ESM Bundling for Node with Webpack It is 2024 and there is a renaissance in the JavaScript world to replace Webpack with other solutions. As much as create-react-app helped Webpack, it was also responsible for this sentiment. Without going further into those details, which is probably a topic for another article, there are two primary reasons for people trying to move away from Webpack: Performance — slow build times. Complex configuration. However, we should not forget the fact that Webpack is still amazing and nearly works in every possible situation. I have had my hands bu ..read more

Next.js | Clean Architecture against Great Developer Experience Last week, Next.js 12.3 was released. This is not about the cool new things in it. It is more about weird opinions that comes to haunt every now and then when building Enterprise JavaScript applications with it. There are two sides to the technology. First, technology doesn’t matter as long as you can build affordable solutions that truly solve users problems. For example, the choice between Python or Ruby, and/or between Java or Kotlin to build your Web application. We call this a flavor of the ecosystem that you or your tea ..read more

How we got here? A front-end engineer’s perspective! Contemporary Front-end ArchitecturesReasoning about the Data Flows within different components of a software system is the central idea of software architecture. The quality of the architecture is the measure of ease with which you can justify this reasoning! Exploring these data flows and ultimately architectures in today’s web applications is the motivation behind this article. Web applications have evolved from simple static websites (two-tiered architecture) into complex multi-layered SPA and SSR driven API first systems. CMS systems hav ..read more

Doing it the right way — Tapping into the CSS Object ModelCSS Object Model is different than DOM and it plays well with Shadow DOM.Encapsulation is the primary reason why you might want to start using Web Components. In particular, Shadow DOM is the mechanism to achieve true encapsulation. Over the years, web community invented patterns to fix global nature of CSS and JavaScript. These solutions worked but they were not perfect. It took Shadow DOM to really provide the perfect scoping for our CSS.In this article, we will explore ways to apply styles to web components and attempt to arrive at t ..read more