Good news for the fediverse, the indie web, and community sites like The Session:
People are abandoning massive platforms in favor of tight-knit groups where trust and shared values flourish and content is at the core. The future of community building is in going back to the basics.
This is a great little helper in understanding anchor positioning in CSS.
This is absolutely wonderful!
There’s deep dives and then there’s Marcin’s deeeeeeep dives. Sit back and enjoy this wholesome detective work, all beautifully presented with lovely interactive elements.
This is what the web is for!
- Springy easing with
linear()- Typed custom properties
- View transitions for page navigation
- Transition animation for
dialogandpopover- Transition animation for
details- Animated adaptive gradient text
This is a very smart way to handle feedback about a product.
Logical properties, container queries, :has, :is, :where, min(), max(), clamp(), nesting, cascade layers, subgrid, and more.
I like the approach here: logical properties and sensible default type and spacing.
This special in-depth edition of Quanta is fascinating and very nicely put together.
Adam makes a very good point here: the term “vertical rhythm” is quite chauvanistic, unconciously defaulting to top-to-bottom writing modes; the term “logical rhythm” is more universal (and scalable).
Here’s a taste of what Rich will be delivering at Patterns Day on Thursday—can’t wait!
With classes, we can send CSS static values but with custom properties we can send dynamic ones, which is a major shift in the way we can style state. This is something that has been true for some time—and is extremely well supported—but sometimes it takes solving a small real-world problem to make you appreciate the value of it.
I think we still haven’t come to fully appreciate the superpower of custom properties: dynamic values that are shared between CSS and JavaScript.
I see what you nerds have done with AI image-creation software so far. Look at Midjourney’s “Best of” page. If you don’t know a lot about art but you know what you like, and what you like is large-breasted elf maidens, you are entering the best possible future.
The value of design principles done right:
What I’ve learnt is that principles are not a luxury. Making explicit and conscious what drives your behaviour can be incredibly powerful as a means to critically shape a team and organisation to be who they want to be.
On leaving the company, Hixie compares the Google of old to what it has become today:
Google’s culture eroded. Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision. Transparency evaporated. Where previously I would eagerly attend every company-wide meeting to learn what was happening, I found myself now able to predict the answers executives would give word for word. Today, I don’t know anyone at Google who could explain what Google’s vision is. Morale is at an all-time low. If you talk to therapists in the bay area, they will tell you all their Google clients are unhappy with Google.
I agree with everything that Matt says here. Evangelising accessibility by extolling the business benefits might be a good strategy for dealing with psychopaths, but it’s a lousy way to convince most humans.
The moment you frame the case for any kind of inclusion or equity around the money an organization stands to gain (or save), you have already lost. What you have done is turn a moral case, one where you have the high ground, into an economic one, where, unless you have an MBA in your pocket, you are hopelessly out of your depth.
If you win a business-case argument, the users you wanted to benefit are no longer your north star. It’s money.
Vitaly provides some sensible rebuttals.
This is a terrrific presentation by Chris, going through some practical implementations of modern CSS: logical properties, viewport units, grid, subgrid, container queries, cascade layers, new colour spaces, and view transitions.
This may mark the beginning of Gov.uk’s decline. The top-listed priorities are the very antithesis of starting with user needs. Instead from now on it’s going to be about growth, shiny new technology, having a native app, and literally pivoting to video.
It’ll be interesting to see if they try to maintain their existing design principles while simultaneously abandoning them.