Tooling and libraries
Choosing tooling and libraries can be one of the most overwhelming and time consuming aspects of web development. To help readers feel confident in their choices, provide instructions for well-known, well-established tools rather than an exhaustive list of options. Strike a balance between what's most commonly used and what's best practice, in terms of compatibility, accessibility, and functionality.
When appropriate, provide multiple paths, frameworks, or tools to achieve a goal. Including a codelab for each path is often a good way to achieve that goal. To see an example, check out the codelab callout at the end of the Use Imagemin to compress images post.
Use open-source software #
This keeps web.dev accessible to as many developers as possible.
Ensure tooling is well-established #
When you're planning to include tooling in a post or codelab, make sure it meets at least one of these criteria:
- HTTP Archive data: Tooling is used by ≥ 10K domains.
- npm weekly download statistics: Tooling consistently has ≥ 50K weekly downloads.
Include a link to the relevant data source in your content proposal.
Sometimes it's impossible to use these data sources to verify the popularity of a given tool. (For example, if you're writing an article about servers, neither data source can be used to verify the usage of NGINX.) In such cases you can demonstrate the popularity of a tool in your content proposal by listing 5–10 well-known sites that have self-identified as users.