Hey there,

The Top 3 in Tech newsletter coming at you again. Before we get started, I just have a quick question to ask you. I've been reading a lot about paid newsletters recently, and that got me curious: would anyone actually pay to receive this newsletter?

I wanna stress that I'm not planning on turning these weekly emails into a subscription anytime soon, but I thought it'd be a fun experiment to get your opinion and if you feel like the value you get from the newsletter would be worth paying for.

I've created a quick poll to gather feedback, so please give me your honest opinon and vote here:

​https://www.strawpoll.me/45891408​

Again, I'm not planning to make any changes right now!

With that out of the way, let's get into today's topics:

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1. Working as a front-end developer

Today I want to share what it's like to work as a front-end developer in a digital agency. Of course these are all my own personal experiences, but I think talking about it can help people currently looking for that first job get an idea of what a normal "day in the life" of a dev looks like. And if you're already working as a dev, it might be nice to get an alternative perspective. Hopefully you find it interesting either way (I'll try my best!).

I'm currently working in a medium-sized digital agency of about 60 employees, with 20 of us being developers (split evenly between front- and backend). As an agency we're earning money by selling hours as consultants, rather than working on a single dedicated product. Instead we work on a wide variety of different projects for our clients, from simple marketing websites to e-commerce stores to complicated webapps.

This wide array of projects (most being about 1-3 months of development time) is what really excites me about working in an agency. It's hard for me to stay focused and motivated when working on the same thing all the time, so the fact that there's always a new project in the pipeline is awesome for me.

It's also very common to be associated with several projects at the same time. At the beginning of the week, our project managers divide our time between the different projects that need focus right now. This helps to make sure that we're always working on the most important problems for our clients.

Another thing I really enjoy about working as a front-end developer in a company like mine is that we're at the forefront of new technologies. We focus on using modern tech like Vue/Nuxt, React/Next and TailwindCSS, usually together with a headless CMS or Laravel app as backend. I'm a big fan of not being locked to some old WordPress + jQuery versions, and find all this modern tech much more fun to work with.

Now of course it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Since we work directly for our clients, we always have to make sure that they're happy - even if we sometimes don't agree with their decisions. We also have to be very careful with deadlines and budgets as we only get paid for what was agreed upon initially. That can be stressful when unforseen circumstances happen that delay our work and make it harder to deliver on time.

For me personally, I do like this tradeoff between pros and cons. I don't think you'll ever find at job where everything is just perfect, 100% of the time.

Anyways, I hope this provided some insight into what it can be like working as a front-end developer. Do note that working in other types of companies (big tech, startups, corporations) could be a LOT different from what I've described here. Either way, I know I always enjoy learning about other people's experiences in the field, so hopefully you enjoyed reading this as well ✌

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2. Tailwind 3

Probably the most exciting new tech release this week (and one I've been eagerly awaiting for a long time!) is Tailwind version 3 🔥

In case you don't know, Tailwind is a utility-first CSS framework designed to rapidly implement custom designs. It's my favourite front-end technology because the workflow is amazing, it comes with incredible defaults out-of-the-box, and still allows you complete customizability to implement any design without getting in the way.

And in this new version 3, the team once again added a BUNCH of new, cool features to make lives easier for developers. Among those are the new Just-In-Time mode I've talked about before, now being the new standard. V3 also has a cool new CDN build, scroll snap utilities, colored box shadows and SO MUCH MORE. Just check it out for yourself and be amazed:

​Read the full announcement post​

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3. Container queries

Staying on the topic of CSS, container queries are an experimental API that allows developers to style elements based on the size of that element's parent container (instead of just the entire viewport, as we're used to with media queries). This is super exciting because it makes flexible layouts much more accessible and easier to create. Which is good for us, the developers, but especially for our users.

The problem is that container queries aren't ready for production as the browsers haven't implemented the specification yet. Luckily for us, Chrome is pushing them heavily. That's why I wanted to share a glimpse into what container queries can do and how you'll be able to work with them in the future. Check out the awesome video by the Chrome development team to learn more about container queries (or read more in the MDN docs):

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Thanks for reading! I would really appreciate if you would share the newsletter with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email or copy/paste the link mads.fyi/top3 on other platforms. It really helps to keep me motivated and let the newsletter grow. See you next week ✌

Mads Brodt