Welcome

Dear reader,

Thanks for picking up the MEAP edition of Vanilla Web. This book is for developers who want to build modern web experiences by leaning on the platform itself: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, browser APIs, and HTTP, without defaulting to heavyweight frameworks, libraries, or complex stacks.

To get the most out of the book, you should be comfortable writing and debugging everyday web code: fundamentals in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, plus basic confidence using browser DevTools. If you haven’t used them in several years, you are still learning, or your experience is only coding with libraries and frameworks, I’ve got you covered in this book.

A quick note as you read: the skills here are not “anti-framework.” They’re foundational. Even if you spend your day in React/Angular/Vue, you still benefit from understanding the underlying platform and its APIs, because that’s what everything else is built on.

As a web developer myself, starting my first website 30 years ago, I’ve seen patterns, libraries, and frameworks come and go, while the fundamentals stay and make you a better developer. We will focus on: simplicity, performance, stability, usability, and accessibility. And it doesn’t mean we will take a prehistoric web development lesson or create ugly or outdated apps. Vanilla web is the present, and it’s a modern platform.

What you can expect to learn is how to build web apps that stay understandable, portable, and fast by design. We’ll focus on: