Journal

I read 28 books in 2025. Looking back over that list, there are a few recurring themes…

I read less of the Greek mythology retellings than last year but I seem to have developed a taste for medieval stories like Matrix, Nobber, and Haven.

I finally got ‘round to reading some classics of post-apocalypse fiction like Earth Abides and I Am Legend.

I read lots of short story collections: Salt Slow, Bloodchild And Other Stories, The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories, Folk, and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. There’s quite a dollop of horror in some of those.

I’m clearly hankering for the homeland because I read a lot of books set in Ireland: The Country Girls, Haven, Prophet Song, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac, and Nobber.

And there’s the usual smattering of sci-fi from the likes of Nnedi Okorafor, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arkady Martine, Becky Chambers, and Emily St. John Mandel.

Here’s what I thought of these 28 books, without any star ratings…

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

I started this one in 2024 and finished it in the first few weeks of 2025. It’s a classic piece of post-apocalypse fiction from 1949. It’s vivid and rich in detail, but there are some odd ideas that flirt with eugenics. There’s a really strange passage where the narrator skirts around describing the skin colour of his new-found love interest. I get the feeling that this was very transgressive at the time, but it’s just a bit weird now.

The Last Song Of Penelope by Claire North

The final book in Claire North’s Songs Of Penelope trilogy is the one that intersects the most with The Odyssey. There’s a looming sense of impending tragedy because of that; we’ve spent the last two books getting to know the handmaids of Ithica and now here comes Odysseus to fuck things up. I enjoyed the whole trilogy immensely.

Short Stories In Irish by Olly Richards

This is a great way to get used to reading in Irish. The stories start very simple and get slightly more complex as throughout the book. None of the stories are going to win any prizes for storytelling, but that’s not the point. If you’re learning Irish, I think this book is a great tool to augment your lessons.

Sea Of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Nothing will ever top the brilliance of Station Eleven but I still enjoyed this time-travel tale set in the interconnected Emily St. John Mandel cinematic universe.

The Heart In Winter by Kevin Barry

A very Irish western. The language is never dull and the characters are almost mythological in personality.

Matrix by Lauren Groff

One woman’s life in a medieval convent. What’s really engrossing is not just the changes to the protaganist over her lifetime but the changes she makes to the community.

Hera by Jennifer Saint

I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as Jennifer Saint’s previous books. Maybe that’s because this is set almost entirely in the milieu of gods rather than mortals.

A Psalm For The Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

A short book about a tea-making monk meeting a long-lost robot and going on a road trip together. It’s all quite lovely.

Bloodchild And Other Stories by Octavia Butler

A superb collection of short stories. Bloodchild itself is a classic, but every one of the stories in this collection is top notch. Some genuinely shudder-inducing moments.

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

Staying with short story collections, this one is all killer, no filler. Julia Armfield knows how to grab you with a perfect opening line. Any one of these stories could be the basis for a whole novel. Or a David Cronenberg film.

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

The third book in Pat Barker’s retelling of the aftermath of the Trojan war is just as gritty as the first two, but this one has more overt supernatural elements. A grimly satisfying conclusion.

Folk by Zoe Gilbert

A collection of loosely-connected short stories dripping with English supernatural folk horror. The world-building is impressive and the cumulative effect really gets under your skin.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

The description of the Nigerian diaspora in America is the strongest part of this book. But I found it hard to get very involved with the main character’s narrative.

Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The sequel to Dogs Of War and just as good. On the one hand, it’s a rip-roaring action story. On the other hand, it’s a genuinely thought-provoking examination of free will.

A History Of Ireland in 100 Words by Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Gregory Toner

Every attendee at Oideas Gael in Glencolmcille received a free copy of this book. I kept it on the coffee table and dipped into it every now and then over the course of the year. There are plenty of fascinating tidbits in here about old Irish.

Haven by Emma Donoghue

Medieval monks travel to the most inhospitable rock off the coast of Kerry and start building the beehive huts you can still see on Skellig Michael today. Strong on atmosphere but quite light on plot.

