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Front End Web Development Feeds and Newsletters

The world of Web Development is exciting and moves fast - particularly front end development in the past few years.

Although all of this innovation is great, it can sometimes be pretty difficult to keep up with. One of the ways I keep on top of the latest changes, trends and new technologies is by following the blogs and newsletters of companies and developers leading the industry.

I'm always on the lookout for more blogs or newsletters! If you have any suggestions I should check out get in touch!

Table of Contents

  1. Intro
  2. Browser Vendors
  3. Company Blogs
  4. Development Blogs
  5. Developers and Designers
  6. Magazines
  7. Newsletters

Intro

I thought I'd crack out a post I can point people to with a list of the feeds and newsletters I subscribe to, with a bit of hopefully useful info so you know if you want to subscribe yourself. Most of these are focused on:

  • Front End Development
  • Full-Stack development
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • Accessibility
  • Web Performance
  • Browsers
  • 11ty

I find it quite fun that the format for the majority of these feeds about modern web development is RSS, a technology that has existed since 1999! If you're looking for a feed reader I use Feedbin, which is a great cloud RSS and newsletter reader across multiple platforms. You can also find an export of my RSS subscriptions on my Github.

Browser Vendors

Useful for keeping up with changes to the biggest browsers. Topics can be quite technical and writing not particularly approachable, but probably worth a look. I tend to scan the titles to decide if it's something that will likely affect me before reading.

  • Google Chrome blog [feed] — Fairly approachable summaries of changes, updates and new features coming to Google chrome and probably other chromium browsers;
  • Chromium Blog [feed] — Similar to the Google Chrome blog but more technical, and posts summaries of every major version;
  • Mozilla Hacks [feed] — Updates on Firefox and Gecko changes, mixture of technical level, summary of major updates;
  • Microsoft Edge Blog [feed] — MS' work on Blink and Chromium, will eventually come to all Chromium browsers so good to follow;
  • Planet Webkit [feed] — Very technical updates to WebKit and Safari - useful however due to a lack of official Safari updates. Keep in mind WebKit changes can take months or even years to make their way to Safari;
  • Planet Igalia [feed] — The Igalia team have contributed to all browsers, most recently :focus-visible in Safari. Some really deep-dives into very technical topics. Not for everyone.

Company Blogs

Any blogs by development agencies or dev-related products. A few of the agency blogs have some great tips, best practices and open-source tools. I tend to be a bit wary of product blogs as they're always trying to sell but there are some decent ones out there.

  • 9Elements [feed] — Agency with some great front-end skills in their team. I particularly like Nils Binder's articles on layout like "The Devil's Albatross";
  • Axess Lab [feed] — Accessibility consultants, they have some great articles offering approachable summaries for accessibility topics including "What is a screen reader?";
  • Bejamas [feed] — An expert Jamstack agency, if you want more info on Static Site Generators or Headless CMS' their articles are brilliant;
  • DebugBear [feed] — DebugBear sells web performance monitoring, I haven't used their product but they write some decent high-level articles about improving web performance.
  • Filament Group [feed] — If you've been on the web a while you've probably used a tool made by Filament Group! Authors of Respond.js, Picturefill, LoadCSS and the most common async CSS pattern - they do great open-source work and really interesting articles about them.
  • Volument Minimalism [feed] — Privacy-focused analytics, haven't used the product but their insight on analytics and modern development is interesting and straight to the point.

Development Blogs

Blogs generally aimed at sharing knowledge about web development. Separate from Developers and Magazines as they feel somewhere between the two.

