Onion Labs
08Notes7 posts

Working notes from the core.

Problems we hit, decisions we made, and the ones we got wrong the first time. Flutter architecture and performance, plus a run of posts about this site itself — the code for those is in front of you, so the claims are checkable.

8 min

Offline-first Flutter: keep the merge off the UI thread

An app that works in a basement is not an app with a retry button. How to structure local-first writes in Flutter, and why the sync pass belongs in an isolate.

  • Flutter
  • Dart
  • Offline-first
  • Architecture
7 min

Flutter jank is measurable, so measure it in CI

Cross-platform frameworks get their reputation for stutter from teams who never put a number on it. A frame budget, enforced on real devices, on every pull request.

  • Flutter
  • Performance
  • Testing
6 min

Keeping scroll progress out of React

A value that changes every frame does not belong in state. How this site drives a WebGL scene from scroll without re-rendering the tree sixty times a second.

  • React
  • Performance
  • WebGL
7 min

Making text legible over a WebGL scene without scrims

Dark plates behind paragraphs always look like dark plates behind paragraphs. Four techniques that solve the same problem without a single visible patch.

  • Design
  • WebGL
  • Typography
4 min

Two canvases, one decision

A context provider whose scope was one element too small, and the silent fallback bug it caused on machines where WebGL worked fine.

  • React
  • WebGL
  • Debugging
5 min

Mobile is a parallel implementation, not a degraded desktop

Below 768px this site swaps WebGL for SVG and keeps every beat. The version that dropped the concept on phones shipped first, and it was worse than no concept at all.

  • Mobile
  • Design
  • Performance
5 min

A contact form that tells the truth

Silent failure for bots, honest failure for humans, and why the rate limiter and the honeypot deliberately behave differently.

  • Forms
  • Security
  • UX

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