Doggerland by Ben Smith

Fairly dripping with damp atmosphere, this book has three characters off the coast of a near-future Britain. The world-building is vivid and bleak. Like The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison, it’s got a brexity vibe to the climate crisis.

Bee Speaker by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I found this third book in the Dogs Of War series to be pretty disappointing. Plenty of action, but not much in the way of subtext this time.

Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang

Surprisingly schlocky. Kind of good fun for a while but it overstays its welcome.

Nobber by Oisín Fagan

Gory goings-on in a medieval village in county Meath. For once, this is a medieval tale set in harsh sunlight rather than mist-covered moors. By the end, it’s almost Tarantino-like in its body count.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

A fairly light book where nothing much happens, but that nothing much is happening on the International Space Station. I liked the way it managed to balance the mundane details of day-to-day life with the utterly mind-blowing perspective of being in low Earth orbit. Pairs nicely with side two of Hounds Of Love.

The End of the World is a Cul de Sac by Louise Kennedy

Louise Kennedy is rightly getting a lot of praise for her novel Trespasses, but her first book of short stories is equally impressive. Every one feels rooted in reality and the writing is never less than brilliant.

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

The second short book in the Monk and Robot solarpunk series. It’s all quite cozy and pleasant.

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

I said that each short story in Julia Armfield’s Salt Slow could be a full-length novel, but reading her full-length novel I thought it would’ve been better as a short story. It’s strong on atmosphere, but it’s dragged out for too long.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Another classic of post-apocalyptic fiction that looks for a scientific basis for vampirism. It’s a grim story that Richard Matheson tells in his typically excellent style.

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien

Reading this book today it’s hard to understand how it caused such a stir when it was first published. But leaving that aside, it’s a superb piece of writing where every character feels real and whole.

The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories by Angela Carter

If I’m going to read classic short horror stories, then I’ve got to read this. Twisted fairy tales told in florid gothic style.

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

An entertaining novella that’s a whodunnit in a haunted house, except the haunting is by an Artificial Intelligence. The setting feels like a character, and I don’t just mean the house—this near-future New Mexico is tactile and real.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

I haven’t finished this just yet, but I think I can confidentally pass judgement. And my judgement is: wow! Just an astonishing piece of work. An incredible depiction of life under an increasing totalitarian regime. The fact that it’s set in Ireland makes it feel even more urgent. George Orwell meets Roddy Doyle. And the centre of it all is a central character who could step right off the page.

There you have it. A year of books. I didn’t make a concious decision to avoid non-fiction, but perhaps in 2026 I should redress the imbalance.

If I had to pick a favourite novel from the year, it would probably be Prophet Song. But that might just be the recency bias speaking.

If you’re looking for some excellent short stories, I highly recommend Salt Slow and The End of the World is a Cul de Sac.

About half of the 28 books I read this year came from the local library. What an incredible place! I aim to continue making full use of it in 2026. You should do the same.

It’s getting towards the end of the year. That’s when I put together a post reviewing the books I’ve read in the previous twelve months.

I think I might change things up in 2026. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to write all the little reviews at once, I think I should write a review as soon as I finish a book. Instead of holding onto my reckons for months, I can just set them free one at a time.

And I think I’m done with ratings. Stars. I’m not sure why I ever started, to be honest. Probably because everyone else was doing it. But they kind of just get in the way. I spend far too long deliberating about how many stars to give a book when I should be spending that time describing the effect that the book had on me.

In any case, books, movies, music …it’s all entirely subjective. Assigning stars gives a veneer of something measurable, countable, and objective. That’s not how art works.

But that’s just my opinion.

I think I’ve also developed more of an aversion to scoring things the more it’s crept into everyday life. It feels like you can’t perform any kind of transaction without being asked later to rate the experience.

I remember the first time I was ever in an Uber. This was many years ago in San Francisco. I was with a bunch of friends at an after-party for An Event Apart in the TypeKit offices. Someone suggested that we move on to a second location and proceeded to whip out the Uber app.

