Frances has urged me for years to collect resources for folks getting into performance and platform-oriented web development. The effort has always seemed daunting, but the lack of such a list came up again at work, prompting me to take on the side-quest amidst a different performance yak-shave. If that sounds like procrastination, well, you might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

The result is a new links and resources page page which you can find over in the navigation rail. It's part list-of-things-I-keep-sending-people, part background reading, and part blogroll.

The blogroll section also prompted me to create an OPML export , which you can download or send directly to your feed reader of choice.

The page now contains more than 250 pointers to people and work that I view as important to a culture that is intentional about building a web worth wanting. Hopefully maintenance won't be onerous from here on in. The process of tracking down links to blogs and feeds is a slog, no matter how good the tooling. Very often, this involved heading to people's sites and reading the view-source://

FOMO

Having done this dozens of times on the sites of brilliant and talented web developers in a short period of time, a few things stood out.

First — and I cannot emphasise this enough — holy cow.

The things creative folks can do today with CSS, HTML, and SVG in good browsers is astonishing. If you want to be inspired about what's possible without dragging bloated legacy frameworks along, the work of Ana Tudor, Jhey, Julia Miocene, Bramus, Adam, and so many others can't help but raise your spirits. The CodePen community, in particular, is incredible, and I could (and have) spend hours just clicking through and dissecting clever uses of the platform from the site's "best of" links.

Second, 11ty and Astro have won the hearts of the best minds.

It's not universal, but the overwhelming bulk of personal pages by the most talented frontenders are now built with SSGs that put them in total control. React, Next, and even Nuxt are absent from pages of the folks who really know what they're doing. This ought to be a strong signal to hiring managers looking to cut through the noise.

Next, when did RSS/Atom previews get so dang beautiful?

The art and effort put into XSLT styling like Elly Loel's is gobsmacking. I am verklempt that not only does my feed not look that good, my site doesn't look that polished.

Last, whimsy isn't dead.

Webrings, guestbooks, ASCII art in comments, and every other fun and silly flourish are out there, going strong, just below the surface of the JavaScript-Industrial Complex's thinkfluencer hype recycling.

And it's wonderful.

My overwhelming feeling after composing this collection is gratitude. So many wonderful people are doing great things, based on values that put users first. Sitting with their work gives me hope, and I hope their inspiration can spark something similar for you.