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Year 2021

1,767 articles published in 2021.

Engineering — Building the Cloudflare Summer Challenge Application

Building the Cloudflare Summer Challenge Application

If you haven’t already heard, we’re hosting the Cloudflare Summer Developer Challenge, a contest for the Cloudflare community at large. Anybody – yes, including you – can sign up for free and compete for a chance to win one of 300 available prizes.

LLukeedLukeed·August 13, 2021Engineering
Career & Teams — Modelling Developer Infrastructure Teams - Shopify

Modelling Developer Infrastructure Teams - Shopify

I’ve been managing Developer Infrastructure teams (alternatively known as Developer Acceleration, Developer Productivity, and other such names) for almost a decade now. Developer Infrastructure (which we usually shorten to “Dev Infra”) covers a lot of ground, especially at a company like Shopify that’s invested heavily in the area, from developer environments and continuous integration/continuous

SEShopify Engineering·August 13, 2021Career & Teams
Engineering — More devices, fewer CAPTCHAs, happier users

More devices, fewer CAPTCHAs, happier users

Today, we are taking another step in helping to reduce the Internet’s reliance on CAPTCHAs to prove that you are not a robot. We are expanding the reach of our Cryptographic Attestation of Personhood experiment by adding support for a much wider range of devices.

WTWesley, TaraWesley, Tara·August 12, 2021Engineering
Engineering — Stay alert

Stay alert

A few days ago, Chris wrote up his thoughts about how alert(), confirm(), and prompt() were being deprecated by Chrome and collected a bunch of thoughts from

RRRobin RendleRobin Rendle·August 12, 2021Engineering
Performance — Useful Figma Plugins And Tools — Smashing Magazine

Useful Figma Plugins And Tools — Smashing Magazine

Useful Figma plugins that will help you fix all the little slowdowns and boost your productivity. From color management and image assets to SVG shapes and animation. Whether you’re just starting out with Figma or have been using it for a good while now, this post will give you just enough pointers to make your design process faster and smoother.

JJJanet JohnJanet John·August 12, 2021Performance
Engineering — Napkin

Napkin

We took a surface level look at Pipedream the other day, which really does look cool. It's like a much more modern and fancy version of what Yahoo Pipes was.

CCChris Coyier·August 11, 2021Engineering
Frontend — Open-sourcing a more precise time appliance

Open-sourcing a more precise time appliance

Facebook engineers have built and open-sourced an Open Compute Time Appliance, an important component of the modern timing infrastructure. To make this possible, we came up with the Time Card — a PCI Express (PCIe) card that can turn almost any commodity server into a time appliance. With the help of the OCP community, we […]

MEMeta Engineering·August 11, 2021Frontend
Engineering — Bridging the Gap Between Developers and End Users - Shopify

Bridging the Gap Between Developers and End Users - Shopify

In every business, regardless of industry, it is important to keep an open communication line between the consumer and the producer. In the tech world, this line of communication comes in the form of customer support, chatbots, or contact forms.

SEShopify Engineering·August 11, 2021Engineering
Design & UX — How We Design Our APIs at Slack

How We Design Our APIs at Slack

More than five years ago, we launched the Slack Platform, giving developers an easy way to build apps in Slack and publish them in our App Directory. Today, millions of users bring their work into Slack, and those apps built by over 885,000 active developers on the platform are key to further improving collaboration in…

SSSaurabh SahniSaurabh Sahni·August 11, 2021Design & UX
Frontend — New Smashing Workshops on Front-End & Design — Smashing Magazine

New Smashing Workshops on Front-End & Design — Smashing Magazine

How do we build and establish a successful, bulletproof design system? What’s the state of HTML Email? And what are new, smart interface design patterns we could use? Let’s find out. With our [brand new online workshops](https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/) on front-end & design — to help us all boost skills online.