I remember looking at the little icon of the car moving in real time as it approached our location. So futuristic!

We all bundled into the car and off we went. The driver was a really nice guy. But at some point he made a navigational error and took us off track. He fixed it, but I remember my friend who had summoned the Uber was kind of miffed.

When we were getting out of the car, the driver apologised profusely before driving off. My friend—who was basically showing me how this whole Uber thing worked—explained that he would now give a less than stellar review for the driver, becuase of that directional snafu.

“Ah, come on”, I said, “he was a nice guy.”

“This is how the app gets accurate data”, he responded.

“But …it’s a person”, I said.

Something about reviewing a person felt so wrong to me. Books, movies, music …I get it. But applying the same logic to a human being. That just didn’t sit right with me.

Now we’re expected to review humans all the time. It still feels wrong to me.

That’s probably why I’m done with ratings. No more stars from me.

In an Irish session, tunes are almost never played in isolation. They’re played in sets.

A set of tunes might be as few as two. More usually, it’s three or more.

It’s unusual to change from one tune type into another. You tend to get a set of jigs, or a set of reels, or a set of hornpipes. But it’s very common to change key within a set. In fact, that’s often where a good set really stands out. There can be a real joy at that moment of switching. You might get a “Hup!” from someone listening to the session at that changeover.

So how do you decide what tunes to play in a set?

There are no real rules to this. Some people make up the set on the fly. Or you might try playing a set that you’ve heard other people play, maybe on a recording you like.

On the one hand, you’re looking for contrast. You probably don’t want to play three tunes all in the same key. On the other hand, it’s nice when there’s some kind of connection between the tunes—something about the phrasing or emphasis perhaps.

Pairing tunes for sets always reminds me of pairing typefaces. You don’t want the body copy and the headlines to be too similar, but you do want them to share some quality.

In his classic book, On Web Typography, Jason says:

When it comes to choosing and pairing typefaces, I keep two things in mind: distinction and harmony. To keep the system you’ve created for visual communication properly balanced, you need to choose typefaces that don’t compete too much with each other, but aren’t so similar as to be indistinguishable.

The same could be said for pairing tunes in sets!

Jason also says:

As another approach, opt for typefaces that share the same maker.

That can work for sets of tunes too. While most tunes are traditional, with no known composer, the really good composed tunes have entered the canon.

I’ve taken Jason’s advice for typefaces and applied to sets by playing a set of tunes by Junior Crehan or a set of tunes by Vincent Broderick.

Mostly though, there’s no real system to it. Or at least, not one that can be easily articulated. Like Jason says:

And we’re back to that old chestnut about rules: there are many right answers, and no answers are really wrong; there are just different degrees of good.

Maureen has written a really good overview of web feeds for this year’s HTMHell advent calendar.

The common belief is that nobody uses RSS feeds these days. And while it’s true that I wish more people used feed readers—the perfect antidote to being fed from an algorithm—the truth is that millions of people use RSS feeds every time they listen to a podcast. That’s what a podcast is: an RSS feed with enclosure elements that point to audio files.

And just as a web feed doesn’t necessarily need to represent a list of blog posts, a podcast doesn’t necessarily need to be two or more people having a recorded conversation (though that does seem to be the most common format). A podcast can tell a story. I like those kinds of podcasts.

The BBC are particularly good at this kind of episodic audio storytelling. I really enjoyed their series Thirteen minutes to the moon, all about the Apollo 11 mission. They followed it up with a series on Apollo 13, and most recently, a series on the space shuttle.

Here’s the RSS feed for the 13 minutes podcast.

Right now, the BBC have an ongoing series about the history of the atomic bomb. The first series was about Leo Szilard, the second series was about Klaus Fuchs, and the third series running right now is about the Cuban missile crisis.

The hook is that each series is presented by people with a family connection to the events. The first series is presented by the granddaughter of one of the Oak Ridge scientists. The second series is presented by the granddaughter of Klaus Fuch’s spy handler in the UK—blimey! And the current series is presented by Nina Khrushcheva and Max Kennedy—double blimey!

