1012: Who Decides What Ships on the Web?

**Jake Archibald** (0:00)
I'll tell you a story whenever you want to put it in the podcast, I know it's up to you. So we did an episode of, well, we did a series of HTV 203, like forever ago, and we filmed out in California, because we were there for Google IO at the same time. And one of the first episodes we filmed, because for some reason we got a lot of budget and the crew that were filmmakers at heart, they filmed one of the episodes up at like a wine place, up a mountain thing near San Francisco.
And most of the shot was just us sitting there waiting for the light to be right, because it just, the cloud, you know, they hate it. But because we were just sat outside, and my skin, even though it was overcast, I got horrendously sunburned. And I didn't notice until we got in the car for the, you know, on the drive back and I felt the thing, I was like, oh, I know what this feeling is. Oh, no, I know.
And then within an hour, I was bright red. But this was the first day of a week of shooting, like the first day for a week. So I had an absolute panic. Like I didn't sleep that night because every hour I sat around every hour to then go and dip my head in the sink of cold water because I thought that's smart. That's that's something that's going to solve it. It did not solve it. So at like four in the morning, I panicked and just like went on to YouTube and I was like, right, what do I do? What makeup solves this? And there was this just really young girl kind of like going, you know, I'm going to show you how to sort out sunburn. First thing you're going to do is you're going to moisturize. And I'm like, lady, I've been moisturizing all night. I don't know.
And then but then she was like, and first we're going to apply the green makeup. And I was like, tell me all of your secrets.

**Scott Tolinski** (1:41)
Oh, yes, the green makeup. Yes.

**Jake Archibald** (1:44)
Yeah. And it and it's so it sort of worked. You could tell.
I sort of look a little bit like Mr. Datu in the morning.

**Wes Bos** (1:52)
That's funny.

**Jake Archibald** (1:53)
Absolute nightmare.

**Wes Bos** (1:54)
Oh, that's you know what the move is, is put more sunscreen on. It has zinc in it and it it cools the skin. I've been sunburned many times.

**Jake Archibald** (2:04)
I have I have been applying after sun. And for this recording, I put some Matt's makeup because I am I am a shiny boy. Like I am a really shiny boy. At the best of times, if I put the after sun on, I look like it looked like something's gone wrong with like a WebGL demo, right?
The highlights are also off. I look like a cue ball, you know.

**Wes Bos** (2:24)
There's our intro. Scott, take it from there. I think that's a beautiful way to open this up.

**Scott Tolinski** (2:29)
Yes. Welcome to Syntax. Today, we have Jake Archibald here. And we're going to be talking about web standards. We're going to be talking about Mozilla. We're going to be talking about Chrome, the Prompt API, and a whole lot more. I'm really stoked. Jake, I've been a fan of yours for a long time. I was a sprite cow user back in the day.
So very familiar with your work forever and ever and ever. So if you don't know Jake, he has been around the industry at the forefront of the industry for a very long time. Now, he's at Mozilla. So Jake, do you want to give the audience who isn't familiar with you a little bit of background and then now what you're doing at Mozilla?

**Jake Archibald** (3:16)
Yeah, sure. I guess the short story, I started my career at the BBC. I was there for four years. Then I worked at a web agency for a year, a startup for a year, and then I went to Google where I was a Chrome DevRel for a solid decade.
Then I left there and I was at Shopify for a couple of years, but then I guess the short story is I missed web standard stuff a lot. So I am now at Firefox doing the DevRel thing again. I guess in terms of the big hitters, I suppose, I did a lot of the work around service worker, staff, fetch, and then more recently, like view transitions and the linear easing thing in CSS, where you can do like bounce easing and stuff. That was a kind of, and I knew I was kind of, I'm leaving Google soon, but I want one last thing. I want one last thing that I want in, and that was that.