SitePoint Weekly: World of Workcraft

A Moment.js replacement, Applemas season's greetings, your creepy new VR office + resisting the Audible monopoly No images? [Click here]( [SitePoint Weekly]( [SitePoint Weekly]( SitePoint Weekly – 17 September 2020 🍓 The freshest resources, stories, and exclusive content for web developers, designers, and digital creators. ♾️ Pointed Advice 🦾 A selection of our latest articles and tutorials [Learn date-fns: A Lightweight JavaScript Date Library]( [Learn date-fns: A Lightweight JavaScript Date Library]( James Hibbard [🐦]( With the Moment.js maintainers putting the library into maintenance mode, it's time to pick up a new date library. date-fns is lightweight, functional, and makes the ideal choice. SitePoint veteran JavaScript editor James Hibbard shows you the ropes. [React with TypeScript: Best Practices]( [React with TypeScript: Best Practices]( Joe Previte [🐦]( It can be tricky to work with React and TypeScript and find the right answers to roadblocks. We've put together best practices and examples with the help of Facebook Open Source developer advocate Joe Previte. [Style React Components: 7 Ways Compared]( [Style React Components: 7 Ways Compared]( Praveen Kumar [🐦]( Understand the best ways to style React components. We compare regular CSS with preprocessors like Sass and CSS-in-JS libraries like styled-components. ♾️ World of Workcraft 🍕 Web development and technology links from around the web The Rundown Technology news, society, and culture It's announcement week for a couple of companies you've heard of before. Apple: Apple Watch Series 6, iPad Air, Fitness+, & Apple One Bundle - Apple announced the [Apple Watch Series 6, which will measure blood oxygen levels](. - This is neat: [Family Setup will let you manage multiple Apple Watches from a single iPhone](. There are a bunch of things about the Watch that are legitimately helpful for kids who may not be ready for a phone. - Apple announced [a new iPad Air that looks like an iPad Pro]( and will work with the Magic Keyboard (which costs over half the price of the US$599 iPad Air itself). - Apple is retiring from the rat race to start a yoga studio, except the yoga studio is called [Fitness+]( and Apple has no plans to retire from the rat race. - The [Apple One subscription bundle]( brings Music, Arcade, iCloud Storage, TV+, and News+ under one payment. A pretty decent discount for you, big gains! in services revenue for Apple. - One thing remains consistent, which is that Apple is not doing a good job at DevRel lately. [Apple surprised iPhone users with a next-day iOS 14 release. App developers are pissed.]( Amidst it all, Spotify said that the [Apple One bundle is a 'threat to collective freedom'](. As much as I've been consistently grumpy with Apple since The Beginning of the Newsletter, my soft spot for Spotify has worn away over the years. Spotify has failed to capitalize on a number of the concessions they've gained from Apple. The Watch app and Siri integration are half-baked, even considering the limitations Apple imposes. I actually switched to Apple Music, which pays slightly higher rates to artists and allows me to pretend my HEOS/Sonos Frankenstein is not totally ridiculous, while I moved all of my in-app subscriptions to direct developer relationships. ♾️ Facebook Connect: Oculus Quest 2, R.I.P. Rift, & Your Virtual Office! - Facebook announced the [Oculus Quest 2]( with an entry cost of US$299. The Verge says it has a great screen and price but comes with a bunch of downsides, such as a cumbersome design and a Facebook sign-in requirement. - It's also the end of the road for the Rift. [The Rift S is being killed off]( with the launch of the Quest 2. - Facebook announced a [virtual office experience called Infinite Office](. I haven't tried this, but it's hard to imagine VR tech has come far enough since the first Rift, which gathers dust on my bookshelf, for this to be even remotely appealing. - Also: why are we continuously trying to replicate office paradigms in a remote work world? It's bizarre. Leave it behind already. It's like pouring your liquor store wine in the bathtub so you can wade barefoot in it and get your fix of medieval, bacteria-infested stompfestival. Probably the biggest news of the week, even if not the sexiest: [NVIDIA will acquire Arm for $40 billion](. This puts Intel in quite a position. It's hard to feel good about an Intel CPU purchase right now, given Ryzen pricing and performance. Apple is phasing its Intel silicon right out of the product line. And NVIDIA, which has become an unstoppable force in recent years, is about to apply a new kind of pressure. At least in 2021, it's quite unlikely that there'll be Intel Inside for most of us. ♾️ - “[I