iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 10/02/2025

TIL about “forbidden” request headers. None of these can be set in the browser by JavaScript APIs like fetch() or XMLHttpRequest.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 03/02/2025

If you’ve ever needed to break up a long JavaScript task to keep the UI responsive, you’ve probably reached for setTimeout(). Turns out there are a boatload of other options at your disposal, like scheduler.yield(). I wrote about a handful & their tradeoffs:

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 25/01/2025

Look at what you'll soon be able to do in native CSS (currently supported in Chromium browsers):

You can now opt into animating intrinsic size keywords by using "interpolate-size: allowed-keywords" on a parent element.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 01/12/2024

Simple demo for embedding JamComments client-side: - ~10 lines of code to configure - no custom styles necessary - ~2.6kb (gzipped) of JavaScript needed to load - ~3.6kb of HTML to load lazily load in after that And none of the grossness other comment tools throw in. jamcomments.com/demo/vanilla

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 18/11/2024

Early version of the PicPerf Image Saver extension is out. Plz try it! It lets you download any WebP or AVIF as a more useful JPEG, PNG, or GIF. Got it submitted to the Chrome Web Store, but you can install the unpacked version now.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 31/10/2024

ChatGPT is the 4th most largest referrer to TypeIt’s site right now. Kinda crazy.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 20/10/2024

Introduced domain settings for PicPerf.io. To start, you can set a max image width for optimizations. No more worrying about accidentally making your visitors download a hero image 5k pixels wide (more common than you might think!). #webperf

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 14/08/2024

AI-powered moderation in JamComments is a go! Rather than auto-approving everything (risky), or manually doing it yourself (a hassle), set a prompt and an LLM (or a small man in a box - who knows) will handle it. Real easy to set up.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 01/08/2024

Check this out - an IoC container/dependency injection framework using native JavaScript decorators in 25 lines of code.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 22/07/2024

A small JamComments.com update has been rolled out to all integrations. You can now customize many of the bits of microcopy throughout the UI, rather than going w/ the standard, out-of-the-box stuff. To help you picture this concept, I made you this picture.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 06/07/2024

Serneke Bostad - a Swedish homebuilding company - is using PicPerf to optimize over 2,700 images. Average size reduction: ~94%. 🤯 #webperf #seo #performance

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 04/05/2024

JamComments now does a better job warding off SEO freeloaders. Every link included in a comment has these bad bois slapped on it. #seo #blogging

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 10/02/2024

making more updates to picperf.io's website, including a side-by-side demo of a suuuper fat .png being turned into a lean, mean .avif on the fly. cached, 91% lighter, 86% faster than the unoptimized version. just by prefixing the url. #webperf #avif #corewebvitals #seo

comparing load time between PNG and AVIF images

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 14/09/2023

What's extra encouraging is that it ultra-optimizes the images on certain web platforms that are already supposed to be optimized. Ex. tried it w/ an image from a @Wix site (already converted to .webp and auto-optimized). PicPerf.dev shrinks it by 60% with no noticeable quality change.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 14/09/2023

This one says that the image is in the process of being optimized, and it's just kicking back the original image in the meantime.

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Alex MacArthur @macarthur.me · 14/09/2023

Cleaned up how headers are set on images optimized through PicPerf.dev tonight. They now far more reliably give clues as to how the image was surfaced. For example, these indicate the image is only 3.6% the original size and it came straight from the CDN cache:

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