ILIris LjesnjaninIris Ljesnjanin·August 11, 2021Frontend
Security — Handling Mounting And Unmounting Of Navigation Routes In React Native — Smashing Magazine

Handling Mounting And Unmounting Of Navigation Routes In React Native — Smashing Magazine

Often you need two different sets of navigation stacks for pre and post user authentication. Usually, to see more content, you have to be authenticated in some way. In many Apps, authentication is one of the most important parts because it confirms that the person trying to gain access to protected content has the right to access the information. Learning how to do it right is an important step in

DDDaniel DonDaniel Don·August 11, 2021Security
Frontend — View Source (on Mobile)

View Source (on Mobile)

Have you ever wished you could see the HTML source of a web page while on a mobile browser, which generally doesn't offer that feature? If you have a desktop

CCChris Coyier·August 10, 2021Frontend
Frontend — CSS Nesting, specificity, and you

CSS Nesting, specificity, and you

Here’s Kilian Valkhof on CSS nesting which isn't available in browsers yet, but will be soon. There are a few differences he notes between CSS nesting and

RRRobin RendleRobin Rendle·August 10, 2021Frontend
Frontend — The World of CSS Transforms

The World of CSS Transforms

The “transform” property is such a powerful part of the CSS language! In this blog post, we'll take a deep look at this property and see some of the nifty things it can do.

JWJosh W. Comeau·August 9, 2021Frontend
Networking — Risk-driven backbone management during COVID-19 and beyond

Risk-driven backbone management during COVID-19 and beyond

What the research is: A first-of-its-kind study detailing our backbone management strategy to ensure high service performance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic moved most social interactions online and caused an unprecedented stress test on our global network infrastructure with tens of data center regions. At this scale, failures such as fiber cuts, router misconfigurations, […] Read

MEMeta Engineering·August 9, 2021Networking
Performance — HTTP/3 From A To Z: Core Concepts — Smashing Magazine

HTTP/3 From A To Z: Core Concepts — Smashing Magazine

After almost five years in development, the new HTTP/3 protocol is nearing its final form. Earlier iterations were already available as an experimental feature, but you can expect the availability and use of HTTP/3 proper to ramp up over in 2021. So what exactly is HTTP/3? Why was it needed so soon after HTTP/2? How can or should you use it? And especially, how does it improve web performance? Let

RMRobin MarxRobin Marx·August 9, 2021Performance
Performance — New Nuxt Features past v2.10

New Nuxt Features past v2.10

Nuxt offers an incredible developer experience, with a lot of performance and application setup best practices baked in. In recent releases, they’ve been

SDSarah DrasnerSarah Drasner·August 6, 2021Performance
SRE & Ops — How we built a general purpose key value store for Facebook with ZippyDB

How we built a general purpose key value store for Facebook with ZippyDB

ZippyDB is the largest strongly consistent, geographically distributed key-value store at Facebook. Since we first deployed ZippyDB in 2013, this key-value store has expanded rapidly, and today, ZippyDB serves a number of use cases, ranging from metadata for a distributed filesystem, counting events for both internal and external purposes, to product data that’s used for […]

MEMeta Engineering·August 6, 2021SRE & Ops
Performance — Cloudflare Helps K-12s Go Back to School

Cloudflare Helps K-12s Go Back to School

Cloudflare is excited to announce our Back to School initiative that provides special K-12 Education pricing to help school districts stop cyber attacks while improving web performance.

NKNandini, Kristina WilliamsNandini, Kristina Williams·August 5, 2021Performance
Engineering — Release Radar

Release Radar

It’s been a busy time of the year for our Hubbers (GitHub employees). We’ve been shipping products, getting ready for launches, and taking some much needed time off for the…

MDMichelle DukeMichelle Duke·August 5, 2021Engineering
Design & UX — Usability Pitfalls of Disabled Buttons, and How To Avoid Them — Smashing Magazine

Usability Pitfalls of Disabled Buttons, and How To Avoid Them — Smashing Magazine

How can we make disabled buttons more inclusive? When do they work well, and when do they fail on us? And finally, when do we actually need them, and how can we avoid them? In this article, Vitaly Friedman will take a look to common usability issues with disabled buttons, how to fix these issues and when disabling buttons actually makes sense. We’ll start from the beginning, looking into when disa

VFVitaly FriedmanVitaly Friedman·August 5, 2021Design & UX
Security — Open sourcing Winterfell: A STARK prover and verifier

Open sourcing Winterfell: A STARK prover and verifier

We are releasing Winterfell, our implementation of a STARK prover/verifier to Crates.io Winterfell is an easy to use open source implementation of STARKs for security and privacy applications. One potential application for Winterfell’s zero-knowledge proofs is blockchain privacy and scalability. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” —Clarke’s Third Law What if the

MEMeta Engineering·August 4, 2021Security
Performance — React Children And Iteration Methods — Smashing Magazine

React Children And Iteration Methods — Smashing Magazine

In this article, we’ll discuss and learn about the use case of iterating over React `children` and the ways to do it. In particular, we will deep dive into one of the utility methods, `React.Children.toArray`, that React gives us, which helps to iterate over the children in a way which ensures performance and determinism.

