I’m the same as Stefan here: I honestly can’t see myself using this property because justified text can be a bit of an accessibility nightmare, but should I ever need to use it, knowing there’s a better way to to control that last line is useful. One to store in the ol’ CSS knowl … | Continue reading
My favourite CSS techniques are the ones that are tiny but have a huge impact. Step up the global box-sizing technique, which Paul Irish published in 2012. Chris Coyier declared February 1st, International box-sizing awareness day, which I also celebrate every year. This is how I … | Continue reading
I don’t really use Sass anymore, but a lot of people do. Rightly so: it’s great! I’ll tell you what else is great: Utopia. I’m somewhat of a super fan, so anything Trys and James add to the project is immediately welcomed by me. I think this particular feature is a great addition … | Continue reading
It feels like React is getting a bit of a kicking recently, which I’m not 100% against, but I can’t stress enough how ingrained React is. It’s what happens when a framework or library is the hot topic for over a decade! I’ve just been reading “Removing React is just weakness leav … | Continue reading
Safari Technology preview has recently added a native switch component with version 185 and 186, which is great! It’s going to be a long while before this is ready to rock on a production website though. Still, this collection of demos is worth enjoying. Here’s a video for those … | Continue reading
I think it’s quite well known that I’m not exactly React’s Biggest Fan™, but y’now, we gotta use it for clients in the studio sometimes. Cassidy’s article definitely rings true for me: I’ve found it particularly difficult to be in tune with React over the last couple of years. I … | Continue reading
One of my favourite features of WordPress is how quick and easy it is to categorise posts, then even better, grab an RSS feed for that category. It’s what powers Set Studio’s newsletter, for example. I’ve been doing some recent updates to this site and although the category syste … | Continue reading
What I love about this site is there’s so little copy, but it’s really well written. The type is also massive, which my tired eyes love. The design details are out of this world, like the animations that are subtle, speedy and tasteful rather than completely dominant. The imagery … | Continue reading
There’s one thing I do not have the patience for: puppeteer and headless Chrome. I very much subscribe to the “just let me pay for something that works” methodology because I ain’t got the skills to be tinkering around with back-end. Step up Urlbox for capturing screenshots of we … | Continue reading
You might have noticed that I’m starting to share links on here. There’s a hole that’s been left by publications like CSS-Tricks and A List Apart going quiet, along with the Great Fragmentation™ of social media, since Elon Musk bought — and crapped all over — Twitter. There’s a m … | Continue reading
This is such a handy run-down of CSS features that have a really high support level that you might not have realised. One that surprised me was how well supported the logical property shorthands like margin-inline are. I, for some reason, thought the explicit ones like margin-inl … | Continue reading
This is so cool by Sophie. Over the years, I've gone from “we need to build bespoke” to “let's stitch some services together for the first iteration > measure > then use that to build bespoke if still required”. Sophie’s new weekly link posts setup is exactly that: some stitched … | Continue reading
This latest offering from Ahmad is highly interactive and highly informative. It’s also making me think that although gap is useful for layout, it might be worth re-visiting negative margins and padding-based layouts for clusters of interactive elements, like navigation 🤔 … | Continue reading
First up, you may have noticed that Reality Check now has a new home. I've moved it from Set Studio's blog to here because I think it makes more sense here, based on the technical nature of the content. This is also my first post since deciding to bring back Piccalilli. I wanted … | Continue reading
I’m going to be writing a lot of content in 2024 and I’ve been working out where that should live. I’ve decided that Piccalilli is the best place for it. I know I haven’t posted on here in a long time, but I’ve been caught up, founding a design studio: Set Studio. I’ve got a fant … | Continue reading
I know I also have a terrible record with open source maintenance, so I thought I’d archive the original and just post this instead. Do with it what you want! To be super clear, this is a reset that works for me, personally and us at Set Studio. Whenever I refer to “we”, that’s w … | Continue reading
I’ve been doing the finishing touches on some client work recently and a part of that is making sure we get 100s across the board in lighthouse. That’s so important to me that I make it a deliverable for Set Studio projects. With that testing, I uncovered a doozy. We were getting … | Continue reading
A client project requirement meant I made a CUBE CSS with Tailwind prototype that actually turned out really well. | Continue reading
I’m setting up a new agency and that means piccalil.li and the Discord are closing down, but all the content is moving to set.studio. | Continue reading
I talk about how I was made redundant 3 years ago and how that’s resulted in lots of freelance success. | Continue reading
Now that we created the Learn CSS course that is free to everyone, the Learn CSS From Scratch course is redundant. The membership perks are changing too. | Continue reading
It may seem like it, but Twitter isn’t the center of everything for tech. Here’s some places you can hang out away from Twitter that are very good. | Continue reading
Custom properties in CSS are exceptionally useful, not just for tokenising your CSS, but also for abstracting complexity and interactivity into smaller, easier to manage pieces. This short guide will get you up to speed with how they work and how to use them. | Continue reading
You can set a different delay for each transitioned property, using the transition shorthand, which creates some pretty cool state changes. | Continue reading
After years of asking and memes, we’re finally getting container queries and they will transform UI design, just like media queries did. | Continue reading
A handy way to use modern CSS functions to give yourself fine-grained, yet flexible, design control. | Continue reading
I explain what a minimum viable experience is and how I think it’s a crucial part of progressive enhancement’s role in building resilient websites and apps for the web. | Continue reading
A CSS methodology oriented towards simplicity and consistency with a heavy dosage of pragmatism. | Continue reading
A CSS methodology oriented towards simplicity and consistency with a heavy dosage of pragmatism. | Continue reading
We go from an empty directory to a fully functional, continuously deployed Eleventy site that will tick all the performance boxes and give you heaps of publishing flexibility. | Continue reading