Lessons From Building a Chrome Extension With AI
I think that you should be able to select more than one reason for rating. This team is
The State of TypeScript in 2025: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t
TypeScript turned 13 this year. It is no longer the scrappy alternative to JavaScript type checkers — it is the default for any JavaScript project that expects to be maintained for more than six months. The State of JS 2024 survey showed 89% usage among
Building Browser Extensions That Users Actually Keep Installed
The average Chrome extension loses 60% of its users within the first week of installation. That number comes from our own analytics across four extensions we have shipped at Harbor Software, and it tracks closely with industry data from Chrome Web Store’s internal retention reports.
Building Chrome Extensions with React and TypeScript
Chrome extensions are one of the highest-leverage products you can build. They reach users in their browser, integrate with existing workflows without requiring users to switch applications, and distribute through the Chrome Web Store to 3 billion Chrome users. Despite this enormous opportunity, the developer
Tailwind CSS at Scale: Patterns for Large Applications
The Scaling Problem Nobody Warns You About Tailwind CSS is brilliant for small to medium projects. You write utility classes directly in your markup, you never context-switch to a CSS file, you delete a component and its styles disappear with it. The developer experience is
Building Accessible Web Applications Without Losing Your Mind
Accessibility Isn’t a Feature — It’s a Baseline Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if your web application can’t be used by someone with a disability, it’s broken. Not “less optimal.” Not “could be improved.” Broken. In the same way that a form that doesn’t submit is
Server Components vs Client Components: A Practical Guide
The Mental Model Shift That Changes Everything When React Server Components landed in production via Next.js 13, our team at Harbor Software had already been building complex dashboards and AI-powered tools for clients. We thought we understood React. We were wrong about where the boundary
Optimistic UI Updates: Making Your App Feel Instant
Why Perceived Speed Matters More Than Actual Speed There’s a number that changed how we think about UI at Harbor Software: 100 milliseconds. That’s the threshold below which a user perceives an action as instantaneous. Above it, they start noticing. Above 300ms, they start feeling
State Management in 2023: What Actually Works
The State Management Landscape Has Changed Five years ago, the answer to “how should I manage state in React?” was simple: Redux. It was the default. You installed it on day one, wrote your reducers, connected your components, and accepted the boilerplate as the cost