The next big things

One of the interesting things about frontend web development is that things change rapidly. There is always something new to learn and the web community is always figuring out better, faster, and more effective ways of solving problems.

For example, when writing the first edition of this book, responsive images (srcset and the picture element, which are detailed in Chapter 4, Fluid Layout, Flexbox, and Responsive Images) simply didn't exist. Back then, we had to use clever third-party workarounds to serve up more appropriate images to different viewport sizes. Now common need has been rationalized into a W3C standard, which has been implemented across browsers.

Similarly, only a few years ago, Flexbox was just a twinkle in a specification writer's eyes. Even when the specification evolved, it was still difficult to implement until a super-smart developer called Andrey Sitnik, along with his colleagues at Evil Martians (https://evilmartians.com...