  • CSS { In Real Life } [feed] — Generally short posts focused on CSS and layout. "Detecting Hover-Capable Devices" is a great recent one to check out;
  • Joy of Computing [feed] — More general that most other feeds here. Short daily posts about cool or interesting things going on in Computing, can be pretty fun too;
  • Piccalilli [feed] — Piccalilli by Andy Bell has great tutorials and summaries on building modern front ends. Check out "Modern CSS Reset". The Piccalilli community membership is also great if you're into that!
  • QuirksMode Blog [feed] — QuirksMode has been writing about the web since 2004, talking a lot about browsers and thinking about how the web as a whole should work. Great thinkpieces.
  • web.dev [feed] — Posts mostly by Google Web Developers introducing and covering best practices and new features in the web. The courses on the site are also well worth checking out;
  • Web Platform News [feed] — Provides short updates on anything new in the web, including bugs and announcements you might not find elsewhere. Only available as a screenshot unless you pay $2/month on Patreon, worth considering though as I've found it very useful.

Developers and Designers

These are individual devs and designers who are experts in their field. Not as frequent posts, but there are some real gems here. In alphabetical order for simplicity, and just a short summary as there's a few!

  • Addy Osmani [feed] — Google developer focusing on performance. Author of great book "Image Optimisation";
  • Adrian Roselli [feed] — One of the best writers on accessibility and does loads of research and testing of screen readers etc;
  • Ahmad Shadeed [feed] — Dev/Designer who is a master of CSS;
  • Brad Frost [feed] — Mostly thoughts on the front end design industry and design systems;
  • Bruce Lawson [feed] — Web veteran with a lot of accessibility knowledge. His Reading Lists provide a great ~monthly list of great articles from around the web.
  • Bryan Robinson [feed] — 11ty wizard and devrel for Sanity - a decent-looking headless CMS;
  • Chen Hui Jing [feed] — Well written articles from all areas of web dev from devops to CSS debugging;
  • Christian Heilmann [feed] — Shorter posts and introductions to various front end topics;
  • Dave Rupert [feed] — co-host of podcast ShopTalk, most of the blog is more about life as a dev and productivity but has some great dev articles also;
  • David Walsh [feed] — One of the longest running dev blogs, David has so many brilliant articles, many of which are short tips with exactly what you need;
  • Dmitri Pavlutin [feed] — I love Dmitri's introductions to new JavaScript and React features and patterns;
  • Harry Roberts/CSS Wizardry [feed] — Master web performance consultant, great articles providing fairly easy and accessible performance tips and advice;
  • Heydon Pickering [feed] — Internet maverick, accessibility expert, design systems writer and author of the brilliant "Inclusive Components";
  • Hidde De Vries [feed] — Accessibility, HTML and CSS expert;
  • Jake Archibald [feed] — Google developer and co-host of HTTP 203, writes great articles on web performance, images and modern JavaScript;
  • Jens Oliver Meiert [feed] — What you didn't realise you didn't know about HTML. Check out "HTML Concepts: Body-Ok";
  • Jeremy Keith [feed] — Jeremy has been writing about the web since 2001 and always has interesting thoughts of development and the industry in general. Manages the great agency Clearleft.
  • Jeremy Wagner [feed] — Web performance consultant and fan of simple JavaScript;
  • Josh W Comeau [feed] — React developer, writes great articles about JavaScript and HTML/CSS from the perspective of a JS dev;
  • Kat Maddox [feed] — Internet anarchist and computer/programming comedian.
  • Lea Verou [feed] — Works on web standards with the W3C Technical Architecture Group. Blog focused on CSS and JS;
  • Malte Ubl [feed] — Web developer and software designer, particularly good articles on web performance;
  • Manuel Matuzovic [feed] — Creator of HTMHell, general tips and snippets of HTML, CSS and on accessibility;
  • Marcus Herrmann [feed] — Accessibility specialist, writes lots of great articles helping you test for accessibility and digging into testing various practices.
  • Marko Saric [feed] — Articles on analytics, web privacy and the state of the web as a whole;
  • Max Böck [feed] — Creative front end developer and creator of the Whimsical Web Club;
  • Maximiliano Firtman [feed] — Best known for being a PWA expert and a better source of Safari news than anyone who work on it. I particularly love his Image CDN article;
  • Nicolas Hoizey [feed] — 11ty plugin author and writes on front end developer topics. He also shares lots of great wee stuff on his "Notes";
  • Rachel Andrew [feed] — One of the best technical writers /editors around, working for Smashing, MDN and web.dev. Brilliant writing about CSS Layout;
  • Sam Smith [feed] — Great freelance dev, writes about anything relevant to modern web development;
  • Sam Thorogood [feed] — Technical articles about JS, HTML and computing;
  • Sara Soueidan [feed] — Writes about Accessibility, HTML, CSS and SVG mostly but anything relevant to front end development;
  • Sia Karamalegos [feed] — Writes a lot about 11ty, but also more general Jamstack and web performance topics;
  • Thomas Steiner [feed] — Google developer working on PWAs and 'Project Fugu', blog is more general explanations of browser features and APIs.
  • Tim Kadlec [feed] — Now working at WebPageTest, great writing on web performance;
  • Tobias Ahlin Bjerrome [feed] — Writes about JS, CSS and Design. Each post focuses on one a particular topic and explains it really well and thoroughly.
  • Zach Leatherman [feed] — Now working at Netlify, author of 11ty, Glyphhanger and has written some of the best Web Font loading articles around;
  • Zell Liew [feed] — Brilliant writer whose articles are super easy to understand. Covers so many useful topics including system setup, build chains, technical JavaScript and industry advice;

