I think many of us expected this. In previous years, much of the discussion and knowledge-sharing among web developers has been about ways to minimize page-load

I think many of us expected this. In previous years, much of the discussion and knowledge-sharing among web developers has been about ways to minimize page-loads, and about flash dying. Nowadays with the proliferation of JS MV*, Node on the server-side, HTML5 games in JS, much of the focus and attention has been about how to find better performance in our JS code, how to more efficiently deal with the DOM and re-paints, how to get JS to a state where we can have a lot more complex games inside the browser. Also has to do with the nature of putting everyone on the client-side and the increased amounts of libraries being used (many of which are probably in the user's browser cache already). That said, I'm not sure if it's the change in focus alone, or if it's also because many of the new-er web developers haven't yet been working for the web back when the discussion was about page-loads and when people cared more about supporting legacy-legacy-legacy browsers (I'm glad we're slowly letting that go...). Regarding web fonts, well I guess it has to do with our obsession with pretty apps and thus, pretty fonts too.