Here’s the RSS feed for The Bomb podcast.

If you want a really deep dive into another pivotal twentieth century event, Evgeny Morozov made a podcast all about Stafford Beer and Salvadore Allende’s collaboration on cybernetics in Chile, the fabled Project Cybercyn. It’s fascinating stuff, though there’s an inevitable feeling of dread hanging over events because we know how this ends.

The podcast is called The Santiago Boys, though I almost hesitate to call it a podcast because for some reason, the website does its best to hide the RSS feed, linking only to the silos of Spotify and Apple. Fortunately, thanks to this handy tool, I can say:

Here’s the RSS feed for The Santiago Boys podcast.

The unifying force behind all three of these stories is the cold war:

• 13 Minutes—the space race, from the perspective of the United States.
• The Bomb—the nuclear arms race, from Los Alamos to Cuba.
• The Santiago Boys—the CIA-backed overthrow of a socialist democracy in Chile.

There’s the old adage “nobody gets fired for buying IBM”. Or to put it more broadly, “everyone else is doing it.”

It’s dispiriting how often this explanation is given as justification for a dubious design decision, from home-page carousels to cookie banners.

Nic Chan has written a great post about designing a contact form and how the process was derailed by the client pointing to other people’s contact forms …even when they’ve got very, very different user needs.

It’s especially depressing when “everyone else is doing it” is used a substitute for any kind of accountability.

Building an email service that’s going to track when people click on links in an email? That sounds dodgy. On the other hand, everyone else is doing it.

Building a straightforward website, but making it a single-page app with client-side React that will be barely work on some devices and networks? That seems over-engineered. On the other hand, everyone else is doing it.

Sometimes the “everyone else is doing it” phenomenon leads to a chain reaction where nobody even knows why anyone ever did it in the first place.

Remember Flash? Remember when almost every website had a Flash intro? Everyone knew they were annoying and uneccessary, but everyone else was doing it.

Instead of getting rid of the intros, we got “skip intro” links instead. This link was guaranteed to have a 100% clickthrough rate.

I’ve noticed something similar with conference talks. So many of them begin with a little spiel about the speaker, their background, and their work experience.

This might be interesting information, but this isn’t the right time or place for it. It’s already on the conference website, in the conference programme, and has probably just been reiterated by the conference host who just introduced the speaker.

When I’ve asked why people do this, the responses generally come down to “everyone else is doing it.” It’s become an expected part of the conference talk, just like a Flash intro used to be an expected part of a website.

When I’m curating a conference, I like to send speakers some information to help them prepare their talk. Some of this is practical stuff, like the tech set-up. Some of it is guidance for the slides, like ensuring sufficient colour contrast. And then there’s this:

Please don’t begin your talk with an introduction about yourself and your work history. You’ll be introduced on stage so it would be a shame to just repeat all that again. Also, it just gets in the way of the actual content of your talk. No need to provide your bona-fides.

Personally, I just find it super cringe. That’s why I don’t do it if I’m giving a talk myself.

As a host however, it’s a big part of my job. It’s way less cringe to have someone else big you up before the talk then doing it yourself.

Safari, Chrome, and Edge all allow you to install websites as though they’re apps.

On mobile Safari, this is done with the “Add to home screen” option that’s buried deep in the “share” menu, making it all but useless.

On the desktop, this is “Add to dock” in Safari, or “Install” in Chrome or Edge.

Firefox doesn’t offer this functionality, which as a shame. Firefox is my browser of choice but they decided a while back to completely abandon progressive web apps (though they might reverse that decision soon).

Anyway, being able to install websites as apps is fantastic! I’ve got a number of these “apps” in my dock: Mastodon, Bluesky, Instagram, The Session, Google Calendar, Google Meet. They all behave just like native apps. I can’t even tell which browser I used to initially install them.

If you’d like to prompt users to install your website as an app, there’s not much you can do other than show them how to do it. But that might be about to change…

I’ve been eagerly watching the proposal for a Web Install API. This would allow authors to put a button on a page that, when clicked, would trigger the installation process (the user would still need to confirm this, of course).

