Dean Hume

Progressive Web Apps

Getting started with the Web Share API

If you’ve ever built a website and needed the ability to share to a social network, you’ll know that it’s not as easy as it first seems. In order to add basic share functionality, you often need to include a third party script and become familiar with

Progressive Web Apps

Testing Service Workers locally with self signed certificates

Service workers are awesome. They provide us with powerful functionality to intercept and handle network requests, cache resources, send useful push notifications and so much more. Because service workers have this ability to intercept network requests, it’s essential that they run over HTTPS. In the wrong hands, a malicious

Progressive Web Apps

I'm writing a book - Progressive Web Apps

I am very proud to announce that I am writing a new book entitled Progressive Web Apps. I started working on it during late 2016 and the book is shaping up nicely! I will be the first to admit that I am a big fan of Progressive Web Apps, and

Progressive Web Apps

5 awesome Progressive Web Apps worth exploring

Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s) are truly changing the way we use the web today. Push notifications, offline web pages, and super fast load times are just a few of the great features that developers are using to build Progressive Web Apps. Quite often I find myself visiting a website

HTTP

Getting Started with HTTP/2 and Server Push

HTTP/2 is awesome. When we enabled HTTP/2 on the settled.co.uk website, we noticed a 10% improvement in the page load times across the site. We didn’t change any code, or even make any web performance tweaks - we made the switch and noticed the results

Web Performance

A simple, client-side approach to measuring Speed Index

When I first started learning about web page performance, I always use to focus solely on the time that it took a page to load. The excitement of seeing a web page load in an instant kept me coming back for more. Whilst web page load time is an important

Book Review

Book Review: ReWork

I'm currently reading a booked called ReWork, by the authors Jason Fried and David Hansson. They are two entrepreneurs that have created well known software products such as Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire. If you've ever used these products before, you'll know how easy they are to use. I realise

Web Performance

Image Beast - My 10 K Apart Entry

This year, An Event Apart and Microsoft are teaming up to bring you 10 K Apart. It's a pretty cool competition with a challenge to build a compelling web experience that can be delivered in 10 KB and works without JavaScript. Believe me - it's not as easy as it

Progressive Web Apps

How I built a Progressive Beer app

I like beer. In fact, I like it so much that I decided to build a web app that showcases all the amazing different types that are out there! I've called it Progressive Beer. I've been experimenting a lot with Service Workers lately, and building a web application with this

Book Review

Book Review: Business for Punks

I recently found myself stuck in a train station waiting for the next train. With some time to kill, I wandered into one of the book stores near the platforms. As I was casually scanning the different books on the shelves, one book in particular jumped out at me -

Progressive Web Apps

A Basic Guide to Background Sync using Service Workers

It's been a while since I've guest written on another website. I normally find myself writing solely for this site, but I recently teamed up with Nicolás Bevacqua and his fun blog site Ponyfoo.com. If you've not heard of ponyfoo before, I thoroughly recommend checking it out. The guest

Web Performance

Ten Things you didn't know about WebPageTest.org

That's a pretty catchy title for an article, right?! Now that I've lured you onto this page, I am going to do my best to deliver the goods! Without a doubt, WebPageTest is one of my favourite web performance testing tools. It's completely free to use and is such a

Google Chrome

CPU throttling using Chrome Developer Tools

I recently gave a tutorial at Velocity Conference in Santa Clara about some of the amazing features that lie within the browsers we use everyday. As web developers, we are pretty lucky to have such awesome developer tools at our disposal. After the tutorial was complete, a few people asked

Book Review

Book Review: Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson

I have always had a fascination with successful teams. Whether it's a business team, a military team or even a sports team, I find it intriguing to know what makes them tick. Regardless of what the team is involved in, finding the formula to their success is the secret sauce

Firebase

A basic guide to Firebase for the web

I've recently been tinkering with Firebase, and I have to admit, I am really impressed. I was a bit sceptical at first, but when I starting experimenting with the code samples on the site I was blown away. If you haven't heard of Firebase before, it is a platform that

CSS

Quick Tip: What's that font?!

Have you ever visited a website and wondered what web font is being used? I often visit websites with great typography and end up digging through the CSS in my developer tools until I find what I am looking for. There are actually a few plugins and extensions that you

Speaking

I'll be speaking at Velocity Conference 2016

I am very excited to announce that I'll be presenting at this year's Velocity Conference in Santa Clara along with my partner in crime Robin Osborne. I've been lucky enough to present at Velocity Conference before, but this will be my first time at Santa Clara. Velocity Conference is without

Service Workers

Service Workers: Save your User's Data using the Save-Data Header

I was recently travelling abroad when I urgently needed to get some information from the website of my airline. I was on a sketchy 2G connection that took forever to load the page, and eventually I ended up giving up completely. I was also paying a fortune for this daily

Progressive Web Apps

How I built buildingstartupteams.com

If you follow this blog, you may have noticed that I've been working on a side project for the past 8 months or so. I'm really passionate about building and growing teams and I'm lucky enough to get to do this in my day job. As a result, this lead

Book

I'm Writing a Book - Building Great Startup Teams

I am very excited to announce that I am writing another book. I've been secretly working on this project for the past 8 months, and finally wanted to share it with you. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will be familiar with most of my software

Programming

Whats your Favourite Algorithm?

Whether you've studied a computer science related subject or not, complex algorithms can seem quite daunting. You know, the ones you occasionally get asked and have to learn before going into an interview! It might feel like you only really learn these for an interview, but when you start to

Service Workers

Create a really, really simple offline page using Service Workers

Let's imagine for a second that you are on a train. The train is cruising through the countryside and you are reading an awesome article on the web using your mobile device. At the same moment that you click on a link to view more details, the train suddenly disappears

Service Workers

Getting started with the Service Worker Toolbox

I've been playing around with Service Workers a lot lately. I am super excited about the great features that they bring to the web. Offline pages, push notifications and flexible caching are just a few of the great features that they bring to the table. Using these built-in features allows

Speaking

I'll be speaking at the Chrome Developer Summit 2015 Livestream

The Chrome Developer Summit is a fantastic event. If you are a web developer that is interested in discovering more about Google Chrome, it's a great chance to learn about the the newest and latest features for the upcoming year. The schedule is packed with great speakers and will be

Service Workers

Service Workers: Dynamic Responsive Images using WebP Images

Images play an important role on the web today. Imagine a world without images on our web pages! High quality images can really make a website stand out, but unfortunately they come with a price to pay. Due to their large file sizes, they are bulky to download and result