Journal — hire-web-dev.com https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/ Notes on frontend engineering, WebGL, motion and web performance. en-gb Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Scroll-driven Animation https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/scroll-driven-animation/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/scroll-driven-animation/ Why trigger-based scroll animation accumulates bugs, and why treating scroll position as a pure input fixes an entire class of them at once. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Shaders for App Developers https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/shaders-for-app-developers/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/shaders-for-app-developers/ What I wish someone had told me before my first fragment shader. Not a tutorial — a list of the assumptions from application code that you need to put down. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Render Budgets as Design Material https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/render-budgets/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/render-budgets/ A frame is sixteen milliseconds. Spending it is a design decision, and it belongs in the design conversation rather than in a bug ticket three weeks after… Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Motion That Means Something https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/motion-with-meaning/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/motion-with-meaning/ A single test for whether an animation should exist, and what I got wrong for the first two years of doing this professionally. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Accessible Motion is a Design Problem https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/accessible-motion/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/accessible-motion/ Wrapping everything in a media query that disables animation is compliance, not design. The people who need it deserve a considered alternative rather than a… Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 State That Survives a Bad Network https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/state-on-bad-networks/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/state-on-bad-networks/ Most interfaces are built as though requests succeed quickly. They usually do, which is exactly why the failure paths are where the embarrassing bugs live. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Typography on the Web https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/web-typography/ https://www.hire-web-dev.com/journal/web-typography/ The part of frontend work where the defaults are most wrong and the fixes are cheapest. Also the thing I keep having to relearn every couple of years. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000