Right now it’s a JavaScript API called navigator.install, but there’s talk of having a declarative version too. Personally, I think this would be an ideal job for an invoker command. Making a whole new install element seems ludicrously over-engineered to me when button invoketarget="share" is right there.

Microsoft recently announced that they’d be testing the JavaScript API in an origin trial. I immediately signed up The Session for the trial. Then I updated the site to output the appropriate HTTP header.

You still need to mess around in the browser configs to test this locally. Go to edge://flags or chrome://flags/ and search for ‘Web App Installation API’, enable it and restart.

I’m now using this API on the homepage of The Session. Unsurprisingly, I’ve wrapped up the functionality into an HTML web component that I call button-install.

Here’s the code. You use it like this:

<button-install>
  <button>Install the app</button>
</button-install>

Use whatever text you like inside the button.

I wasn’t sure whether to keep the button element in the regular DOM or generate it in the Shadow DOM of the custom element. Seeing as the button requires JavaScript to do anything, the Shadow DOM option would make sense. As Tess put it, Shadow DOM is for hiding your shame—the bits of your interface that depend on JavaScript.

In the end I decided to stick with a regular button element within the custom element, but I take steps to remove it when it’s not necessary.

There’s a potential issue in having an element that could self-destruct if the browser doesn’t cut the mustard. There might be a flash of seeing the button before it gets removed. That could even cause a nasty layout shift.

So far I haven’t seen this problem myself but I should probably use something like Scott’s CSS in reverse: fade in the button with a little delay (during which time the button might end up getting removed anyway).

My connectedCallback method starts by finding the button nested in the custom element:

class ButtonInstall extends HTMLElement {
  connectedCallback () {
    this.button = this.querySelector('button');
    …
  }
customElements.define('button-install', ButtonInstall);

If the navigator.install method doesn’t exist, remove the button.

if (!navigator.install) {
  this.button.remove();
  return;
}

If the current display-mode is standalone, then the site has already been installed, so remove the button.

if (window.matchMedia('(display-mode: standalone)').matches) {
  this.button.remove();
  return;
}

As an extra measure, I could also use the display-mode media query in CSS to hide the button:

@media (display-mode: standalone) {
  button-install button {
    display: none;
  }
}

If the button has survived these tests, I can wire it up to the navigator.install method:

this.button.addEventListener('click', async (ev) => {
  await navigator.install();
});

That’s all I’m doing for now. I’m not doing any try/catch stuff to handle all the permutations of what might happen next. I just hand it over to the browser from there.

Feel free to use this code if you want. Adjust the code as needed. If your manifest file says display: fullscreen you’ll need to change the test in the JavaScript accordingly.

Oh, and make sure your site already has a manifest file that has an id field in it. That’s required for navigator.install to work.

Here’s the schedule for Web Day Out—what a fantastic collection of talks!

Web Day Out

10:00 – 10:30	I can’t believe it’s not JavaScript	Jemima Abu
10:30 – 11:00	A pragmatic guide to browser support	Rachel Andrew
11:30 – 12:00	Progressive web apps from the trenches	Aleth Gueguen
12:00 – 12:30	Build for the web, build on the web, build with the web	Harry Roberts
14:00 – 14:30	Breaking with habits	Manuel Matuzovič
14:30 – 15:00	What’s new in web typography?	Richard Rutter
15:30 – 16:00	Customisable <select> and the friends we made along the way	Jake Archibald
16:00 – 16:30	The browser is the playground	Lola Odelola

Seeing all of those talk titles in a row is getting me very, very excited for this day!

I hope that you’re excited too, and I hope you’ve got your ticket already.

If you need to convince your boss to send you (and your team) to Web Day Out I’ve put together some reasons to attend along with an email template that you can use as a starting point.

Also, if your company is sending a group of people anyway, consider sponsoring Web Day Out. You get a bunch of conference tickets as part of the sponsorship deal.

Hope to see you in Brighton on Thursday, 12 March 2026!

