Reading
Here's a list of what I've been reading / watching / listening to / want to bookmark.
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Sam, champion, yeah nah by Fershad Irani
Who decides our buring future. -
How to Set up and Use NVDA to read a Website for Accessibility Testing by Kyle Borah
Helpful tutorial as I try to learn how to use NVDA. -
Why visual website builders didn't take off by Salma Alam-Naylor
A great bit of nerd history and looking at why visual builders haven't progressed much (or regressed, I'm looking at you Figma) in many years. -
Looking elsewhere. by Robb Owen
Some great fresh thinking for my industry, based on old thinking -
ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) by W3C
I didn't know about this until Chris Ferdinandi mentioned it -
Yes! You can use position: sticky and overflow together by Ben Frain
This solved a UI problem I constantly encountered when wanting a sticky <thead> on a table that I wanted to be able to overflow too. -
Building Websites With LLMS by Jim Nielsen
Using just HTML links and CSS page transitions to replace intra page interactions. Looks very good for list filtering. My heart wants to go all in on this but requiring Javascript (JS) to return to your previous location doesn't sit well with me. Progressively enhanced JS interactions in page give you an option if JS is broken. This approach breaks if JS breaks. Clicking the close button on navigation if JS is broken, for example, takes you back to the home page, not the page you were. You could fix the menu by generating a navigation page for each post with the correct back link.... millions of pages 😅 -
Strong Opinions on URL Design by Declan Chidlow
Good advice on URL design. I would like to change mine but I feel stuck with it as posts are published. Must look into redirects... I added the date to my posts, not as subfolders but in the title. I like seeing dates on things to know how contemporary it is. However, I think this has made my posts too long and the dates will appear in the articles anyway. I might shorten my filenames instead of just copying the full title too. -
Leaving 18F by Ethan Marcotte
US federal workers drawing lines they will not cross. Resistance under a fascist advance. -
DOGE procurement capture by Anil Dash
A likely explanation of the real purpose of DOGE. Always ingesting how authoritarianism and corruption go hand in hand. -
How to build a copy code snippet button and why it matters by Salma Alam-Naylor
I want to make this into a web component -
Breaking the Status Quo by Joost de Valk
How to address a problem (Matt Mullenig) with a direct action proposal. -
Learnable by default by Robin Rendle
Predictability in a language means a better learning curve. HTML for the win. -
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 by Simon Willison
This is an expert and fair review of the LLM domain to date. It notes the advances and cautions about consequences. As noted, they are getting more efficient but data centres continue to be built with massive environmental impact. Despite the efficiencies, I suspect this will be like widening motorways: adding more lanes encourages more traffic. I think the main problem will remain something that wasn't mentioned here. The organisations behind this tech are mostly bad actor acolyte's of unfettered capitlaism. Profit without regard to humans. We've seen this before. That and missing Government regulation. And here is where the big profit is: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/07/uk-government-ai-military-drones-faculty-ai-artificial-intelligence. The only regulation the UK government has proposed so far is to excuse LLMs from copyright law. -
Cool URLs don't change (but they don't have to last forever) by Chris Ferdinandi
A practical take on the limits of the "Cool URLs don't change" Tim Berners Lee statement. -
Front-end development’s identity crisis by Elly Loel
Elly does a great job of outlining the difficulties in answering the job title question, "What do I call myself"? The question helps to illustrate some of the problems endemic in the tech industry today. I think this article came out when more and more people were starting realise the issues that React was creating. Since then, I think the movement has only got stronger. The article ends on why "Web designer" is a good title. The job description list from Brad Frosts linked article is great. -
Redesign case study by Ahmad Shadeed
A great breakdown of a design engineer's (Ahmad Shadeed) personal site redesign. -
Let's create a Web Component from scratch! by Chris Ferdinandi
HTML as a solid foundation with aria used to set styles too. -
How To Avoid Breaking Web Pages For Keyboard Users by Andrew Nevins
Practical tip to fix common keyboard relevant accessibility issues. -
What is Utility-First CSS? by Heydon Pickering
"It turns out, people in tech are particularly bad at distinguishing between paradigm shifts and paradigm sharts." Just chef's kiss. Why Utility-first is such a problem. -
The Static Site Paradox by Loris Cro
"...only few professional software engineers can “afford” to have the second option [simple HTML and CSS sites] as their personal website, and almost all normal users are stuck with overcomplicated solutions". Great point also about lawyer and accountant domains gatekeeping with uneccessary complexity. ALSO, the web is more interesting when it's accessible to those who are NOT web devs. -
The 3 Types of CSS Utility Classes by james kerr
Bringing another layer to CUBE CSS -
Style your RSS feed by Darek Kay
Using XSLT files to style RSS feeds. Short and useful. -
Designing for people who don't want to use your service by Terence Eden
People doing good work. Why public sector web services need to work well, and often with opposite paradigms to for-profit work. A great short read. -
Burned by My Own Hot Take by Tyler Sticka
A great piece of self-reflection. Overly harsh on themselves I think in terms of accepting unnecessary personal critisism (that's not a critisism ;-) Tyler extracts a very positive point on the best way to present problem issues with web dev - show the positives in alternatives or just list the problems without comment. -
Animating height with only CSS by Chris Ferdinandi
Animating details without the grid row transition trick - which was flakey anyway. Still trying to work out how to animate on close too. -
The Body element by Heydon Pickering
Ongoing html documentation. Awesome. -
My anti-overlay client letter by Alistair Shepard
A useful template letter to explain to clients why overlays are a bad idea for users and business. -
When is the shadow DOM useful? by Chris Ferdinandi
The shadow Dom often felt like an instruction to me.There are no tags at this moment.
