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project_path: /web/_project.yaml book_path: /web/shows/_book.yaml description: Microsoft shows off Project Spartan, Beacons by Blesh connect the physical world to your phone, React Native goes open source, a11y-wins.tumblr.com catalogs great accessibility, Polymer 0.8 hits the airwaves, and preload links get an intent to implemnt

{# wf_updated_on: 2017-07-25 #} {# wf_published_on: 2015-04-14 #} {# wf_youtube_id: REAnmF5FHUA #}

The physical web is all around us {: .page-title }

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In this Weeks Episode

Microsoft shows off Project Spartan, Beacons by Blesh connect the physical world to your phone, React Native goes open source, a11y-wins.tumblr.com catalogs great accessibility, Polymer 0.8 hits the airwaves, and preload links get an intent to implemnt

React Native <span class="lazyweb-title-timestamp">0:13</span>

React Native is an open source framework which allows you to run your react app on native iOS. It comes with a bundle of components and you can grab additional add-ons at <a href="http://react.parts/native-ios">react.parts/native-ios</a>.

Learn more in <a href="https://youtu.be/KVZ-P-ZI6W4">this video from React.js Conf</a>.

A11y-Wins <span class="lazyweb-title-timestamp">0:31</span>

It's hard to find good examples of accessibility websites. To help solve this problem Marcy Sutton has created <a href="http://a11ywins.tumblr.com/">a11ywins.tumblr.com</a> which covers sites which are doing accessibility right.

Learn more on accessibility by <a href="https://vimeo.com/118697675">watching Marcy Sutton's talk from Smashing Conf</a>.

Polymer 0.8 <span class="lazyweb-title-timestamp">0:48</span>

Polymer 0.8 is out in the open and showing great performance boosts with 5x improvement on mobile safari and 8x improvement on desktop Firefox.

Checkout the <a href="https://www.polymer-project.org/0.8/">blog post on the release here</a> and <a href="/web/shows/polycasts/season-2/first-look-polymer-0.8">learn more in this Polycast</a>.

Downloading resources can be a major bottleneck and preload links are a new way to give the browser prioritization over what assets to download ahead of time.

With this <a href="https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/Abrd-tbDyuQ/4YP6_yvBa94J">intent to implement</a>, signals are good that it'll be coming to Chrome.

Project Spartan <span class="lazyweb-title-timestamp">1:21</span>

Project Spartan is Microsoft's new browser built to be lean, mean and standards compliant. <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/31/8319169/project-spartan-new-browser-microsoft-hands-on">The Verge</a> took for a test drive and you can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKjkfkAmzAg">learn more from either</a> of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A5ZXWTIlHw">these videos from Microsoft</a>.

Still want more? Then no worries, you can check out the <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/03/30/quot-project-spartan-quot-in-the-windows-technical-preview-build-10049.aspx">Technical Preview of Spartan here</a>.

Physical Web Beacons <span class="lazyweb-title-timestamp">1:42</span>

The <a href="https://google.github.io/physical-web/">Physical Web</a> was a project started at Google which uses beacons to transmit signals which are picked up by mobile devices to know what is around them.

Blesh have just released a demo of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AryiXsPQ1Y">their physical web beacons which you can watch here</a>.