Hasty Briefs - Daily Tech News Brief

Bilingual

The Plumbing of Everyday Magic
2 months ago
- Modern technology allows seamless interaction with real-world services through simple screen taps, akin to turning on a faucet.
- Web development in 2026 is fraught with complexities like state sync issues, schema lock-in, orchestration challenges, and deployment nightmares.
- Creative flow in software development is often disrupted by the need to manage underlying systems, leading to project stagnation.
- The divide between creating user experiences and managing backend systems can pull developers away from their original creative goals.
- Malleable documents and surface-level artifacts could revolutionize software by integrating creation and sharing seamlessly.
- Existing frameworks and tools, while useful, still require deep dives into system plumbing, detracting from the creative process.
- The vision for the future web includes highly personalized, malleable software that encourages creation and sharing without complex infrastructure.
Why Cloudflare rule order matters?
2 months ago
- Cloudflare ruleset misconfiguration allows bypassing security rules.
- Terminating actions in Cloudflare stop evaluation of subsequent rules.
- Block rules placed after challenge actions can be bypassed with cf_clearance cookie.
- Recommended order for Cloudflare security rules starts with Skip and Block actions.
- Exploitability of the issue is uncertain due to testing limitations.
- Cloudflare dashboard inaccurately represents rule execution order.
- Historical discussions on serverfault.com highlight similar confusion.
Cover Flow with Modern CSS: Scroll-Driven Animations in Action (2025)
2 months ago
- Cover Flow is a visually striking UI pattern originally popularized by Apple in the late 2000s.
- Modern CSS allows recreating Cover Flow effects using HTML and CSS alone, leveraging features like CSS Scroll Snap and Scroll-Driven Animations.
- Traditional implementations relied on JavaScript, Flash, or WebGL, which were resource-intensive and complex.
- CSS Scroll Snap enables creating scrollable carousels that snap to discrete positions without JavaScript.
- CSS Scroll-Driven Animations tie animations to scroll position, allowing smooth transitions as elements move into view.
- Bramus Van Damme demonstrated a pure-CSS Cover Flow using scroll snap and view timelines for animations.
- Performance benefits include GPU acceleration and off-main-thread animations, ensuring smooth 60fps performance.
- Accessibility considerations include keyboard navigation, ARIA roles, and reduced motion preferences.
- Modern CSS techniques reduce reliance on JavaScript, making implementations more performant and maintainable.
- Cover Flow's evolution showcases the power of modern CSS for creating engaging, interactive UIs.
Designing delightful front ends with GPT-5.4
a month ago
- GPT-5.4 excels in web development with improved UI capabilities and image use.
- The model can generate production-ready frontends with subtle touches and interactions.
- Design balance is key: GPT-5.4 understands various design approaches.
- Underspecified prompts lead to generic designs; guidance is crucial for better results.
- Model improvements include stronger image understanding, functional completeness, and better tool use.
- GPT-5.4 uses image search and generation tools natively for visual reasoning.
- Functionality improvements enable more reliable and complex app development.
- Computer use and verification tools like Playwright enhance autonomous workflows.
- Practical tips include defining design systems upfront and providing visual references.
- Frontend tasks should avoid generic layouts and follow specific design rules.
- Techniques for better designs include starting with principles and structuring pages as narratives.
- The Frontend Skill enforces restrained composition and cohesive content structure.
- Key takeaway: Clear prompts with constraints and references yield high-quality interfaces.
Abusing Customizable Selects
2 months ago
- Introduction to customizable <select> elements in web browsers.
- Demo walkthroughs: Curved stack of folders, Fanned deck of cards, and Radial emoji picker.
- Techniques include using CSS pseudo-elements like ::picker(), ::checkmark, and sibling-index() function.
- Styling options and dropdowns without breaking non-supporting browsers.
- Animating elements with CSS transitions and @starting-style for smooth appearances.
- Overriding default select behaviors for creative layouts like fanning cards and radial emoji pickers.
- Progressive enhancement approach ensures functionality in all browsers.
Anthropic's Claude loses its >99% uptime in Q1 2026
a month ago
- The web application is heavily interactive and requires JavaScript.
- Simple HTML interfaces are possible but not applicable here.
- Post by teropa from teropa.bsky.social.
- Claude's uptime is officially at 19%.
Show HN: ReactNative.run – Browser Metro bundler that runs React Native
a month ago
- browser-metro is a Metro-like bundler for the browser that allows running React Native apps directly in the browser.
- It offers full Hot Module Replacement (HMR) with React Refresh, Expo Router for file-based routing, and support for any npm package via an on-demand ESM server.
- The tool is client-side, running in a Web Worker, requiring zero setup with no CLI, Xcode, or Android Studio.
- It includes features like API routes that run in-browser via fetch interception and dynamic route addition through HMR.
- Compared to alternatives like Expo Snack and CodeSandbox, reactnative.run offers client-side bundling, any npm package support, and is open-source under MIT license.
- Currently, it only supports web preview via react-native-web, with native device preview planned for the future.
- It is not an official React Native project and can be self-hosted on personal infrastructure.
CSS is DOOMed
a month ago
- CSS is used to render DOOM in 3D space using HTML <div> elements and transforms, with game logic handled by JavaScript.
- The project separates concerns: JavaScript manages the game loop and state, while CSS handles rendering via custom properties and trigonometry functions like hypot() and atan2().
- Key techniques include moving the world instead of a camera, using CSS for animations (doors, lifts, projectiles), and implementing culling and depth sorting for performance.
- Modern CSS features like @property, clip-path, anchor positioning, and SVG filters are leveraged, though browser bugs and performance limitations are noted.
- The renderer demonstrates CSS's capabilities for complex 3D projections, sprite animations, and responsive design, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in a browser.

Hasty Briefsbeta

#web development

The Plumbing of Everyday Magic

Why Cloudflare rule order matters?

Cover Flow with Modern CSS: Scroll-Driven Animations in Action (2025)

Designing delightful front ends with GPT-5.4

Abusing Customizable Selects

Anthropic's Claude loses its >99% uptime in Q1 2026

Show HN: ReactNative.run – Browser Metro bundler that runs React Native

CSS is DOOMed