June 3rd was my last day on the Edge team. It’s been an absolute honor and privilege to work with such an amazing team all these years, moving from Internet Explorer (IE) to “Spartan” Edge and, finally, to “Anaheim” Edge.

Today, some colleagues and I kicked off a new series on developing Progressive Web Apps. It will run for 30 days and takes you from the point of knowing nothing about PWAs all the way through integrating some of the amazing advanced capabilities available to web apps today.

While working on tooling to analyze Web App Manifest usage in relation to some new feature proposals, it became clear we needed a test Manifest that included the proposed syntax for dark/light mode support. I decided to make this site the guinea pig and spent an hour or so tweaking things to make it happen. Here’s a run-down of what I did:

Since joining the esteemed group of editors maintaining the Web App Manifest spec for the W3C, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to enhance both web apps themselves—in terms of functionality—and how web apps are represented in app catalogs and digital storefronts. Some of that work is finally gaining traction and I’d love to get your input.

You may or may not be aware, but the Shortcuts feature for PWAs has begun rolling out in Chromium-based browsers and implementation is underway in other browsers as well. The first version of Shortcuts provides you with the ability to define a small set of links in your Manifest. Rayan Kanso and I are currently working on a proposal for Shortcuts v2 which will introduce a JavaScript API for managing these links and we’d love your input too.

Facebook reminded me of a video I recorded of my reef tank a little over a year ago, so I thought I’d shoot another video, write a post about it, and share some of the interesting things that have changed over the last year.

In a recent blog post, Manuel Matuzović offered a great case study covering how he built Front-end Bookmarks. In the course of developing it, Manuel found that following the progressive enhancement philosophy in his development made it easy to support older/less feature rich browsers and devices: > To my surprise, I only had to reduce some paddings and font sizes to make it look nice. I didn’t have to change much because I follow the Progressive Enhancement principle when I build websites.

Charles Vernon Bush is perhaps best known for holding not one, but two “first” titles. In 1954, Charles became the first Black page of the Supreme Court of the United States. Nine years later, he became the first Black cadet to graduate from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). Charles didn’t stop there, however.

When I learned of Sissieretta Jones (a.k.a., Madame Jones), and began reading up on her, I noticed several parallels between her career and Beyoncé’s.

I have to admit that I was a little surprised when I learned that the first Black woman to receive a patent was granted it in 1884. To be clear, I wasn’t surprised because I didn’t think Black women were capable of inventing things—not at all. I was surprised because the process of obtaining a patent is pretty arduous on its own, even without factoring in the very overt racism I’m sure these inventors were dealing with at every step of the way.