Web Development Advent Calendars for 2023

Web developers around the world have for years given a nod to Saturnalia solstice Isaac Newton’s birthday Yule wassailing mummering end of Gregorian calendar year Christmas with advent calendars covering web-related topics. As a result, you may (should) recognize some of the ones listed below.

Every year I miss a few on December 1, so add a comment or hit me up on the Fediverse if you have more. I delayed posting this year until the end of the day because I am a bit tired of people who just copy the entire thing and share their version on the socials, so I am hoping the 20 hour delay frustrated them at least the tiniest bit. Also, this content originally appeared on AdrianRoselli.com.

I have not included advent calendars that are delivered via email only (Advent of JavaScript, Advent of CSS, React Holiday), single blog posts, or image-only efforts with inaccessible images. It would be a terrible gift from me to you if you sign up for spam or end up taking advice from organizations that are clearly bad at advice.

I am happy to see more of the calendar creators are available on the fediverse instead of (or in addition to) Twitter. I look forward to it being all of them.

HTMHell Advent Calendar (@matuzo@front-end.social)

HTMHell Advent Calendar is Manuel Matuzović’s doubling-down on the theology of HTML. And Christianity. One of those. Anyway, each day will reveal an article, talk, or tool that focuses on HTML.

Lean UXmas (@LeanUXmas)

Lean UXmas collects the most popular articles from the Agile & Lean UX News mailing list, presented throughout the month.

Advent of Code (@ericwastl)

Advent of Code provides a small programming puzzle every day up to Christmas. They are stand-alone, but supposedly have a general theme. They also use different technologies so there is some variety as well.

24 Jours de Web (@ParisWeb@mamot.fr)

24 Jours de Web is back as an advent calendar for web folk. Written in French, it is clearly primarily targeted at French speakers, but a round of Google Translate will open it up to far more readers (like me).

Performance Calendar (@perfplanet)

Performance Calendar hails this as the speed geek’s favorite time of the year, ostensibly because of the tips it has been offering each December since 2009. It isn’t just server optimizations you’ll find here, so don’t shy away because you’re not a system admin.

JVM Advent (@JavaAdvent)

JVM Advent is posting a technical article from various authors related to Java each day.

アクセシビリティ Advent Calendar (@motchie)

Accessibility (アクセシビリティ) Advent Calendar 2023 is in Japanese, and thanks to the powers of Google Translate, I can tell you it covers a variety of accessibility issues, including web: Webのアクセシビリティを含む、様々なアクセシビリティについてのアドベントカレンダーです。). If you know Japanese, I welcome any corrections. This is its 10^th year.

Selfhtml Advent (@SELFHTML@bildung.social)

Selfhtml Advent is from Germany’s oldest (since 1995) and largest web design Community. The advent calendar will present tips and examples from its contributors.

Kodekalender (@knowitnorge)

Kodekalender is a Norwegian code-specific calendar. Each day solve a code puzzle and be entered in a drawing (you should check the rules).

Advent of Annotations

Advent of Annotations is a Figma-based advent that challenges people annotate designs pulled from real organizations each day. Participants can use their preferred Figma annotation tool (though the CVS Health annotation kit is included). The complexity will increase each day, though these are intended for any skill level.

Bekk Christmas (@livetibekk)

Bekk.christmas collects a few topics per day in one calendar. In previous years I broke them all out, but with some of the domains not resolving it seems safest to link to the parent calendar. Posts will cover JavaScript, UX, security, and machine learning.

24 Days in Umbraco (@24DaysInUmbraco)

24 Days in Umbraco is dedicated to the Umbraco CMS. Now in its eleventh year (the calendar, not the CMS).

24 Pull Requests (@24PullRequests@mastodon.social )

24 Pull Requests is less an advent calendar than it is an effort to mobilize developers. The goal is to get developers to send a pull request every day in December (up to Christmas), thereby supporting your favorite open source projects.

Perl Weekly Challenge Advent (@PerlWChallenge)

Perl Weekly Challenge Advent is in its third year. Each day it takes a response from a previous weekly challenge and re-posts it on the site.

Perl Advent Calendar (@perladvent)

Perl Advent Calendar goes all the way back to 2000 (and back then looked a bit more like a traditional advent calendar, too) and has been dispensing tips for Perl developers ever since.

12 Days of Web (@5t3ph@front-end.social)

12 Days of Web is back this year and again will not open until December 13, but promises topics covering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

C# Advent Calendar (@mgroves)

C# Advent Calendar (sharp, not hashtag) is revealing two posts per day, including on December 25. That’s 50 posts over the course of the month.

Advent of Cyber (@RealTryHackMe)

Advent of Cyber offers a daily beginner security exercise over 25 days (not 24). There is prize money available, but you need to sign up to have a shot at it.

TryHackMe Advent of Cyber 2023 Accessibility Showcase (@zersiax@infosec.exchange)

TryHackMe Advent of Cyber 2023 Accessibility Showcase is both a mouthful and a screen reader review of the examples from the calendar immediately preceding this one on the page. Florian Beijers will go through the Advent of Cyber tasks and provide feedback on challenges and necessary workarounds. Each is released as a video in a dedicated YouTube playlist.

Raku Advent Calendar

Raku Advent Calendar (Raku is Perl6) has a new daily post for your Perl/Raku needs.

Festive Tech Calendar (@_cloudfamily)

Festive Tech Calendar is a YouTube channel with videos ranging from a half hour to over an hour.

24 Days of Design Gifts (@Framer, @Mans)

24 Days of Design Gifts will be pushing design-related bits from heavily discounted apps to free icon & wallpaper packs.

IndieWeb Gift Calendar

IndieWeb Gift Calendar is the 6^th annual group effort to gift (ship) one or more IndieWeb-related thing(s) each day of December that others can use to improve their IndieWeb experience.

LostCarPark Advent Calendar

The LostCarPark Advent Calendar is dedicated to Drupal, though I don’t know much more about it than that (there is no information on the site, no social presence). Chris Wells shared it with me on Masto.

Advent of TypeScript (@typehero)

Advent of TypeScript shares a daily challenge for readers using, yup, TypeScript. There is a dedicated Discord for asking questions and answers will be posted on the Type Hero GitHub. Apparently you can also earn Advent of TypeScript badges on GitHub.

The Tactile Times Advent Calendar and Countdown

The Tactile Times Advent Calendar and Countdown is self-described as the first fully-accessible online advent calendar aimed specifically at young braillists (as far as they know). Its content is not web/dev-related, but it is good insight into what “3 blind children” can build for their “newspaper for young braillists”.