The Dev Times #89

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.

A customizable select

Styling the native HTML <select> element has long been a challenge for web developers seeking custom designs. This post from the Chrome Developers team dives into new possibilities for customizing select elements, potentially offering the best of both worlds: greater styling flexibility, while retaining the built-in accessibility and functionality of the native control. Take a look and explore how you might soon be able to style selects without resorting to complex custom solutions. Find out more ›

Anime.js V4 overhaul

Anime.js recently unveiled a major new upgrade. With the release of V4, Anime.js has undergone a complete rewrite, focusing on a modular, ESM-first API. It's an almost unbelievably long list of new features, performance improvements and bug fixes, so we suggest you check out the changelog for the full list. It is not only the library that has been improved though, as the website and documentation have also received a new coat of paint, both of which are definitely worth a look. Dive in ›

Building software is really hard

The recent rise of AI programming platforms, promising boundless opportunities for those with little coding experience, has prompted a much-needed reality check from Andreas Møller. Drawing a comparison to so-called "no-code" tools with their similar initial promise, Møller highlights a shared long-term drawback: by significantly easing the learning process, these platforms ultimately stifle long-term learning, as programming itself remains a challenging endeavor. Read more ›

Making APIs and documentation more accessible to AI tools

We're excited to announce that Transloadit has joined the growing movement to make the web more AI-friendly by implementing support for /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt files. This addition makes our extensive documentation and API capabilities more accessible to large language models (LLMs), enabling developers to build more powerful AI-integrated applications with Transloadit. Check it out ›

Automatic background removal from images

Meet the newest member of our versatile Robot family: the /image/bgremove Robot. It can automatically detect and remove backgrounds from images, using advanced AI technology. This powerful tool allows you to create clean, professional-looking results with transparent backgrounds, saving you time and effort while producing high-quality images. Try it out ›