Burton Smith

Fun-loving coder and speaker. I love #webdevelopment, #webcomponents, and #designsystems. Creator of the WC Toolkit. I work @zocdoc.

[DEV Community @ThePracticalDev]

Can HTML `<template>` elements improve performance while keeping content visible to bots and AI scrapers? This dev tested 4 approaches across 100,000 items and the results for AI discoverability are surprising.

{ author: @stuffbreaker }

https://t.co/Ex1TG0ZRcA

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

The idea popped into my head that maybe you could use the <template> element to create virtualized content while still making it available for AI agents and bots, so I decided to test it out.

#html #webcomponents #javascript #performance
https://t.co/PmAtilT8SJ

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@mattpocockuk @akmandev I know a couple of those...

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

Women's clothing sizes are the dumbest, most nonsensical thing ever...

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

One of the pain points of my #WebComponents type parser was its inability to parse types from "node_modules". Now it will parse them, and if it can't, it logs a warning with the type name, declaration location, and reason it was skipped.

https://t.co/XJu6j6FFa4

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@mitchellh I also think there's a weird mentality being pushed sometimes where you're either 100% all-in on AI or you're not at all and being left behind.

I think AI is another great tool I get to add to my arsenal.

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@stolinski @wesbos They're from Canada. 😂

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@ryanflorence @diegohaz @stolinski The way we have worked around this in the past for clickable cards is to pass the click event to an interactive element within the card and tell it to ignore other clicks to prevent other element clicks from bubbling up to the card-level click event listener.

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@ryanflorence @diegohaz @stolinski I love this idea!

My biggest concern is that this would open the door for accessibility issues. That card scenario is a good example. It results in nested interactive elements.

https://t.co/HDDhh7u7po

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

In #WebDev, do you say "semi-bold" or "demi-bold"?

#DesignSystems #CSS

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@mattpocockuk This is great! Thank you!

In the video you mentioned you have a video about preventing entropy. Are you able to provide a link to that?

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

As always, a classy talk from @SALTnBURNem_636 @stirtrek!

#DeveloperCommunity

[Firefox for Web Developers @FirefoxWebDevs]

CSS's light-dark() now accepts images, making it simpler to define alternate values for a dark color scheme. Here's how it works:

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

If you're using the Custom JSDoc Tags plugin for your #WebComponents, you can now add them at the property level!

https://t.co/D9ea7idgOv

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@stirtrek Let's gooooo!

[Stir Trek @stirtrek]

🎙️ @stuffbreaker is speaking at #StirTrek2026!

"The 5 Fundamentals of UX Everyone Should Know"

📅 1 May 2026 11:30 AM

🎟️ https://t.co/LuphtOUvcE

We're really looking forward to having Burton at Stir Trek this year!

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@nicola_sosio @stolinski I'm saying this assumption is not necessarily true.

https://t.co/mg6US0fFJp

[Nicola Sosio @nicola_sosio]

@stolinski That’s the opposite. AI is best at react because is the most adopted one.

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@nicola_sosio @stolinski I would also argue that because of the quantity of varying quality and the amount it has changed over the years means that AI is more likely to struggle with React code. Quantity !== Quality

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

@DavidKPiano @wesbos I heard they prefer "Frisky" and the people that live there are "Friskies".

[Burton Smith @stuffbreaker]

When I was at Microsoft, we were trying to find ways around some of the pain points of #WebComponents, so I did an exploration on what Declarative Custom Elements could potentially provide us.

#html #css #javascript
https://t.co/ZjndEENrBw