Zach Leatherman
zachleat.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2011
Zach Leatherman, creator of the Eleventy static site generator, writes about web performance, fonts, and front-end development.
What HN saysCommenters link his guide to web font loading and his React criticism history, and praise the hamburger menu on his homepage.
60HN people shared it
13linked it in comments
57stories submitted
568story points
3 months agolast shared
2011people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1A Historical Reference of React Criticism–Zachleat.com9 people · 7 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 2A Comprehensive Guide to Font Loading Strategies4 people · 72 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN
- 3Netlify is no longer sponsoring full-time development on 11ty3 people · 8 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 4Use Speedlify to continuously measure site performance3 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 5The Sneaky Costs of Scaling Serverless2 people · 6 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 6A Front End Engineer’s Manifesto2 people · 6 points · first shared 2012 · 1 comments on HN
- 7Netlify's Disingenuous Survey-Based Attack on Next.js (and Eleventy, Too)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 8Which Generator builds Markdown the fastest? (2022)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 9The many definitions of Server-Side Rendering2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 10Lazy Loading Web Fonts Is Probably Not What You Want2 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 11The JavaScript Site Generator Review, 20232 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 12The Good, the Bad, the Web Components2 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 13Glyphhanger – Your web font utility belt2 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 14The Tension and Future of Jamstack2 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 15Never write your own date parsing library1 people · 265 points · first shared 2025 · 321 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
cjlm · 2022-03-17
Zach Leatherman has my favorite hamburger menu implementation on his homepage: https://zachleat.com
traverseda · 2023-07-27
I think anyone who is going to listen to a react critique has already heard it.
For those looking for a more in-depth critique of react, this article looks good: https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/
Although that focuses more on the objective legal and performance issues, if anyone can recommend something focusing more on architectural and developer ergonomics issues I'd love to see it.
leerob · 2020-05-05
It's not very common. If you want to learn more about fonts on the web, this is an excellent resource: https://www.zachleat.com/web/comprehensive-webfonts
zachleat · 2012-09-04
Please read the associated blog post that went along with the site. http://www.zachleat.com/web/manifesto/
"I’ve been reluctant to share the slides because I certainly don’t want developers to take them as dogmatic truth. Rather, I’d love for people to see a forest using trees they’ve planted themselves."
Certainly scrolling could be improved. I'll definitely look into improving the performance. I honestly had no idea this slide deck would get this much attention.
nchmy · 2025-10-10
Certainly! Here's a good start (React is the main focus, but it extends to many other frameworks)
https://infrequently.org/2024/11/if-not-react-then-what/ (there's MUCH more at this site as well)
https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/
ricardobeat · 2025-09-15
Websites were much more varied and creative in the jQuery era, and even more so in the Flash era that came before. Different interaction paradigms, wild animations, full-screen effects, etc etc. Not necessarily "better", but React didn't really enable anything we couldn't have before - even today when real performance is required you will resort to canvas/webgl, alternative rendering approaches and skipping react's render cycle.
React was never [1] fast [2] - that is one of the biggest misconceptions in frontend development in the last decade.
[2] https://css-tricks.com/radeventlistener-a-tale-of-client-side-framewor…
[1] https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/
brianzelip · 2023-11-28
See the related post by Zach Leatherman, https://www.zachleat.com/web/jamstack-future
igravious · 2020-12-04
Hmm, I just did a search for web fonts with data URIs
In this article: https://www.zachleat.com/web/web-font-data-uris/ mr. Leatherman advises against (because of the bulkiness of web fonts blocking rendering for too long) but he has not taken into account rolling your own custom mini-font with just the glyphs you need.
So I think your idle musing may indeed have merit!
Perhaps those more knowledgeable and preferably with benchmarked evidence could care to comment?
onion2k · 2020-10-01
All you really need to do to get a 100 perf score is to cut out any unused elements, only load the CSS you need, load any JS you need as late as possible (defer the <script> at least), and optimize your fonts and images. If you're using a decent host that has a point of presence fairly close to where Lighthouse is running then you should get a decent score. My own website has a 4x100 Lighthouse score.
If you're interested in this sort of optimization then Zach Leatherman's "Speedlify" is a good tool for doing continuous monitoring - https://www.zachleat.com/web/speedlify/
hasanhaja · 2023-11-14
This is a better and more concrete example of the point made in the article:
- https://www.zachleat.com/web/details-utils
The `details-utils` component enhances the behavior of the built-in HTML `detail` component. If for any reason you have JavaScript disabled, then using a web component like this would be just fine because the `detail` component would continue to behave like it always does. If you have JS enabled (or it's finished downloading) then you have an enhanced version of it that has features like collapsing when you click outside of it, etc. That's the part that's reusable when used like this.
That web component from the creator of 11ty is what made the point made in the article click for me. When I first started looking at web components I was like, "this still requires JavaScript and doesn't work without it," and that was the same point Rich Harris made in this article: https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia
felixthehat · 2026-02-03
yeah check out https://front-end.social - some popular front end dev accounts:
https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs
https://social.lol/@db
https://front-end.social/@piccalilli
https://mastodon.social/@davatron5000
https://indieweb.social/@addyosmani
https://front-end.social/@jensimmons
https://mastodon.social/@adactio
https://zachleat.com/@zachleat
https://front-end.social/@rem
https://front-end.social/@chriscoyier
https://front-end.social/@AmeliaBR
https://front-end.social/@rachelandrew
https://webtoo.ls/@astro
https://webtoo.ls/@antfu
https://front-end.social/@bramus
https://front-end.social/@5t3ph
evilduck · 2025-09-03
There have been many that have hit the front page over the years. If you're not aware of a technology's shortcomings then you're a bad proponent of said technology. They're also almost the antithesis of what the HTMX crowd also preaches as "the one true way" and meanwhile, Wordpressers will continue developing the majority of the world's websites blissfully unaware that either technology even exists.
https://dev.to/ryansolid/web-components-are-not-the-future-48bh
https://dev.to/richharris/why-i-don-t-use-web-components-2cia
https://daverupert.com/2023/07/why-not-webcomponents/
https://paularmstrong.dev/blog/2023/03/11/why-we-do-not-write-web-comp…
https://nolanlawson.com/2024/09/28/web-components-are-okay/
https://www.zachleat.com/web/good-bad-web-components/
https://mayank.co/blog/web-components-considered-harmful/
https://adamsilver.io/blog/the-problem-with-web-components/
https://web-highlights.com/blog/are-web-components-dead/
along with some criticisms from very knowledgeable people:
https://x.com/youyuxi/status/1839833110164504691 (author of Vue) https://x.com/Rich_Harris/status/1839785839036887361 (author of Svelte)
Web Components solve a few problems and introduce a few others, use them when they make sense for your needs.