The Dev Times #27

Halfway through each month, our newsletter for developers: The Dev Times, brings three reads that our own developers found interesting on the web, and two Transloadit updates that may interest you.

Cutting Google out of your life

Google is everywhere. They offer a vast ecosystem that covers most of everyone's basic online needs, so there's a lot they know about you. Their services and products are incredibly good, but if you're concerned about your privacy and staying secure online, Google might not be your best bet. This guide, without trying to outright boycott Google, presents alternatives that you can use to become a privacy wizard. Learn more. ›

Accessible links and buttons with React

Distinguishing buttons from links has been an age-old problem of the web platform when it comes to accessibility. But now, the people at N26 seem to have cracked the case! They have succesfully managed to support all their features with and without JavaScript (thanks to server-side rendering). This means that a lot of links automatically become buttons when JavaScript is enabled and running. To avoid authoring ternaries all over the place, they also have a single component capable of rendering both links and buttons depending on the assigned properties. Check it out. ›

Playwright

Microsoft launched a Node-based browser automation project called Playwright. It allows you to spin up a headless version of a browser and control it. Their primary goal is to improve automated UI testing by eliminating flakiness, improving execution speed and providing insight into the operation of the browser. It's similar to Google's Puppeteer, but instead of being Chrome-only, Playwright is compatible with multiple browsers. Read more. ›

We rewrote our docs

We are pleased to announce a complete overhaul of our documentation. Since we started ten years ago, we've grown Transloadit into the extensive company it is today, launching 16 more ways to integrate, API2, countless infra and security upgrades, and over 40 extra features! All of the documentation required was always gradually added on top. As a result, a good amount of outdated information and inconsistencies found its way into our docs. In other words, it was high time we cleared our garden of weeds again! Enjoy! ›

Automatically convert media added to a Google Sheet

Our Zapier integration has been receiving a lot of interest. Just recently, three different (potential) customers inquired how to automate some of their business processes using Transloadit and Zapier. We took a closer look at Deliveroo earlier, and this time we're zooming in on Salesgym and their desire to automatically concatenate calls that are added as columns to newly added rows of a Google Sheet. Fortunately, this is just one of many things that Transloadit makes light work of! While helping them get set up, we decided to document the steps we took and write an in-depth guide about the process. Check it out! ›