AVArihant VermaArihant Verma·August 4, 2021Performance
Performance — Durable Objects: Easy, Fast, Correct — Choose three

Durable Objects: Easy, Fast, Correct — Choose three

When multiple clients access the same storage concurrently, race conditions abound. Durable Objects can make it easier. We recently rolled out improvements to Durable Objects that automatically correct many common race conditions while actually making your code faster.

KVKenton VardaKenton Varda·August 3, 2021Performance
Frontend — How To Build Resilient JavaScript UIs — Smashing Magazine

How To Build Resilient JavaScript UIs — Smashing Magazine

Embracing the fragility of the web empowers us to build UIs capable of adapting to the functionality they can offer, whilst still providing value to users. The User Experience (UX) doesn’t need to be all or nothing — just what is usable. This premise, known as graceful degradation allows a system to continue working when parts of it are dysfunctional — much like an electric bike becomes a regular

CHCallum HartCallum Hart·August 3, 2021Frontend
Distributed — Evolution of search engines architecture - Algolia New Search Architecture Part 1 - High Scalability -

Evolution of search engines architecture - Algolia New Search Architecture Part 1 - High Scalability -

What would a totally new search engine architecture look like? Who better than Julien Lemoine, Co-founder & CTO of Algolia, to describe what the future of search will look like. This is the first article in a series. Search engines, and more generally, information retrieval systems, play a central role in almost all of today’s technical stacks. Information retrieval started in the beginning of com

HSHigh Scalability·August 2, 2021Distributed
Frontend — Refactoring CSS: Strategy, Regression Testing And Maintenance (Part 2) — Smashing Magazine

Refactoring CSS: Strategy, Regression Testing And Maintenance (Part 2) — Smashing Magazine

After analyzing CSS and its weaknesses, and management giving a green light to the refactoring project, it’s time to get to work. A team needs to agree on the internal code standards and best practices, plan out the refactoring strategy, and outline individual tasks. We need to set up a visual regression testing suite, and a maintenance plan to enforce the new standards and best practices in the f

ABAdrian BeceAdrian Bece·August 2, 2021Frontend
Engineering — Four Lessons We Learned from Creating Spotify’s Desktop App

Four Lessons We Learned from Creating Spotify’s Desktop App

TL;DR Over the years, Spotify’s brand has expanded to encompass a number of products, from mobile apps to to . But sitting at the core is our flagship product, the one that started it all: the desktop app. In of our podcast series, “”, host and Chief R&D Officer Gustav Söderström walks through how the app (and Spotify in general) came to be — and the product lessons you should take away from that

SESpotify Engineering·August 1, 2021Engineering
Engineering — The Future of Work at Cloudflare

The Future of Work at Cloudflare

During Impact Week, we've shared how Cloudflare is providing tools for our customers to minimize their environmental impact as well as what we, as a company, are doing to help society at large. But some critical stakeholders we haven’t talked much about yet are Cloudflare's more than 2,000 employees

MPMatthew Prince, Michelle ZatlynMatthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn·July 30, 2021Engineering
Engineering — Building a sustainable workforce, through communities

Building a sustainable workforce, through communities

At Cloudflare, we place a lot of value on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity, equity, and inclusion lead to better outcomes through improved decision-making, more innovative teams, stronger financial returns and simply a better place to work for everyone.

JVJanet Van HuysseJanet Van Huysse·July 30, 2021Engineering
Career & Teams — Introducing Greencloud

Introducing Greencloud

Greencloud is a coalition of Cloudflare employees who are passionate about the environment. Initially founded in 2019, we’re a cross-functional, global team with a few areas of focus: Awareness, Support, and Advocacy.

AFAnnika, FranciscoAnnika, Francisco·July 30, 2021Career & Teams
Engineering — Cloudflare is joining Pledge 1%

Cloudflare is joining Pledge 1%

We're excited to announce that Cloudflare is joining Pledge 1%. We're joining the more than 12,000 companies in 100 countries that are committed to making a tangible, positive impact in their communities.

MZMichelle ZatlynMichelle Zatlyn·July 30, 2021Engineering