Next week Forward JS Ottawa will be meeting. RSVP now! www.meetup.com/ottawa-forwa...

NYC I will be in you for a two day @sanity.io conference. Join us on Monday September 29th for a hands on workshop. Then on Tuesday September 30th we'll have sessions on code, culture and community. RSVP at: everything.sanity.io

Amazing editing by Evelina Wahlström our Technical Product Marketing Manager @sanity.io for turning my ramblings about the Functions product I work on into something coherent. www.youtube.com/shorts/HQ2tK...

Auto-fix your blog's annoying problems with event-driven logic. Change a slug → create a redirect Add a code snippet → format it Modify the body → generate a changelog with AI Build it with Sanity Functions. youtu.be/W8f6jFLcCng

Book Review - Web Accessibility Cookbook I learned something new in every chapter ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ out of ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2025-08-20-book-review-web-accessibility-cookbook

"Dan Webb wrote about how he and his team migrated their site from Next.js to Eleventy and improved performance by 24%. But who knows, maybe he’s just deep in Big Static’s pocket" - Bytes etch.co/blog/we-migr...

HTML day, Ottawa edition 🍁 August 2, 2025 12pm-5pm Brown's Inlet Park Come hang out and write some HTML!!! More info ➡️ html-day-ottawa.vercel.app Not in Ottawa? Other locations + online event here: html.energy/html-day/202...

Awesome to see Function Recipes from our DevRel team. Spoiler, functions has been what I've been up to since last Fall.

Newsletters that regularly hit my inbox these days Newsletters that I make a point of reading every week. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2025-07-15-newsletters-that-regularly-hit-my-inbox-these-days

Pretty excited that all the work we've been doing at Sanity.io is finally public. It's been a wild ride since us Begin’ners joined last September. www.sanity.io/docs/compute...

Woof, I really dropped the ball on this one but today 4/24 is JS Naked Day. We celebrate today because HTTP error code 424 is “Failed Dependency”. I'm going to spend the rest of the day surfing with JS turned off and do a better job of promoting next year. js-naked-day.org

WALL·E Released: 2008-06-22 This is my favourite PIxar film of all time. 5 out of 5 stars!!

Hello world!

Dang, this is really nice. dandavison.github.io/delta/introd... > brew install git-delta edit ~/.gitconfig: ``` [core] pager = delta [interactive] diffFilter = delta --color-only [delta] navigate = true ``` try it in a repo w changes: > git diff

Nope, no problem with bots over here.

Books I read in 2024 My 2024 wrap up post on books I read in the past year. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2025-01-08-books-i-read-in-2024

We are delight to welcome #ForwardJS to our group of supporters for #SotB2025. If you're in Ottowa then checkout their meetups www.meetup.com/ottawa-forwa...

Oh we are back on this bullshit again.

At Sanity we are looking to hire a senior backend software engineer to work on our Content Lake team. You wouldn't be working on the same team as me but would be working with some truly great people. Complex, scalable, distributed backend systems and a bit of Golang! www.sanity.io/careers/seni...

Big news. We are absolutely stoked to be joining Sanity. I chart my career using the guiding principle of “solve interesting problems with cool people”. At Sanity we'll be able to keep working on challenging problems with a much larger team. begin.com/blog/posts/2... www.sanity.io/blog/welcomi...

Forward JS Ottawa A Forward JS Ottawa meetup you say?

'Queen of Shadows' by Sarah J. Maas I'm surprised I continued with this series, as I found the earlier books were okay but not great. I only kept reading due to the encouragement of a friend. I'm glad I did continue, as book 4 of Sara J. Ma… https://bookrecs.org//posts/2023-04-27-queen-of-shadows

'Red Team Blues' by Cory Doctorow I've been a fan of Cory Doctorow for a long time, so Kickstarting Red Team Blues was an easy decision. I don't even think I looked at the description. That's why I was surprised that the novel's protagonist i… https://bookrecs.org//posts/2023-05-03-red-team-blues

'Babel: An Arcane History' by R. F. Kuang This is an impressive book, 4.5 out of 5 stars from me. One would think a book about academics at Oxford wouldn't be so gripping, but the author R.F. Kuang paints an incredible picture. The b… https://bookrecs.org//posts/2023-05-14-babel-an-arcane-history

'Outlive' by Peter Attia I thought this was a pretty good book about getting and staying healthy. Perhaps this is confirmation bias since I've been trying to follow these guidelines for approximately half my life. Back when I was 23 my mom died sudd… https://bookrecs.org//posts/2023-09-06-outlive

