I used to use Sass a lot — especially when I was working on extremely complicated CSS codebases as a consultant. Sass definitely is not "dead" either — tech doesn't die, it's 1s and 0s — it's extremely useful still! Sure, CSS is bringing stuff like nesting and mixins over from Sa … | Continue reading

I am a purveyor of reset styles, so of course, my ears pricked up when I spotted this. Especially as it's a Manuel Matuzović job! There's lots to like in his version of a reset, such as ultra low specificity :where() selector usage, like this: :where(html) { line-height: 1.5; } … | Continue reading

The gap capability in layout is — in my opinion — one of the most powerful capabilities CSS has added…ever. There's a problem with it though: if you want separator lines, you're stuck with hacks. We've done this sort of thing before which is not ideal: body { background: white; … | Continue reading

I really enjoyed reading this article by Alex Riviere and found myself nodding along in places. I do disagree with the overall approach though because I come at layout from a different angle. I'm very much in the "layout should be a skeletal, flexible system" camp and have articu … | Continue reading

Hi! I’m Sam, and I write interactive blog posts about computer science. Because that doesn’t quite pay the bills, during the day I’m a senior software engineer for Budibase, an open source, low-code, self-hostable app building platform. We make heavy use of TypeScript, both on th … | Continue reading

When we redesigned Piccalilli last year, our ultimate focus was on the web experience — specifically articles and links. The Index of course got some love, but we put a pin in giving it a full re-work until we had the capacity to give it our full focus. Y'know, iteration. We've r … | Continue reading

In my first developer job, I worked on the software I had used in a different role at the same company. On my first day, I naively explained the business need for an extra thousand lines of code to the developer working on the project. Learning to maintain and fix a legacy codeba … | Continue reading

It’s fairly accepted that keeping navigation visible is best practice for menu design, right? At least when it comes to designing for desktop viewports. Nielsen Norman Group goes as far as saying that off-screen menus are “not appropriate for desktop websites and apps”. Like a lo … | Continue reading

I stumbled upon this article and firstly, I learned yet another an important lesson about making presumptions about screen reader users: It wasn't my first time seeing someone blind use assistive technology for web navigation, but this experience stood out. Instead of relying on … | Continue reading

Recently I had the experience of migrating a Vue web app to a new state management library, Pinia, which was interesting from both a technical and non-technical point of view. In this article I’ll share my thoughts and findings on when, why and how you might consider carrying out … | Continue reading

Did you know we send out a newsletter twice a week? I know, I know, there’s a lot of newsletters out there, but let me tell you what The Index does: It goes out on a Wednesday and Friday The focus is around 5 links per issue and that’s it We try to get a nice blend of front-end, … | Continue reading

Before we get started, I can’t stress the following enough: the choices we make at Set Studio don’t challenge your choices. You might also not agree with our choices and that’s fine, but we don’t need alternatives evangelising to us. To paraphrase Rachel Andrew: If it works, it’s … | Continue reading

I started 2024 with a super in-depth Reality Check article (more of those coming this year) so I thought I’d start simple this year because I’m still a bit tired from, y’know, writing a whole CSS course 😅 What is masonry? I’m not going to presume that everyone knows what … | Continue reading

The obvious lack of diversity (and respondents versus last year 😬) applies of course, but there’s some interesting stuff in here still. The “other front-end frameworks” section specifically. Astro, Ember, Remix and jQuery have all grown in usage vs last year, but Next.js … | Continue reading

I’ve been keeping half an eye on popovers and anchor positioning. I see the latter as a requirement for the former though, so I’ve been waiting not just for browser support, but also, for a deeper dive into how to apply these in the real world. Ryan’s here with exactly what I was … | Continue reading

We recently launched Complete CSS, and a lot of people have mentioned that they don’t know how to approach their boss to ask them to pay for it. Here’s an email template for you to help with that. Dear {{Boss}}, I have come across a CSS course that I believe will elevate our team … | Continue reading

Big fan of and checking in but what I don’t like is having to add extra elements to present a nice look and feel for them. Dealing with the disclosed content also requires extra elements if you want to apply a layout, for example. It looks like that is changing though! I’m espe … | Continue reading

Josh is here again with another stunner of an article and they’ve done a fantastic job of demonstrating how useful container queries can be in the real world. This is a really important part: I don’t think most designers are even aware that they have this exciting new capability. … | Continue reading

A big thing you need to contend with when working on design systems is anticipating all the different ways someone may use a component. The idea here is that you then preemptively provide sensible behavior and safeguards to keep things working well. An example of this is a “Simpl … | Continue reading

The first sentence of this great article is the most important: I don’t mind HTML email, but it really can be overdone. There is a tendency to do too much. We try to keep emails that come from here super simple but we still get a couple of issues with Buttondown. We’re actually l … | Continue reading

FYI A break from our usual type of article here but it is very important we do because WordPress powers nearly half of the web. You may or may not be aware of the situation unfolding with Automattic and their CEO Matt Mullenweg against WP Engine. I recommend reading the following … | Continue reading

When the gov.uk team offer a rundown like this, you have to read it because that team are some of the best in the business of great user experience. We’re so lucky in the UK because anything government related is so easy to use. They are, of course very into progressive enhanceme … | Continue reading

Being the co-author of Every Layout and a super fan of wildcard selectors, as you can imagine, my mentions and DMs have been riddled with “wildcards are incredibly inefficient” for years. I of course brush that off because as Trys says in their article, browsers are very efficien … | Continue reading

I’ve always been a Richard Rutter fanboy, so seeing my CSS reset cited in their new reset fills me with pride. When it comes to web typography, Richard knows more than most and shares this vast knowledge really well with TODS. There’s a near 100% guarantee (unless you’re actually … | Continue reading