have blood on my hands](”: a whistleblower tells BuzzFeed News that Facebook knew about and ignored global political manipulation. - The TikTok saga is still a wild, neverending ride. After a near-sale to Oracle (???), China [indicated it may kill TikTok’s US operations]( rather than see them sold. But the latest reports suggest [TikTok may IPO globally instead]( if Trump approves a deal where Oracle and Walmart own minority stakes in the company. And that particular if is always the least predictable one. - Apple [will not let Epic Games re-apply]( to the Apple Developer Program for at least one year. It is also [still making ridiculous, hyperbolic arguments](, as it has in every preceding App Store debate — though not quite to these heights. Also: "[they're only doing it for attention.](" - Google Groups is [finally leaving its Google Classique styling behind]( in favor of Material Design. - Is the vaunted cloud acceleration [falling flat](? - Amazon Alexa for Landlords [is dystopia incarnate](. This product, designed to be built into apartment buildings, comes from the same company that [recently appointed a former NSA chief to its board](. The one in charge during the Snowden disclosures, to be precise. - Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ads. [Few are buying it](. - We mentioned the DoJ preparing to bring an antitrust lawsuit against Google recently. Now the FTC is [reportedly working on one against Facebook](. - [Over 1,000 parents sign an open letter protesting facial recognition in schools](. I would definitely encourage my children to leave their faces at home should this became widespread. - A Berkeley study [says 90% carbon-free electricity is achievable by 2035](. Naturally, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern [has pledged to go 100% renewable by 2030](. ♾️ Taking on Audible's Audiobook Monopoly You may have seen this Fast Company article on [the author taking a stand against Amazon's audiobook monopoly](. That author is Cory Doctorow, who we've featured in recent issues for his important anti-monopoly work. Cory famously makes digital copies of his books available for free — even with Creative Commons licensing. It's how I started reading them in the early 2000s as a uni student, trackpad-on-iBook instead of iPad or Kindle. Now he's using his upcoming book launch, Attack Surface, to [demonstrate the viability of self-publishing audiobooks]( without giving in to Audible's mandatory DRM policy. [Attack Surface - Cory Doctorow]( Attack Surface: audiobook for the third Little Brother book When cyberweapons come home from Iraq and Eastern Europe to attack US protesters - a technothriller narrated by Amber Benson. ➤ [Why Kickstarter just to avoid Audible?]( If you want to check out some copyleft infopunk fiction that comes recommended by Neil Gaiman and Edward Snowden, you can grab a DRM-free copy of many of Cory's books on his site — classics to try include [Little Brother](, [Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom](, and [Eastern Standard Tribe](. ♾️ Versioning Web development, design, and tooling Age of the Denosaur [Deno 1.4 was released]( this week, bringing a number of significant changes with it, including a web-standard WebSocket API, a flag to auto-restart running scripts on file change, and integrated test coverage. - Take a look at [denopack](, a CLI tool and plugin collection for bundling code to be used with Deno. - Interested in picking up Deno? Our growing collection of introductory material is a click away — read [our getting started guide]( and find an index of the rest once you get to the end. - Need help with something that's not there? [Let me know](mailto:joel.falconer@sitepoint.com) and we'll sort you out. Jammedstack If you recall Matt Mullenweg's controversial comments on the Jamstack, there's been plenty of time for the responses to roll in. [Brian Rinaldi of JAMstacked]( does a great job of rounding up the best from [Netlify](, [Stackbit](, [Chris Coyier](, and others. For what it's worth, we're both bullish on the Jamstack and grateful for the 20 years of accessible publishing WordPress has enabled. SitePoint moved to Gatsby (with headless WordPress) in April, and we have no regrets. ♾️ - The legendary [Rachel Andrew]( has published [a guide to CSS masking on web.dev](. - Add these fun randomly-generated characters to your apps and games with [Bigheads](, via React library, SVG, or image. This would make a neat user-customizable avatar generator. - [BGJar]( is a free SVG background generator for your projects. - [Anyfiddle](, according to the tin, is JSFiddle for any language. Start coding with pre-built templates for Node, Laravel, Django, and more. - AVIF has landed — [a new image format