Magazines

The big blogs that feature articles from many different authors. A few only run for a month a year, others are year-round. If you only want to subscribe to a few blogs, make it these ones.

Year-round

  • CSS Tricks [feed] — The big one, possibly the best source for web development articles out there;
  • Smashing Magazine [feed] — Generally goes into more detail than CSS Tricks, with longer and more in-depth articles;
  • Codrops [feed] — Publishes the 'Collective', a regular summary of great articles in web development. Also has some super cool JavaScript effect tutorials;

Seasonal

  • 24 Accessibility [feed] — Advent calendar of accessibility articles;
  • 24 ways [feed] — Advent calendar of cool/impressive things you can do on the web;
  • JavaScript January [feed] — Features all sorts of JS-related articles throughout January, including vanilla, front end frameworks, node.js and testing;
  • Web Performance Calendar [feed] — Advent calendar of front and back end web performance articles.

Newsletters

Some feed readers allow you to receive email newsletters in the same place, I used Feedbin for this. Regardless, these are some great newsletters to subscribe to:

  • Calibre Performance Newsletter — Regular summary of web performance articles;
  • CSS Layout News — Curated by Rachel Andrew, this is a newsletter with news, articles and tips specifically focused on web page layouts with CSS;
  • Fauna Developer Weekly — Developer-focused tips and tricks. Fauna is a database provider so a bit more back end focused;
  • Frontend Focus — Weekly roundup of front end news and articles, also includes tutorials, jobs and tool suggestions;
  • Frontend Horse — focuses on modern CSS and really dynamic and animated interactions. Not super frequent but each issue goes into so much depth;
  • Frontend Weekly — Lots of articles about the JS ecosystem, particularly React tools and libraries;
  • JAMstacked — Jamstack news, articles, libraries and platforms;
  • Rendezvous with Cassidoo — Weekly newsletter with a few links about the web, a few about other things, an interview question to try and a joke!
  • The UI Animation Newsletter — A few links with super cool UI animations to check out;
  • Tiny Web Animation — a short email with 3 links to cool web animations;
  • Web Development Reading List — as the name suggests, a list of articles to check out about web development. Well curated;
  • Web Tools weekly — Weekly newsletter that focuses on tooling rather than articles. Links to libraries, packages, platforms and tools you can use while developing.

Thoughts or comments?

If you have any comments or feedback on this article, let me know! I'd love to hear your thoughts, go ahead and send me an email at alistair@accudio.com or contact me on Mastodon.