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I genuinely want to know why developers choose to build websites using React.

There are many possible reasons. Alas, none of them relate directly to user experience, other than a trickle-down justification: happy productive developers will make better websites. Citation needed.

It’s also worth mentioning that some people don’t choose to use React, but its use is mandated by their workplace (like some other more recent technologies I could mention). By my definition, this makes React enterprise software in this situation. My definition of enterprise software is any software that you use but that you yourself didn’t choose.

Inertia

By far the most common reason for choosing React today is inertia. If it’s what you’re comfortable with, you’d need a really compelling reason not to use it. That’s generally the reason behind usage mandates too. If we “standardise” on React, then it’ll make hiring more straightforward (though the reality isn’t quite so simple, as the React ecosystem has mutated and bifurcated over time).

And you know what? Inertia is a perfectly valid reason to choose a technology. If time is of the essence, and you know it’s going to take you time to learn a new technology, it makes sense to stick with what you know, even if it’s out of date. This isn’t just true of React, it’s true of any tech stack.

This would all be absolutely fine if React weren’t a framework that gets executed in browsers. Any client-side framework is a tax on the end user. They have to download, parse, and execute the framework in order for you to benefit.

But maybe React doesn’t need to run in the browser at all. That’s the promise of server-side rendering.

The front end

There used to be a fairly clear distinction between front-end development and back-end development. The front end consisted of HTML, CSS, and client-side JavaScript. The back end was anything you wanted as long as it could spit out those bits of the front end: PHP, Ruby, Python, or even just a plain web server with static files.

Then it became possible to write JavaScript on the back end. Great! Now you didn’t need to context-switch when you were scripting for the client or the server. But this blessing also turned out to be a bit of a curse.

When you’re writing code for the back end, some things matter more than others. File size, for example, isn’t really a concern. Your code can get really long and it probably won’t slow down the execution. And if it does, you can always buy your way out of the problem by getting a more powerful server.

On the front end, your code should have different priorities. File size matters, especially with JavaScript. The code won’t be executed on your server. It’s executed on all sorts of devices on all sorts of networks running all sorts of browsers. If things get slow, you can’t buy your way out of the problem because you can’t buy every single one of your users a new device and a new network plan.

Now that JavaScript can run on the server as well as the client, it’s tempting to just treat the code the same. It’s the same language after all. But the context really matters. Some JavaScript that’s perfectly fine to run on the server can be a resource hog on the client.

And this is where it gets interesting with React. Because most of the things people like about React still apply on the back end.

React developers

When React first appeared, it was touted as front-end tool. State management and a near-magical virtual DOM were the main selling points.

Over time, that’s changed. The claimed speed benefits of the virtual DOM turned out to be just plain false. That just left state management.

But by that time, the selling points had changed. The component-based architecture turned out to be really popular. Developers liked JSX. A lot. Once you got used to it, it was a neat way to encapsulate little bits of functionality into building blocks that can be combined in all sorts of ways.

For the longest time, I didn’t realise this had happened. I was still thinking of React as being a framework like jQuery. But React is a framework like Rails or Django. As a developer, it’s where you do all your work. Heck, it’s pretty much your identity.

But whereas Rails or Django run on the back end, React runs on the front end …except when it doesn’t.

JavaScript can run on the server, which means React can run on the server. It’s entirely possible to have your React cake and eat it. You can write all of your code in React without serving up a single line of React to your users.

That’s true in theory. The devil is in the tooling.

Priorities

Next.js allows you to write in React and do server-side rendering. But it really, really wants to output React to the client as well.

By default, you get the dreaded hydration pattern—do all the computing on the server in JavaScript (yay!), serve up HTML straight away (yay! yay!) …and then serve up all the same JavaScript that’s on the server anyway (ya—wait, what?).

It’s possible to get Next.js to skip that last step, but it’s not easy. You’ll be battling it every step of the way.

Astro takes a very different approach. It will do everything it can to keep the client-side JavaScript to a minimum. Developers get to keep their beloved JSX authoring environment without penalising users.

