Following on from [my previous post about the Brave web browser](/post/brave-brilliant-browser-and-the-future-of-online-advertising "Brave: Brilliant Browser and the Future of Online Ads"), I've now become a Brave Verified Creator!

## What Does This Mean?

If you use the [Brave](https://brave.com/ "Brave browser homepage") browser and are opted-in to Brave Rewards and Auto-Contributions it means I'll get a small portion of the [Basic Attention Tokens (BAT)](https://basicattentiontoken.org/ "Basic Attention Tokens homepage") you receive for viewing ads.

As I talked about in my previous post, it's a brilliant mechanism to allow creators like me to monetize their content really easily without forcing visitors to see horrible, intrusive on-page advertisements. If you're interested in supporting small content creators like me without it costing you a penny, you should definitely give Brave a try!

## What Am I Going to Do with All My New Found Riches?

The reality is that I don't stand to earn very much, if anything at all with the small number of visitors I bring to this site. But on the off chance I earn a few pennies it'll go towards covering the cost of renewing my domain purchase, so it makes keeping this website going that little bit cheaper for me.

## Content Creator? Consider Signing Up!

If you want to take advantage of Brave Rewards, you can do so completely free of charge! Here's an overview of what you need to do:

1. [Download Brave](https://brave.com/download/ "Brave browser download page")
1. Set Up Brave Rewards
    - Brave will guide you through this process
    - You can make changes via Brave's settings at any time
1. [Connect and verify your Brave Wallet](https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034841711-What-is-a-verified-wallet- "Brave support article about verified wallets") with [Uphold](https://uphold.com/ "Uphold homepage")
    - The wallet gets created alongside the Brave Rewards setup
1. [Sign up as a Brave Creator](https://creators.brave.com/ "Brave Creators homepage")
1. [Verify ownership of your content](https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021408352 "Brave support article describing the verification process")
    - If, like me, you use the "File Upload Verification" method, you can remove the file from the `.well-known/` folder once you've completed verification
    - You have to wait up to 24 hours for the verification to take effect

I would say the whole process can be done in about 15-20 mins...though that's a bit of a guess because I've not done a straight run-through before.

And that's it! You can continue to create the content you and your readers/viewers love and check back every now and then to see how much BAT you're earning by logging into your [Brave Rewards Creators](https://creators.brave.com/ "Brave Creators homepage") account.


I've signed up as a Brave Creator so I benefit from Brave's amazing new approach to monetizing content on the web. If you're a content creator, you should sign up too!

I'm now a Brave Verified Creator

It's been a little over 3 years since I joined the Engineering Team at Amigo Loans as a Front End Software Engineer, and it's been quite a journey for me.

I have been able to work on a range of websites, web applications, backend services and a native mobile app using some of the latest and greatest tools, libraries and frameworks the frontend world has to offer. I have also had the pleasure of working with some of the most brilliant, hard-working people who have all been incredibly supportive and helped me develop as a professional and as a person.

Despite the positives, and after much thought and deliberation, I believe that it's the right time for me to leave the company and move onto something new.

## So What's Next?

At the beginning of March I'll be starting my new job as Frontend Developer at [Pulselive](https://www.pulselive.com/ "Pulselive homepage")!

I'm incredibly excited to get started and work with new people to build amazing digital products for some of the biggest names in sport. I'm also excited to see how this new job will help me learn new things and grow into a better developer.

I'll also be working with a few ex-Redweb colleagues again which is a great bonus!

## Are You Happy in Your Work?

I have spent a lot of time going back and forth about whether I should stay at Amigo. It was never going to be an easy decision. There are lots of things to consider and always the question of "is the grass really greener on the other side?".

If you are/have been in a similar position of struggling to figure out a way of deciding what's right for you, I have one recommendation which I hope may prove useful to you. Ask yourself this one simple question:

<blockquote>
  <p class="mb-0">"Will I be <strong>happy</strong> if I stay?"</p>
</blockquote>

I highlight the word "happy" because I don't mean "happy enough", I mean would it actually bring you genuine, long term happiness?