'Moonflower Murders' by Anthony Horowitz I enjoyed the second Susan Ryeland book quite a bit. The quirk about these novels is that our "detective" is a book editor. Her biggest client writes mystery novels. Each book is like two mysteries… https://bookrecs.org//posts/2023-04-21-moonflower-murders

'The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires' by Grady Hendrix I'm not a big horror fan, but I was intrigued by the premise of The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. Set in Charleston, So… https://bookrecs.org//posts/2023-05-01-the-southern-book-clubs-guide-to-slaying-vampires

🛑 Block the Bots in Enhance Projects Introducing a new plugin for Architect and Enhance projects to block AI crawler bots. We are making it easier to reduce the burden on your bandwidth usage by blocking AI crawler bots. More features to come soon. begin.com/blog/posts/2...

I'm speaking at Web Unleashed 2024 this Fall. webunleashed.ca Save 20% off an in-person OR online ticket with coupon code WEBU24BEGIN

Upcoming Conferences this Fall Fall conference season is once again upon us and I'll speaking at a bunch over the next few months. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-07-19-upcoming-conferences-this-fall

New post on which I opine that web components and island architecture go great together like chocolate and peanut butter. begin.com/blog/posts/2...

Frontend Nation 2024 Last month I did a lightning talk at Frontend Nation 2024 on SSR Web Components Everywhere (with WASM). The video is now up for anyone who wants to give it a watch. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-07-03-frontend-nation-2024

📜 Building an OS Selector for Documentation Sites Let's build a component that allows users to select their preferred operating system while viewing documentation. begin.com/blog/posts/2...

💬 Component Communication in Enhance Enhance makes it easy to build apps composed of web components. Each component encapsulates its own UI and functionality. Under some circumstances you may need to communicate between components to share data or react to changes. begin.com/blog/posts/2...

My Appearance on Talking Serverless I had a great chat with Paul Chin Jr. on the Talking Serverless podcast. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-05-18-my-appearance-on-talking-serverless

Detect Missing Adblocker Component Nudging folks to install an Adblocker in order to protect themselves https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-05-02-detect-missing-adblocker-component

A funny thing happened on my way up the stairs My trip through the good, bad and ugly of Ontario healthcare https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-04-22-a-funny-thing-happened-on-my-way-up-the-stairs

Introducing JS Naked Day Kicking off the first annual JS Naked Day on April 24, 2024. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-04-12-introducing-js-naked-day

The Case for Slack Most companies do agile wrong. My case for more slack in the system. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-04-04-the-case-for-slack

My latest blog post is up on Begin's blog where I talk about the things that often trip up React developers when they start writing Enhance components or plain vanilla web components. #WebComponents begin.com/blog/posts/2...

@signalwatch.bsky.social I’m not sure what to think here. I need your take. On one hand it is Uncle Scrooge and Jason Aaron but… www.comicsbeat.com/uncle-scroog...

Books I read in 2023 My 2023 wrap up post on books I read in the past year. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-02-19-books-i-read-in-2023

Read It To Me Component I love HTML Web Components but that doesn't mean we should never use the Shadow DOM. One component that greatly benefits from the Shadow DOM is the read it to me component I introduce in this post. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-02-01-read-it-to-me-component

ConFoo Enhance Workshop In February I'll be at ConFoo in Montreal to give two presentations and a workshop on Enhance. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2024-01-18-confoo-enhance-workshop

Default apps for 2023 I saw posts by Chris Coyier and Baldur Bjarnason and decided to get on the bandwagon. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2023-11-28-default-apps-for-2023

I'm proud of the work behind this latest blog post. We are enabling devs to write light DOM #webcomponents with client-side slotting style encapsulation and still not losing the ability to server-side render these components using enhance.dev. begin.com/blog/posts/2...

Upcoming Conferences Fall conference season is upon us and I'll speaking at a bunch over the next few months. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2023-09-27-upcoming-conferences

State of the Browser 2023 Trip Report Over the weekend I made the pilgrimage from Ottawa to London to attend the 2023 version of State of the Browser. https://simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2023-09-25-state-of-the-browser-2023-trip-report

State of the Browser 2023 Trip Report Over the weekend I made the pilgrimage from Ottawa to London to attend the 2023 version of State of the Browser. simonmacdonald.com/blog/posts/2...

'Outlive' by Peter Attia I thought this was a pretty good book about getting and staying healthy. Perhaps this is confirmation bias since I've been trying to follow these guidelines for approximately half my life. Back when I was 23 my mom died sudde… https://bookrecs.org/posts/2023-09-06-outlive