Blog

At the beginning of October, part of our frontend team traveled from Liberec to Brno for FrontKon#25 – a community conference focused on frontend development. The journey wasn't short, but it was worth it.

FrontKon once again confirmed that the Czech frontend community is thriving. Great organization, friendly atmosphere, three stages full of current topics and most importantly – no dead spots. Only occasionally could the talks perhaps flow a bit more smoothly.

And because three stages were running in parallel, it wasn't possible to catch everything – we're looking forward to the recordings that will hopefully soon appear on YouTube. A summary of the most interesting moments from the talks that our team personally attended is provided below.

Design systems and components

One of the big themes of this year's edition. Both Jakub Randák and Petr Koláček showed that building a design system and component library isn't just about technologies, but primarily about structure, discipline and sustainability. Jakub brought a perspective from a large company – what to think about when developing your own component library and what to watch out for. Petr analyzed how individual "atoms" gradually form a system that stands the test of time even in the long term.

For our team, which is currently working on an internal UI kit, this was a double dose of inspiration and warning: how such a system can break when consistency stops being monitored.

AI – hype vs. reality

Another strong theme of the conference this year was artificial intelligence. Milan Seitler brought a realistic view of what AI can actually do, and offered interesting insights on how to use it today. He also focused on the common gap between expectations and reality when AI is thoughtlessly integrated into the work process. Petr Malík in the following talk showed concrete examples from practice. Together they created an interesting contrast – from data and research to practical tips from everyday development.

We at UX Fans also work with AI, although each of us in a slightly different way. So it was inspiring to see how other companies approach its integration as well.

Modern web technologies

Danny Moerkerke opened the topic of progressive web applications (PWA) and confirmed that this technology still has room to grow. Access to the filesystem, biometrics and much more – features that we previously expected only from native applications, today web applications can handle as well.

Libor Vaněk and Jenda Horák followed up brilliantly on a similar topic, practically showing that Service Worker (the technology on which PWAs are built) has wide applications – from advanced caching to improving user experience. For example, implementing offline mode is often overlooked, yet its potential is enormous.

Different approaches, same goal

The frontend world is constantly evolving and new frameworks and approaches are emerging. Ondřej Velíšek showed the relatively new frontend framework TanStack Start – an interesting alternative to Next.js. It's still more of a library for experimentation, but it was interesting to see where framework development is heading. For us it was also confirmation that choosing Next.js is still the right choice for current projects.

Type safety and working with forms

Michaela Trčková brought a clean and practical perspective on working with forms using React Hook Form and Zod. She showed that even seemingly simple things like validation and form processing can have a significant impact on code quality, developer comfort and the final product. Even though we use a different library for validation, we were pleased to see that the emphasis on type safety and quality user experience is similar across the community.

Internationalization directly in the browser

Ondra Kučera reminded us that even built-in APIs like Intl, designed for internationalization and part of JavaScript itself, can do much more than it seems at first glance – from formatting currencies and dates to text localization. Moreover, it's now widely supported across browsers. The practical examples inspired us to make more use of these capabilities in our projects as well, instead of unnecessarily reaching for external libraries.

SEO that makes sense

Pavel Ungr confirmed that technical SEO has its place even at a purely developer conference. He shared practical tools that can save time when checking a website during development. Even for us, who deal with SEO regularly, it was a useful set of tools that will help us streamline our workflow for implementing and checking technical SEO.

And finally Tigran

After a full day of technical topics and information-packed presentations came great relief – Tigran Hovakimyan's stand-up. Honest humor, spot-on observations and exactly the type of conclusion where you laugh from start to finish. Perfect ending to a great day.

What we take away

FrontKon for us isn't just about new technologies. It's about community, inspiration and about the fact that you realize again how quickly frontend is changing.

We'll share the knowledge gained with the rest of our developers at regular meetings – and we already have several ideas of what to try in practice.

Even though it was far from Liberec to Brno, we don't regret a single minute. And next year? FrontKon is returning to Prague – and we definitely won't miss it.