Alex Russell

Trying to make the web work for *everyone*.

https://infrequently.org/about-me/

Still not speaking for my employer, lo these many years.

Blog: https://infrequently.org
Currently: Microsoft Edge
Previously: Chrome, Project Fugu 🐡, PWAs, W3C TAG, Web Components, TC39 & ES6, Chrome Frame, Dojo
Also: Making phae (npub1mmn…4juk) tea ☕

Last Notes

2025-10-12 00:18:09 UTC

At a critical moment, the tech press are failing to connect the dots between Apple and Google's craven capitulations and the authoritarianism they have nurtured within their own ecosystems. Apple is now corrosive to democracy itself, and we have to get smarter about the way these forces interact:
https://infrequently.org/2025/10/the-app-store-was-always-authoritarian/
/cc @npub1kn4…3asa @npub1fdr…lvhs

2025-10-09 21:33:21 UTC

This tool from Firefox DevRel is *awesome*, and if you care about how much progress the web platform delivers *please* go rank your interests:
https://interop-rank.jakearchibald.com/

2025-10-08 20:10:38 UTC

Every time I watch a team of hard-working folks burn months on a React upgrade, I'm reminded of how thoroughly the JS-Industrial-Complex gaslit us.
You know who hasn't slogged through constant breaking change migrations? Web Components developers. New runtimes drop *every month*...and it's *fine*.

2025-10-03 05:39:58 UTC

Apropos of nothing, but maybe monopolies on software distribution are, like, bad? And a threat to the legitimate exercise of civic rights?
Anyway, make web apps and support @npub1kn4…3asa

2025-10-02 18:37:40 UTC

A colleague asked me yesterday what I thought of Tailwind, and thought I'd share the topline response: avoid it, not because it's slow (it's fine-ish), but because of the culture it drags behind it.
Instead, hire people who know CSS, then let them loose on your UI problem(s). Give them space to turn huge pile of JS into tiny rulesets, and create guardrails to keep slow selectors from hurting (e.g., Shadow DOM). Lean on the browser, not the transpiler.

2025-09-21 21:33:16 UTC

Technology is political. Film at 11.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lopqc5qlyamugbxdujsojdhb/post/3lzee26lse22g

2025-06-13 15:55:38 UTC

Safari at WWDC '25: The Ghost of Christmas Past
https://infrequently.org/2025/06/the-ghost-of-christmas-past/

2025-02-09 07:17:33 UTC

Most of the damage Musk can do now is premised on his wealth, which comes back to Tesla. This is gonna be a bumpy ride, but to all my EV-loving peeps who aren't down with the fash, I salute you:
https://insideevs.com/news/750076/tesla-sales-tanking-globally/

2025-02-04 19:40:28 UTC

A truly shocking fraction of the JS community is carrying as if nothing has happened back on the hellsite. Negotiating with myself how to feel about that (and them) is increasingly easy and final.

2025-02-01 23:23:06 UTC

You are about enter another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mindlessness.
Consider one Mr Alex Russell. He has a headache. He senses something off, but he can't put his finger on it. He's looking at web page. With a carousel. And some links.
As is the style, it has three copies of React (3), between the document and two (2) iframes. None of which is shared. It's served as 200 requests across 40 connections.
Or at least it's the style...in **the Twilight Zone**

2025-01-21 21:18:34 UTC

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Software cultures that indulge in ignorance of constraints facilitate magical thinking, which eventually erodes the foundations out from underneath even conservatively-constructed experiences if left unchecked.
This is bad for users, but also business. A great shame of frontend's lost decade is that we lost the ability to adapt because so much of the community was high on frameworkism.

2025-01-21 20:27:28 UTC

The correct response to realizing computers are fast is not to make your software slow, because:
a.) you won't benefit as much as you hope
b.) if you break pro-user norms, so will every other site/app/library, and your thing will feel slow even if it's "fine" in isolation
c.) HW bounty is not evenly distributed, so your product becomes less usable non-linearly below some resource floor
Pretending constraints don't exist is not engineering, it's bullshitting.

2024-11-05 09:03:14 UTC

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But it's not cheaper!

2024-11-05 06:37:01 UTC

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So folks are right; the framework *isn't* the problem. It's what choosing *those* tools says about an organisation, and what the indicated lack of performance management maturity portends:
https://infrequently.org/2022/05/performance-management-maturity/

2024-11-05 06:37:00 UTC

"The framework isn't the problem!" is something I've been hearing the apologists for lemon vendors spout for going on a decade now, and I think we need to decapitate this zombie idea once and for all.
First, *I know* that 45KB of JS isn't going to break the bank. Duh. That's not the point. The point is that the apologists *don't even have budgets*. Which means that *every* increment above zero is *a priori* too much!
Folks that can't say "when" aren't sophisticated enough to be using JS.

2024-10-21 17:19:23 UTC

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What do I mean by "losing"? Going back to the time spent metric, the web is *killing it* on desktop. The web's JTBD percentile continues to rise as we keep adding new power and capability to the platform, handily displacing other platforms, one fraction of a percent every year (because that's how platform wars work; there are no KOs, only slow, grinding changes that look "boring" to a tech press that would rather report on social media contratemps).

2024-10-15 11:50:29 UTC

I'm sure there are more important PM skills, but killing jargon and getting people to say what they mean is underrated.

2024-03-21 17:28:22 UTC

Governments around the world have found exactly this every time they've looked hard at Apple keeping competing browsers at bay, but crikey. The DOJ is not playing around:
https://assets.toot.cafe/media_attachments/files/112/134/849/931/499/301/original/430493a44971442c.png