My day at State of the Browser 2024
Last weekend I was at State of the Browser in London. It’s a fantastic conference, focusing on web development and many social issues in our industry. The talks were brilliantly curated and organised, and it was overall a brilliant day. In this post I’ll share my thoughts from the day and my takeaways. The talks will be available online in the new few months if any catch your attention!
Sustainable Futures: Funding the Web Ecosystem
The first talk of the day was from Stephanie Stimac, discussing how the browser and web ecosystem is perhaps a little more fragile than it would at first appear. My job, our entire industry, and in fact pretty much everyone’s lives all rely on web browsers. These browsers are developed, owned and funded by mega-corporations like Google and Apple. Even Mozilla with Firefox is mostly funded by Google.
Stephanie took us through a thought experiment — what would happen to Chrome if Google disappeared? It may be open-source but it turns out browsers are extremely complex and difficult to make!
It’s a scary thought that the basis of the web is all funded by hyper-capitalist corporations. The key takeaway was to encourage us to have discussions over how we can fund browsers — and open-source software more generally — in a more sustainable way.
It was a great start for the day, criticising capitalism and a couple Dune references!
No industry for old men
Steve Faulkner followed, with an extremely funny and chaotic run-through of the process of Accessibility standards. The accessibility issues in question were interesting to hear about, but my main takeaway was an insight into the history of web standards, and some really fascinating insights into the web industry in its early years. He gave some great advice and detail over how the W3C works and how anyone can contribute to web and accessibility standards. He also made many jokes at the expense of his friends in the industry — “without naming any names… Joe” — which was very entertaining!
The mazy web she whirls: starting Open Web Advocacy
Stuart Langridge took the stage next with a talk about Open Web Advocacy, speaking with legislators to hold big tech companies to account.
I’ve seen a fair few conference talks and let me tell you — this was one of the best. Stuart did an absolutely beautiful job ‘weaving’ together the normally quite dry topic of web legislation, with the Lord Tennyson poem “The Lady of Shallot”:
Out flew the web, and floated wide, The mirror cracked from side to side, "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.
I almost don’t want to spoil how he does it, because it was an absolute delight you should experience yourself when the recording comes out! He was opening up the quite inaccessible topic of browser competition and functionality restriction to be more entertaining and understandable, which is the goal of Open Web Advocacy.
The development side of the talk was sharing the story of how Open Web Advocacy came to be, and how it ended up representing a huge number of independent developers and speaking to governments about web competition. Lots of gems like how all iOS browsers are actually Safari, how Android limits certain functionality to Chrome, and how Apple is fighting against the power and independence of the web.
Check out the talk when it comes out and give your support to Open Web Advocacy!
Web Components: Little Bits
Our final talk of the morning was from David Darnes, about implementing Web Components. It was a great introduction to how Web Components can be used to implement small functional pieces of JavaScript on a page. I’m a big fan of this kind of talk (I’ve done one myself!), as it adds a bit of code to the day that’s really easy to follow along, and super practical to our work. Dave’s example was about the little speaker on his website that says his name — often by his dad.
After the talk I’m excited to use Web Components a little more!
Around the wwworld: Web MIDI, Web AUDIO and what the web does best
Oh my goodness Katie Fenn’s talk was such good fun! She used web APIs like WebMIDI and WebAudio to interact with a MIDI-enabled synthesiser to recreate Daft Punk’s “Around the world”. Using a browser!!!
It was a great talk, we were all bopping away to the music, learning about how to make EDM, synthesisers, MIDI, and audio on the web.
I’d recommend watching the talk when it comes out, but Katie has recorded it on YouTube also. Just remember this is all controlled and produced by a browser! Katie also has a recording on YouTube.
Code Your Future
Gayle Ngozi took to the stage to talk about Code your Future, which works with disadvantaged people and refugees to teach skills in development. It was a great talk, focusing on how difficult it can be in those situations to get a job and how tech and coding can be a way out of that. The takeaway was how we can all help make an impact by contributing time, resources, and hiring these fantastic developers.
Improving Accessibility with ARIA-AT: A Web Standards Case Study
Our second talk of the day about web standards, Lola Odelola took us in detail over how the W3C operates including Working Groups and Community Groups. This was in the context of working through a standard for automated testing of Accessibility Technologies. It was really interesting hearing about how the W3C works, and about such an important topic also.
Fluid typography (and its role in design systems)
Richard Rutter — founder of the wonderful Clearleft — finished the day with a slightly more design-focused talk. His talk was about fluid typography, how you can use fluid type systems to build a more consistent type experience based on screen size without harsh breakpoints.
We use fluid typography in our work already when appropriate, but Richard presented some really interesting tools and best practices — see utopia.fyi — which I’m excited to share with the rest of the Series Eight team!
Summing up
It was an absolutely brilliant day, and flew by. The State of the Browser team always puts on a fantastic event, and a big thank you to them and the speakers for such a high quality conference. So my key takeaways:
- Discuss alternative funding models for browsers;
- Participate in web accessibility standards (chaotic);
- Join Open Web Advocacy and claim the web for us;
- Build web components;
- Make music with browsers 🎶 and try not buy a synthesiser — seriously Alistair, you don’t need one;
- Support non-profit organisations making the tech industry more accessible;
- Participate in web accessibility standards (serious);
- Use fluid type!