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The blockquote element by Heydon Pickering
I think the official HTML documentation should be written like this. Heavily focused on accessibility and super massively practical in terms of using elements. And funny. -
Building a robust frontend using progressive enhancement by GCS
Expert advice on why Progressive Enhancement creates robust front ends. -
CSS: A new kind of javascript by Heydon Pickering
A great and informative shit post about CSS. -
Forcing Mobile Responsive Support for Decap/Netlify CMS: Plain CSS by Mani Kumar
A really useful article explaining and giving clear code to make the Decap admin interface responsive. -
Mourning Google by Tim Bray
A behind the scenes look at how business wankers are killing Google. -
Removing React is just weakness leaving your codebase by Simon MacDonald
React is a liability lurking in your codebase. Lead to me reading about Chesty Puller! -
Big, beautiful, beefy focus states with :focus-visible by Dave Rupert
Usefull tips on using focus-visible -
Email vs Capitalism, or, Why We Can't Have Nice Things - NDC Oslo 2023 by Dylan Beattie
A brilliant talk about email, how it works and how much we rely on an unreliable system. -
Concatenating text by Johan Halse
A very funny takedown of React -
Chesty Puller by wikipedia
Puller is the most decorated Marine in American history. -
'I just went bent': how Britain's most corrupt cop ruined countless lives by Simon Hattenstone
A corrupt policeman but the institution and leaders that allowed it to happen are still in place. -
A Call for Consensus on HTML Semantics by Stephanie Eckles
HTML semantics are a good thing to use but Stephanie points out that it isn't always clear how best to use even basic HTML. -
Varyag degrees of success by DreadShips
To lose a ship once, as Wilde nearly suggested, may be regarded as misfortune. To lose the same ship twice begins to look like carelessness... -
Sortable Table Columns by Adrian Roselli
Practical guidance on creating an accessible sortable table, with testing. -
Progressively Enhancing a Table with a Web Component by Raymond Camden
A guide to building a web component to wrap around an existing table to add sort functionality. -
Hippy, capitalist, guru, grocer: the forgotten genius who changed British food by Jonathan Nunn
Saunders was obsessed with documenting how the new global counterculture was changing the ancient city around him. In 1970, at the age of 32, he self-published his findings in a slim but dense guidebook called Alternative London. The book was testament to Saunders’ belief that information should be made available to all, and that this information should be rigorously tested. -
Mourning Google by Tim Bray
A behind the scenes look at how business wankers are killing Google. -
Is the rise of Dutch populism the result of forced self-reliance? by Albert Burneko
The ideology behind why Tesla cars are shite. -
Is the rise of Dutch populism the result of forced self-reliance? by KATE IMBACH
A first hand account of the possible reasons behind Dutch populism. -
How Nietzsche's insights can help fight fanaticism by Paul Katsafanas
A clear and logical piece explaining the root pyschological cause of fanatasism. Resentment narratives are powerful because they are emotionally satisfying and identity providing. -
Solace from the machine by Danilo Campos
A personal story of a very rough childhood and how the early days of software and the internet saved him. I remember those early days. -
How Lego builds a new Lego set by Sean Hollister
I love lego and the Polaroid camera is an icon design so I was interested in the combined topics. Something as seemingly simple as a lego kit has to go through multiple teams and processes. -
591: Cascade Layers, CSS Functions, and more CSS with Miriam Suzanne by Dave Rupert,Chris Coyier,Miriam Suzanne
High level view of new features in CSS from Miriam Suzanne, creator of the cascade layers standard. In summary, cascade layers: set specificity to groups of styles or style files. Container queries: mainly about width :-) -
The Good, The Bad, and The Web Components - Zach Leatherman | JSHeroes 2023 by Zach Leatherman
This explains WebC nicely for me! Zach notes the problem where if you add HTML inside the web component, either light or shadow DOM, you end up repeating all of that templating each time you use it. The solution is to have one template that can be reused by multiple custom elements. Under WCAG disucssion. WebC treats web compontents as first party SSR rendering. -
HTML Web Components are Just JavaScript? by Miriam Suzanne
Miriam explores how to integrate current HTML Web Components (HWC) into her workflow. I didn't understand some of the practical implementation issues as I need to try practical examples for myself. Notes that HWC aren't DRY yet, something Zach Leatherman also notes. -
HTML web components by Jeremy Keith
A summary of much of the writing around web components noting that a mindset of augmentation is needed over the idea of replacement React encouraged. -
Blinded By the Light DOM by Eric Meyer
A practical look at using web compontents on an HTML first basis, with examples. This approach avoids templates, slots and the shadow DOM and instead enhances HTML inside the compontent with efficientyl run JavaScript... -
How I get a simple build started by Andy Bell
A great video to show the steps set studio take when first designing a site.