care about? I'm sure that's not even a complete list of teams... At an agency I worked for a few years back we had a sheet called "Getting to Done" -- looked something like this: * General Web Project Overview - Google Sheets || https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rGSHT2kZQCahDqoQkryLJ1b3rEq_uVLEX2Qe10RCxB8/edit https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rGSHT2kZQCahDqoQkryL... I've got a huge file on process, with sample documents... but every time I sit down to put it all together into something that can help new hires I hit a wall around who it needs to be written for. What size of company, what focus of the site, what department of the company, what role on the team...? I think the sample "technical alignment" document we used when taking over a web property was about 15 pages worth of questions... and we still had to verify all that stuff and look at the code and various metrics. Point being this stuff is all a learning process for everyone... best practices evolve, technology evolves, standards evolve... if you manage web projects it's more about ongoing learning rather than memorization / repetition.

kinlan 10y ago

Owner of the site here: We do need to update the landing page, we've gone through many updates over the two years that this site has been out and I think this page doesn't explain what Web Fundamentals site is. Our goal with this section is to explain the fundamentals of web development from the platform upwards with opinionated best practice guidance. We are constantly adding new content for new areas of the web (like push notifications) and refactoring guidance as we learn more of how this is used in production (things change, but we base the initial guidance off how we have used it).

austincheney 10y ago
The site is called "web fundamentals" and looks to be educational. Unfortunately, it is severely flawed due to a bias. The site is immediately and inherently skewed towards interaction and programming. This mistake (though incredibly common) is really really bad. At the core to have the web all you need is two things: an application protocol and a document structure format. The public web standardizes on HTTP and HTML for those two qualities. This site does not address these two most primary qualities explicitly. The implicit assumption is that these qualities are not themselves important and instead necessary trivialities who technical qualities can be indirectly surmised through study of more interesting derivative works. This is a big mistake that makes learning these technologies far hard than it really needs to be. Don't assume the technologies are simple or that people will just get it right, because they won't. If I were teaching a class on web fundamentals I would start with XML Schema. Don't laugh, I am being serious, just hear me out. Learning XML Schema is important because it forces the student to learn the importance of structure and design in the crafting of human consumable information, which is really what the web is all about. It also teaches the student about node types and node relationships that is directly reflected in the standard DOM methods. Equally important it also teaches the student about application scope. XML Schema (and thus XML and HTML) features lexical scope for its scope model in exactly the same way that JavaScript does. I cannot express enough just how important this single quality is to understanding JavaScript. For people coming from languages like C#/C++/Java this really seems to be the most challenging experience to wrap their heads around, but it is absolutely essential to understanding that language. After XML Schema I would teach the DOM. I would teach this even before teaching anything about JavaScript. Understanding the DOM from a high level is a conversation of relationships and abstract modeling more than programming. Many web developers never get this and they forever suck as a result. This subject is so much easier to understand when separated from writing methods in a programming language and then so much easier to apply once the student gets to the programming part. None of these principle standard technologies are hard to learn. They just need to be taught in the right order and expressed through practice. Security standards are hard, but web standards are easy. Yet, most developers I have ever known always fail on the easy stuff. If you, as a potential educator, aren't taking these technologies seriously then neither will your prospective students.

wyck 10y ago

Web Push Notifications are Google Fundamentals when using Firebase. A more appropriate title.

kinlan 10y ago
We are not saying to use Firebase although there is a firebase JS lib. If you use Chrome on Android it connects to FCM (which is backed by firebase product but it's not the same, it was called Google Cloud Messaging), if you Mozilla it connects to their push service. That's the way the spec works, the browser controls what push service you connect to.
- kinlan 10y ago
  To be clear our guidance is to follow the spec.

ucarion 10y ago

In case someone reading this can fix it, there's a typo: > App install banners make it easy for users to add your app to their home screen with a single click, and is an indication to the user that the app their adding, meets an important quality bar. "their" should be "they're", and there shouldn't be a comma after "adding", I think.

ebbv 10y ago
Specifically the second "their".

divbit 10y ago

Might want to debug that in safari...

divbit 10y ago
Wait - looks the same in firefox, maybe just my internet sorry :)
- divbit 10y ago
  eh, loads perfect in chrome, but this is what I'm seeing in safari / firefox: http://imgur.com/a/reN2K http://imgur.com/a/reN2K
  - divbit 10y ago
    That said, thanks for the site, looks like something I probably need to read :)

ffwacom 10y ago

"Web push notifications allow users to opt-in to timely updates from sites they love and allow you to effectively re-engage them with customized, relevant content." Christ, opting into these things has always been a mistake for me.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

You people complaining this isn't about fundamentals have your priorities skewed. The web today is all about selling things and web developers finding their next gig. Those are the only fundamentals the web cares about today.