The idea of scoping styles has been desired for a long time. The idea is to write CSS without worrying it will apply to more than you want it to. You can solve this in a number of ways. A way to do it without changing any core technology is to use naming. If you […] | Continue reading
light-dark() Saw Bramus post about this. Apparently, this is just a first step on the way toward a more robust schemed-value() function that can handle more than just those two themes and more than just colors. Still useful! Without light-dark(), we need to use media queries and … | Continue reading
The story The Town With a Song in Its Heart in the New York Times (warning: probably paywalled, but I did try to use a “gift link”) is one of those articles that is made for me. It’s a story about some little town I’ve never heard of, beautiful and full of charm, that takes […] | Continue reading
A friend has a go-to question for a conversation starter, particularly among business colleagues: What’s a business you admire? He runs Frontend Masters and without blowing smoke, I’d put that on the list. They run a good ship over there. Let’s see what else. I’m a Kwik Trip guy … | Continue reading
Let’s say you were looking at a sunset with your eyeballs. You loved all the shades of orange that were happening. So orange! You took a photo with your modern digital camera. Later, you get the photo off your digital camera on your computer. You like post-processing your photos, … | Continue reading
Much to my surprise, I’m still using Arc as my daily driver browser. I really respect how big of a swing this is for that team. It’s honest-to-god browser UI/UX innovation, in a way that it feels like bigger established browsers could never would never. It’s just fun to watch the … | Continue reading
On this site, at the moment, I have a 🔀 random button in the header that takes you to a random blog post. The chances that the random blog post has links in it that are dead are way too high. As in, the URL no longer resolves, or goes somewhere entirely wrong now. Perfect … | Continue reading
You know the feature: you get an SMS message with a 6-digit code (OTP) on your iPhone, and you don’t even have to switch over to the Messages app, the 6-digit code appears right above the keyboard itself. Tap it and the code autofills where needed. It’s an amazing feature of a mo … | Continue reading
I posted about how convoluted all this was recently in The State of API-Powered Publishing to Social Media Networks. I don’t think it’s gotten much better, I just wanted to document exactly what I’m using right now so I can track if it gets better. Here’s where I’d like to be pos … | Continue reading
According to the timeline, the period to submit proposals for what Interop 2024 should do just ended, and now it’s in the refinement phase. Interop, remember, is short for “interoperability” between major browsers. They get together and agree on what web platform features should … | Continue reading
Length requirements, character requirements, uppercase, lowercase, yadda yadda. This is not just security theatre. It’s a waste of time, the math makes no sense and it leads people to create worse passwords, not better ones. Password stupidity is no longer viable I don’t know tha … | Continue reading
… we all claim to hate complexity, but it’s actually just complexity added by other people that we hate — our own bugbears are always exempted, and for things we understand we quickly become unable to even see there is a potential problem for other people. No one actually wants s … | Continue reading
I like the color picker at https://oklch.com/ — it’s well-done and handy. I use it fairly regularly, in part because most other “color pickers” don’t offer anything P3-anything, let alone the particular model varietal you might want in CSS, which is annoying. (I emailed Sip the o … | Continue reading
I worked for Wufoo when it was acquired by SurveyMonkey in April 2011. Twelve years ago. I think it’s fair to say it was largely abandoned. The Wufoo of today isn’t really any different than it was twelve years ago. It’s still pretty useful though. I still have quite a few active … | Continue reading
Casey Newton: … it is probably a mistake, in the end, to ask software to improve our thinking. Even if you can rescue your attention from the acid bath of the internet; even if you can gather the most interesting data and observations into the app of your choosing; even if you re … | Continue reading
Just days before Andy revamped his (more) Modern CSS Reset, Dave and I were line-by-lining it on ShopTalk Show just for poopgiggles. Mouthblogging is fun and all, but so is Writemouthblogging, known colloquially as “blogging”. Allow me to do it again with my fingers. You gotta do … | Continue reading
Dave, on ShopTalk Show lately, has been in favor of reducing nuance when it comes to discussing and deciding on web stuff. Do this. No, don’t use that. Put this here. There is already so much it depends stuff, you can get lost. Can we get some answers around here, please? That’s … | Continue reading
I’ve been clicking the Next Post button on Kagi Small Web quite a bit. It’s like the StumbleUpon of yore (a “bar” across the top and randomized d websites below) except all the websites it brings you to are people’s personal blogs. It’s just a charming experience because you land … | Continue reading
It’s the first official Croqueta Day, I hear. My short time living in Miami left me a big fan. Some call them deep fried bechamel, I call them Ham Blasters. Every time I’d go to a restaurant that wanted to do their unique take on a croqueta, it was disappointing. I don’t want to … | Continue reading
I should have said “can” and “have”: | Continue reading
I’ll cut to the chase before I type too many more words: I came across it via an Amit Merchant blog post. Then followed the thread a little. It all started with a discussion, as these things tend to in this modern world. I think it’s a super weird name choice, but I’m sure if […] | Continue reading
I’m still using Ozempic. Back in February 2023, I was 270 lbs. By May, I was 248. It’s slowed down a little, but: 241. I’m still happy with the progress. That’s a decent amount of time to be slowly losing weight. I’d like to keep it going. There is a bit of a roadblock, though, [ … | Continue reading
When I was giving what little advice I have about WordPress Hosting, I gently said: ISN’T IT FRIGGIN CRAZY THAT NONE OF THEM WANT TO HELP YOU WITH DEPLOYMENT? I wasn’t entirely correct there, some hosts are helping. Even my beloved Local will happily push a local site to producti … | Continue reading
Many who use Tailwind never want to go back; many who don’t never want to. How could we possibly disagree so sharply? After using Tailwind for a good while now—both professionally and on a few small personal projects—I’ve come to what might just be the most unpopular opinion of a … | Continue reading
