web app | Björn Wilmsmann

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Ruby on Rails: The Documentary

Ruby on Rails has one of the most faithful communities online, it also has one of the most controversial, rabble-rousing creators out there, Danish programmer, David Heinemeier Hansson. Widely known as DHH, David tells us how Rails went from a crazy idea to one of the most talked-about full-stack frameworks over the course of 20 years. Given that Ruby on Rails has been hugely influential and seminal in the software development industry for the last two decades, not least by inspiring ...

Modern Web App Design Patterns: Patterns.dev

After last week's post on The Modern JavaScript Tutorial, a comprehensive guide to modern JavaScript, as something of a follow-up, today I'd like to introduce you to Patterns.dev (previously known as "Modern Web App Design Patterns"), an ebook on "design patterns and component patterns for building powerful web apps with vanilla JavaScript and React". The authors of Patterns.dev provide design patterns and tips on how to improve the architecture of your web apps. Patterns.dev follows a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach in ...

Sunday October 29th, 2023 by Bjoern in Software, Web Applications

The Modern JavaScript Tutorial

The Modern JavaScript Tutorial is a comprehensive guide to - well - modern JavaScript. Regularly updated and available both for free online (under a CC-BY-NC licence) and as an ebook, this tutorial introduces the reader to JavaScript as it is (or should be) written today. From JavaScript basics to object orientation, data types, functional programming and asynchronous behaviour, it covers everything the prospective JavaScript developer needs to know about writing high-quality, maintainable JavaScript code according to best practices.

Sunday October 22nd, 2023 by Bjoern in Software, Web, Web Applications

Client-Side Rendering on the Web: Approaches and Frameworks

Exploring Potential Benefits of Client-Side Rendering Client-side rendering is a powerful tool for web developers, offering a range of benefits that can help to improve the user experience and performance of a website. In this article, we will explore the advantages of client-side rendering and how it can be used to create a better user experience. Client-side rendering is a process in which the browser is used to render the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of a web page. This is in contrast to ...

Sunday February 12th, 2023 by Bjoern in Software, Web, Web Applications

Lösung für die COVID-19 Pandemie: Schnelltests als Zugangsberechtigung

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Contrary to my usual writing habits the remainder of this post will be in German. The reason for this is that although the subject most certainly is of interest to everyone the specifics of the solution outlined in the following mostly apply to the current COVID-19 situation in Germany and my personal experience with that situation. The article therefore is mostly relevant to a German audience. If you're interested in discussing the potential for ...

Thursday February 18th, 2021 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship, Mobile Applications, Software, Web Applications

Image Compression Utility: Squoosh

When working with images on web applications and websites optimising images and reducing their download size is a quick win in terms of optimising page and app load times. There are plenty of image compression utilities out there - both web apps and tools for local installation. Recently, I've tried out several of those again because I wanted to reduce the overall load time of this website and according to website audit tools such as Lighthouse image sizes definitely was an area ...

Sunday January 17th, 2021 by Bjoern in Front End Development, Software, Web, Web Applications

Debugging for Mobile Browsers

Occasionally, web developers need to debug a web app's behaviour in a specific browser on a specific device or class of devices. For desktop devices this usually isn't a problem because every modern browser nowadays provides a console, where application errors and custom console.log statements pile up. However, on mobile browsers there's usually no browser console, or browser development tools, for that matter. Analysing browser logs is still possible via vendors' development tools like Apple's Xcode, for example. Still, that process often ...

Sunday May 3rd, 2020 by Bjoern in Front End Development, Mobile Applications, Software, Web Applications

Jess Frazelle: “For the Love of Pipes”

Somewhat recently, Jess Frazelle wrote about her love of UNIX pipes, a sentiment I wholeheartedly share, to the extent that I think web apps should behave more like Unix programs by making data readily available via APIs so other applications can easily process that data. This, in a nutshell, is the Unix philosophy as stated by Doug McIlroy: Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features". Expect the output ...

Sunday October 6th, 2019 by Bjoern in Software

HTTP and REST Standards, Protocols and Headers for More Secure and More Robust Applications

Standards.REST is a website that helps you create better, more robust HTTP- and REST-based applications by providing an overview of existing, proven standards that allow you to build on existing solutions rather than re-invent the wheel yourself. The list of standards mentioned includes OAuth 2.0, the HTTP Caching standard and Application-Level Profile Semantics (ALPS), which - among others - is used extensively in Spring Data REST and Spring HATEOAS. On a closely related note, Stefan Judis published an article on HTTP headers ...

Sunday September 29th, 2019 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Front End Development, Software, Web, Web Applications

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.