If the answer to my question is "No" I would suggest that it's time to look for something new. Go out and find somewhere you think will bring you that missing joy.

I think it's only recently dawned on me just how important it is to really enjoy your job. It is such a big part of your life and it affects the other parts of your life more than you might realise.

I plan to write an article on this topic to go into more depth, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!

At the end of this month I'll be leaving my role at Amigo Loans and starting my new job as a Frontend Developer at Pulselive!

New Year, New Job!

Bootstrap's dependence on jQuery has been a relatively large factor in my reason to stop using it in recent years. Now, with the Bootstrap 5 alpha, they're ditching jQuery in preference of using the APIs provided by modern browsers. This is a big step, but one that I feel is beneficial and necessary to encourage developers like me to use it again on future projects.

## Lets Not Hate on jQuery

I would like to clarify that I don't hate jQuery.\* I think that jQuery has done an incredible job over the years at making front-end web development a significantly less painful endeavour. The reality these days is that it's not as relevant and necessary anymore. Browser support is far less of an issue because they are much better at keeping up with standards and other libraries and frameworks have been developed which render jQuery less useful. Nevertheless, we can still appreciate that jQuery has served it's purpose extremely well since it was first released all the way back in 2006 and I will forever be thankful for it and all the work people put in to building and maintaining it.

<p class="text-sm">*I personally don't like it when developers talk trash about older tech, languages, libraries, frameworks etc. just because it's a little dated. It's always good to be mindful that people still like use these technologies and it is a perfectly valid choice if it suits their use case.</p>

## Light as a Feather

So lets take a look and see what impact dropping jQuery has on Bootstrap's file size:

<div class="overflow-scroll w-full mt-4 mb-8">
    <table>
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <th>Bootstrap Version</th>
                <th>Files</th>
                <th>Size (Original)</th>
                <th>Size (Gzip)</th>
                <th>Total (Gzip)</th>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            
            <tr>
                <td rowspan="2">v4.5 (latest)</td>
                <td>Bootstrap</td>
                <td>60.0 kB</td>
                <td>14.9 kB</td>
                <td rowspan="2">39.8 kB</td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>jQuery</td>
                <td>72.4 kB</td>
                <td>24.9 kB</td>
            </tr>
            
            <tr>
                <td rowspan="2">v5 (alpha)</td>
                <td>Bootstrap</td>
                <td>63.5 kB</td>
                <td>16.2 kB</td>
                <td rowspan="2">16.2 kB</td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>jQuery</td>
                <td>-</td>
                <td>-</td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
</div>

<p class="text-sm">Note: I've excluded Popper.js from this because it is the same for both versions of Bootstrap.</p>

We can see that there's only a very small increase (1.3 mB Gzipped) in Bootstrap's file size to compensate for completely removing jQuery!\*\* Less data down the wire means faster page loads which is great for improved SEO and user experiences.

<p class="text-sm">**This file size will also be affected by changes other than dealing with the removal of jQuery, i.e. new features, so in reality removing jQuery made even less of a difference in Bootstrap's size!</p>

## What Else is New?

There are some other new features of Bootstrap 5 which include:

-   New CSS custom properties
-   Updated forms & form controls
-   New utilities API
-   Enhanced grid system with a new XXL tier for really large screens

I won't go into detail about any of these, but if you're interested you can [head over to the Bootstrap blog to read all about the new features](https://blog.getbootstrap.com/2020/06/16/bootstrap-5-alpha/ "What's new in Bootstrap v5").

## Bootstrap Icons

Whilst on the subject of Bootstrap I thought I should mention that they have recently released a great set of over 1,000 SVG icons which you can use on any project (you don't need to be using Bootstrap to use them). [Take a look at Bootstrap Icons](https://icons.getbootstrap.com/ "Bootstrap Icons") and see what you think!

I definitely feel that it's the right time for Bootstrap to say goodbye to jQuery and move to rely solely on the powerful capabilities of modern web browsers.

"News" Posts

I'm now a Brave Verified Creator

New Year, New Job!

Bootstrap is Dropping its jQuery Dependency