WTN #2: Web of Components, GitHub Alts, GPT-5 Dev Drama

Welcome to Web Technology News (WTN), my weekly newsletter tracking what's next on the web.

Lots of web platform goodies this week, plus discussions about GitHub alternatives on the Open Social Web, and GPT-5 drama in the Web + AI department.

Web Platform

Let's start with something positive. Loved this post by Deane Barker: The Joy of Mixing Custom Elements, Web Components, and Markdown. I use Markdown to publish my Eleventy website, Cybercultural. While I can't say that I find Markdown as intuitive as HTML (simply because I've been using HTML much longer!), I appreciated Deane's reminder of this quote from Markdown creator John Gruber:

"For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use HTML itself."

In the rest of the post, Deane explains how you can also add Custom Elements (a.k.a. Web Components) to your Markdown files. As Deane nicely puts it:

"...Custom Elements and Markdown sort of operate on the same principle from the perspective of the writer: they replace simpler stuff with more complex stuff."

Now let's switch to a different type of component...

Ex-Vercel VP Lee Robinson writes on the difficulties of rolling out React Server Components, which many view as a way for Vercel to get more devs onto Next.js: "...it took many years before there was a community-led effort to get RSC in other places besides Next.js, in a production-like way." (Incidentally, Robinson recently joined the AI startup Cursor, "to teach the future of coding!")

Speaking of complex components, Google's Una Kravets "recaps the top highlights for CSS and Web UI shared at our events this year." Once again, JavaScript frameworks are in the firing line:

"You often have to rely on JavaScript frameworks, complex CSS tricks, and mountains of custom code to build components that feel like they should be simpler."

It should all come down to web performance, but currently "developer experience" seems to be the top priority in web development. However, Blaine O'Brien thinks performance might be starting to matter again (via Hacker News):

"The front-end community is slowly falling out of love with React, and even out of love with SPAs in general. Static site generators like Astro and Eleventy are getting a lot of attention because they're simple and good enough for what most people need. Those sticking with SPAs can have much better performance by using signals. I think the long, painful road of neglecting performance will eventually come to an end."

Speaking of web performance... Alex Russell on how "specific companies have gummed up the works in web standards" (as he put it on Mastodon):

"It's no exaggeration to say that it is anti-web to constrain which standards vendors can implement within their browsers, and implementation coercion is antithetical to the good functioning of SDOs [Standards Development Organisations] and the broader web ecosystem."

Piccalilli comments on the State of CSS 2025 results: "I like seeing some really healthy usage of the new stuff. Especially :has()!"

A few more web platform links:

• Den Odell on why we keep reinventing CSS: "...most of our styling pain doesn’t come from CSS itself. It comes from trying to shoehorn CSS into frontend architectures that weren’t designed to support it." (Good discussion in Hacker News, too)
• Un-Sass’ing my CSS by Stuart Robson.
• Joe Brockmeier has discovered an "Emacs-like web browser."

Open Social Web

With the latest GitHub CEO resigning, people are talking about better, more open, models going forward, like ForgeFed:

"What made GH so popular, we should ask? Well, a ton of features and services on top of #git and a huge platform that makes exploring millions of #FOSS projects easy, are among the reasons I suppose.

The #ActivityPub @forgefed project funded by #NGI0 via @nlnet is creating open standards to provide the same, native to the #fediverse!"

There's a discussion on Hacker News about ForgeFed. And for fedi-friendly developers considering their options, Terence Eden has a good discussion thread.

I enjoyed this thought-provoking post from Jaz Michael-King about what "the fediverse" means. Hint: it's not a protocol, nor is it a public square.

"Most people want their own space, shaped by their needs and their values. Who you follow and who you block shapes your conversations, your values, your tone – that is your fediverse. The fediverse is less like a single public square and more like a city full of homes, gardens, and community halls. You can visit others, invite them over, or keep your doors shut. The foundation is choice – and that choice belongs to the people." (emphasis mine)

Web + AI

GPT-5 reaction amongst developers over the past week has been...mixed. In fact, one of the developers OpenAI featured on its launch-day promotions (Theo Browne) has done a complete 180 — he now says he was wrong about GPT-5! Questions of coding quality aside, GPT-5 raises some interesting longer term questions for web developers: if AI can build things just using web standards, will that lead to less reliance on React and other JavaScript frameworks? I explored this in an article on The New Stack this week.

John Allsopp from Web Directions is thinking along the same lines and promises an in-depth analysis soon:

"...the rise of frameworks like React, Next.js, Vue, and Angular wasn’t simply about providing capabilities the platform lacked. It was about developer experience. However, as I’ll argue in depth in an upcoming piece, generative AI is becoming the developer experience now."

Related, the browser vendors are integrating AI more and more into their products. Here's Google's Domenic Denicola (link via Theresa O’Connor):

"For the last year, I’ve been working as part of the Chrome built-in AI team on a set of APIs to bring various AI models to the web browser."

But let's not forget about the underlying principles of the web. For instance, Léonie Watson, a director at TetraLogical and also Co-Chair on the W3C Board of Directors, ponders how accessibility will work on the agentic web.

Other news that caught my eye in Web + AI this week:

• Ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal launches Parallel Web Systems to build infrastructure for AI agents to search the web. According to Agrawal: "There’ll be more agents on the internet than there are humans around. You will probably deploy 50 agents on your behalf to be on the internet. And I think that’s going to happen soon, like next year." (via Techmeme)
• Vercel rolled out a new version of its v0 AI-driven offering, changing the name from .dev to .app to reflect its new target audience: end users. (The New Stack)

One More Thing

The old way is the best way; a comic by Alvaro Montoro:

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Until next Friday, keep on surfing! (still looking for feedback on a catchphrase for this newsletter 😄)