Alas, the collective inertia of the “modern” development community is bound up in the React/Next/Vercel ecosystem. That’s a shame, because Astro shows us that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Switching away from using React on the front end doesn’t mean you have to switch away from using React on the back end.

Why use React?

The titular question I asked is too broad and naïve. There are plenty of reasons to use React, just as there are plenty of reasons to use Wordpress, Eleventy, or any other technology that works on the back end. If it’s what you like or what you’re comfortable with, that’s reason enough.

All I really care about is the front end. I’m not going to pass judgment on anyone’s choice of server-side framework, as long as it doesn’t impact what you can do in the client. Like Harry says:

…if you’re going to use one, I shouldn’t be able to smell it.

Here’s the question I should be asking:

Why use React in the browser?

Because if the reason you’re using React is cultural—the whole team works in JSX, it makes hiring easier—then there’s probably no need to make your users download React.

If you’re making a single-page app, then …well, the first thing you should do is ask yourself if it really needs to be a single-page app. They should be the exception, not the default. But if you’re determined to make a single-page app, then I can see why state management becomes very important.

In that situation, try shipping Preact instead of React. As a developer, you’ll almost certainly notice no difference, but your users will appreciate the refreshing lack of bloat.

Mostly though, I’d encourage you to investigate what you can do with vanilla JavaScript in the browser. I totally get why you’d want to hold on to React as an authoring environment, but don’t let your framework limit what you can do on the front end. If you use React on the client, you’re not doing your users any favours.

You can continue to write in React. You can continue to use JSX. You can continue to hire React developers. But keep it on your machine. For your users, make the most of what web browsers can do.

Once you keep React on the server, then a whole world of possibilities opens up on the client. Web browsers have become incredibly powerful in what they offer you. Don’t let React-on-the-client hold you back.

And if you want to know more about what web browsers are capable of today, come to Web Day Out in Brighton on Thursday, 12th March 2026.

As part of their on-stage banter, The Dubliners used to quip that “All the books that are banned in Ireland should be published in Irish, to encourage more people to learn their native tongue.”

There was no shortage of banned books back in the day. I’m reading one of them now. The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien.

About halfway through the book, I read this passage:

The parcels for the Halloween party were coming every day. I couldn’t ask my father for one because a man is not able to do these things, so I wrote to him for money instead and a day girl brought me a barmbrack, apples, and monkey-nuts.

Emphasis mine, because that little list sounded so familiar to me.

Back in 2011, I wrote a candygram for Jason. It was called Monkey nuts, barmbrack and apples.

It’s not exactly Edna O’Brien, but looking back at it fifteen years on, I think it turned out okay.

The line-up for Web Day Out is now complete! The final speaker to be added to the line-up is the one and only Manuel Matuzovič.

You may know Manuel from his superb Web Accessibility Cookbook (full disclosure: I had the honour of writing the foreword to that book). Or perhaps you’re familiar with the crimes against markup that he documents at HTMHell. But at Web Day Out, he’s going to be talking about CSS.

The past few years have seen a veritable explosion in CSS capabilities. It’s one thing to hear about all the new stuff in CSS, but how do you actually start using it?

You may need to unlearn what you have previously learned. That’s what Manuel’s talk will be covering:

Manuel built a new project from scratch with modern CSS and questioned every line of code he wrote.

In this talk, he presents what he has learned and encourages you to review your best practices.

You can see why I’m so excited about this—it’s perfect for the agenda of Web Day Out:

Do you feel like you’re missing out on some of the latest advances in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript APIs? Web Day Out is your chance to get up to speed on what matters.

There’ll be eight brilliant speakers for your entertainment:

1. Jemima Abu
2. Rachel Andrew
3. Jake Archibald
4. Aleth Gueguen
5. Manuel Matuzovič
6. Lola Odelola
7. Harry Roberts
8. Richard Rutter

You won’t want to miss this, so get your ticket now for the ludicrously reasonable price of just £225+VAT!

See you in Brighton on 12 March 2026!