derived from the keyframes of AV1 video](. It's a royalty-free format, and it's already supported in Chrome 85 on desktop. - Here's a guide to [handling typography when designing a Material Design theme]( with Figma. — Web accessibility is critically important. Sometimes sites are built with the best intentions but ultimately poor accessibility because it's hard to imagine how disabilities change the user experience if you don't have one. That makes actively seeking out the perspectives of disabled people important — whether through friendship and discussion or resources online. Holly Tuke has written a great article on the [5 most annoying website features she faces as a blind person]( each day. It's a great insight into common UX nuisances for those who browse with a screen reader. — You can level up your productivity in a major way with Vim commands in Visual Studio Code. The Vim learning curve is quite famously a cliff (... never mind the gruesome scene at the bottom). SitePoint author Joe Previte has [built the perfect active learning kit for turning those commands into muscle memory]( — exit instructions included. It's a $10 digital download, but good value and very effective. ♾️ Logic Flow Computing, customization, automation, and productivity [Mailbrew](, one of my favorite tools of 2020, is one major step closer to being the place to manage all of your content consumption with [the addition of Read Later functionality]( and, to start, a Chrome extension. — Roam Research has [taken $9 million in funding]( on a $200 million valuation (this is a lot more than most seed rounds, i.e. 25x more). - This could fuel faster, better product development, or it could be another interesting tool that turns into a mediocre mass-market product due to exit pressure. Always a gamble! - However, I have heard one of the investors (Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison) be intelligent on podcasts. That is the vaguely-optimistic, tenuously-related sign you can feel free to cling to for dear life. — [Material Shell]( is a modern desktop interface packaged as a GNOME Shell extension. It's designed to improve productivity by simplifying navigation and reducing the need to manipulate windows. — As everyone's been telling you, coronavirus remote work is not normal remote work. I've been working from home for 15 years, and 2020 is the first year I started to causing myself issues by staying seated at the screen for too long. I used to wonder what the point of the Apple Watch's 12 one-minute stand goals was. Who needs this? I understand now. Boy, do I understand. But I digress. [WFH Wakeup]( is a tool for Mac and Chrome that hopes to get you taking more frequent, more active breaks. It'll keep you on a proper break schedule, and make sure you do some functionally useful movements with that time. — - Your [‘surge capacity’ is depleted](, and it’s why you feel awful. - [Command is a mobile browser]( (iOS/iPadOS) for thinking — tab decluttering, highlighting, annotation and tagging, and even memory retention features. - Airtable announced the [Airtable Marketplace](, allowing users to make their tables do more, and opening up the platform so that everyone can contribute apps. - [Dawn is an app for iOS]( that brings calendar events, todos, and reminders together in one minimal, beautiful interface. - [NoCodeAPI 2.0]( connects your Google Sheets, Airtables, Telegram, and all sorts of other application APIs, no backend required. - The Notion Web Clipper is pleasantly snappy, but you can only add a title and select a database. This means lots of piles that need to be sorted at some point. One Redditor with an image editor handy [has suggested a better way](. I, for one, am as invested in this as the API. ♾️ [Land in those DMs] Link Supply Drop We love sharing the work of our readers, and the insightful, fun, practical links you find on your own travels through the web. Got something for us? [Head to the Link Supply Drop]( and send it in. ♾️ Connect with the community We'll see you in the next edition — in the meantime, connect with us for a chat through our various communities: - the [SitePoint forums]( - join our [Discord server]( - read [new articles]( - find [remote jobs]( - [write for us](! (paid) - or via [Twitter]( Want to recommend SitePoint Weekly to a friend? Firstly: we love you too. Secondly: just share this link to our newsletter [sign-up page](, where they can sign up to receive new issues once a week. Until next time, 👋 [Joel Falconer]( [Joel Falconer]( Managing Editor SitePoint Level 1, 110 Johnston St Fitzroy VIC 3065 Australia You're receiving this email because you signed up to receive news from SitePoint. Smart choice! 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