I’ve just heard of Triode, just gone v2, which is Iconfactory’s app for listening to “internet” radio. I’m playing with it, and it’s fun! I guess I never really thought about how there are an absolute shitload of constantly broadcasting radio stations over the internet you can li … | Continue reading
A couple of re-aligns ago on this website, my “biography” (a bit of text about myself) had some interactive controls on it. You could swap it between: The big idea was to make it self-serve when someone asked me for this, say to accompany and interview or for an introduction at a … | Continue reading
My grandfather and great-grandfather were plumbers, and my uncles on that side grew up working for the family plumbing shop. One of my uncles took over that business and runs it to this day. I came across this letter that one of those uncles wrote when they came by my parents hou … | Continue reading
Check out this layout I wanted to pull off on the current design of this site: See how just the first two boxes in the “sidebar” of the homepage are set side-by-side on narrow (mobile) layouts. One way I could have done that is to target the sidebar, and turn it into a grid at [… … | Continue reading
I tried to get into Glass, but it didn’t stick for me. It’s partially because I don’t have many friends on it, and the fact that it’s paid-only means I probably never will. But also because it seems like the community spirit there is: only post really excellent photos. That’s nea … | Continue reading
Listen to Jim: Get a personal domain and start all your side projects as a subdomain of that top-level domain. Do not buy a custom domain for every little idea you have. Save your money, give your project the longevity it deserves, and show off who made the dang thing implicitly. … | Continue reading
I posted these to my Instagram, but they could (should) be here. I’m trying to get my “music room” at home in good order and learn to use recording equipment and software. These ones are very rough. Not only am I just not very good, but all I did was turn on Quicktime Player and … | Continue reading
The Breeders! The “30th Anniversary Edition” makes me feel as old as I am. But check this out. You could have fond memories of the cool megaphone voice check-check intro: Then it’s all like a-ooooo-ooo a-ooooo-ooo which is just unforgettable: Then the drummer is like this is actu … | Continue reading
Two people have reached out thoughtfully to ask me about where they should host a WordPress site. They just kinda vaguely wanted it to be good (like a nice dashboard, at least), and not break the bank. The answer is… c’mon I’m just one dude! 😵💫 I’ve never done an … | Continue reading
I’m still on that 100 years thing and how it connects to free hosting, and now thanks to a conversation I peeped in on how it relates to the websites of people who have passed and the memorial sites to them. I helped with a memorial site to Christopher Schmitt that I very much ho … | Continue reading
I think it was a month or two ago when OpenAI published docs on how you can tell their “web crawler” (scraper) to not scrape your site, following a similar syntax to Google’s: The instant I saw it I put it in my sites robots.txt file. I wanted to see how it felt and see […] | Continue reading
Sometimes you need to be doing that. LucidChart When I was in the process of selling CSS-Tricks to DigitalOcean, they wanted to understand the stack and basic architecture of the site. I was like: it’s a pretty basic WordPress deal: PHP, MySQL. Wait but there is a bit more to it. … | Continue reading
I keep thinking about that 100 years of hosting thing. Without some fancy setup like that, this is how it normally works: You pay your hosting bill, you pay to renew your domains, and you stay up to date on the shifting tides of technology well enough that your site doesn’t break … | Continue reading
There is little fresh coat of paint around here. It’s not a million miles different from before, just some new aesthetic choices for fun. I went for a high-information-density look. I liked what Robin said in his recent redesign notes, so I kinda copied that. The goal here was to … | Continue reading
Just an old bluegrass song I like. And what popped to mind when I sat down to continue my journey of learning that absolute friggin basics of how to record something. I have all the stuff from years of podcasting you’d think I’d know now to use it by now, but I really don’t. Appa … | Continue reading
We only just recently lived through the blockchain and crypto hype. We’re currently living through the AI hype. There is some (anonymous?) person who writes at Bite code! in the first person who remembered a hype cycle I’m too young to remember: When I started programming, XML wa … | Continue reading
If you need a good full-throated argument against this practice, read Garrett Dimon’s Live Coding Interviews. They exist because companies need to know if you can actually code, but as Garrett says: At best, they serve as a tolerable de-risking filter for a company that needs an … | Continue reading
Some A+ journalism from Anne Dingus [sic] in TexasMonthly in… 1994. I think it’s smart for long-standing publications to make sure their old gold is properly published online. The clear winners: There was some fine ones in The Fox and the Hound 2 also. | Continue reading
The Paravel boys just launched Luro publically. 🍾 I suspect it will be an app that means different things to different people and helps teams differently. But brass tacks, it’s a dashboard of meta-information about your website. “Track your components” is just one of many … | Continue reading
Chris Brandrick asked me, for Frontend Focus, “to share a few of his favorite tools and services” which of course I’m happy to. Here are my (somewhat random) picks: I’ve seen a couple of these lists recently, like Michelle Barker’s Cool Tools, Christian Heilmann’s The 10 tools I … | Continue reading
I saw this new app for note-taking the other day: Capacities. Looks pretty neat to me. In the vein of Notion, a block-based document-making machine kind of thing. But with a twist or two, like it doesn’t lean into databases as much but elevates other content types like links and … | Continue reading
This February, I half-joked: Waiting for headlines about how web searches are now sent through so many AI models the energy consumption is worse than crypto. Mastodon I was hoping that wasn’t true, but the data is starting to come in. Here’s one I saw (via Ethan): In a paper due … | Continue reading
I woke up a little hungover on Saturday with burgers on the mind. I was inspired after my locally famous breakfast burrito site to do it again, but pick something perhaps even more niche. Smashburgers it is. (Here’s a repo.) I used Astro for this partially because they just went … | Continue reading