This year I’ve been asked more than ever before what web development “stack” I use. I always respond: none. We shouldn’t have a go-to stack! Let me explain why. What stack? My understanding is that a “stack” is a choice of software used to build a website. […]
Vibecusation - noun - an accusation that a human has presented AI generated work as their own, without explicitly disclosing the work is slop. Typically done with scorn and asserted without evidence. Found on social media and comment sections. I don’t...
Morning coffee read: Under the hood of MDN’s new frontend. Big fan of this code snippet: MDN are using a similar conditional import technique to the one I stumbled upon. The difference is that I lazy load based on a specific list that I must maintain....
We’re seeing a sharp rise in Big Tech and unscrupulous VC-funded grifters piggybacking the good name of open source. These parasites love their buzzwords and doublespeak. Look out for red flags like: “Developer experience” “Unified toolchain”...
I’m all aboard the CSS subgrid train. Now I’m seeing subgrid everywhere. Seriously, what was I doing before subgrid? I feel like I was bashing rocks together. Consider the follower HTML: The content could be simple headings and paragraphs. […]
… is what I’m reading far too often! Some of you are losing faith! A growing sentiment amongst my peers — those who haven’t already resigned to an NPC career path† — is that blogging is over. Coding is cooked. What’s the point of sharing insights and...
WordPress and its plugins are notorious for some of the gnarliest CSS selectors and specificity wars you’ll see this side of the galaxy. WP Grid Builder is a prime example. Excellent functionality. It even provides a no-code design interface. But for...
“Even though it may seem like the industry is now made up entirely of tech grifter “AI” bros and vibe-coded websites are seen as the new standard in development: Craftsmanship isn’t dead, it thrives thanks to people like you and me, who have created...
“This is somewhat of a thought experiment, thinking is still free, so let’s indulge.”The Cognitive Dark Forest is fun — by “fun” I mean existential dystopian nightmare. It only works if AI progress hasn’t already stalled. I have a blog draft coming...
What Is CSS Containment and How Can I Use It? — Harry Roberts explains all with clear examples and gotchas. I’ve used contain sparingly but with this guide I’ll be more confident. Side note: I considered the effect of contain: size in my visually...
“Accessibility had never really played a significant role since I started working as a front-end developer in 2019. It didn’t have a significant role in my boot camp, or in YouTube tutorials I watched, and certainly not in my job. Applying...
“The whole tech industry is nothing but scumbag billionaires and smarmy marketing and unbridled enshittification and oppressive management and AI psychosis and alpha-bro startup-hustle grind-culture bullshit and I’m just… so tired. The End - Craig...
Elena from Ariel Salminen looks to solve many problems. “Layout shifts, flash of unstyled content, poor server-side rendering support, too much reliance on client side JavaScript, doesn’t play well with frameworks like React Server Components,...
Figma is the industry standard for painting pretty pictures of websites. It’s where designers spend my designated dev time pushing pixels around one too many artboards. Figma promises to remove the proverbial fence between design and development. […]
Interesting to read about Jim’s notes update. Jim’s notes inspired my notes! But now I realise I am using both a captial letter and a colon in my URLs and I hate it. I have nearly 500 notes… that’s a lot of redirects to maintain forever if I want a...
“In my view, we’re firmly in the fast-fashion era of coding: software is vibe-coded, used up, thrown away, vibe-coded again. This is not a fully bad thing, and I’m sure many non-coders especially are giddy at the superpowers they’ve acquired. But as...
I should build a game! I feel like that’s a common dream, right? Game development is what got me interested in design and programming to begin with. I learnt ECMAScript via Flash ActionScript many moons ago. Some time later “Thoughts on Flash” brought...
This is an RSS-only post, which I like to do sporadically! Thank you for subscribing :) Today’s question Am I burning out? Let me know what you think, internet doctors. I work a four day week and I have done so for many years. Fridays are mine to have fun. […]
Opinions are mixed on this post. Sometimes I miss the mark with my blunt tone. In hindsight I can see why parts come across as mean-spirited. I’ve chosen my words poorly. Feedback noted, I will strive to be more positive. The Nero reference was for...
“Free VPNs can sometimes mean sketchy arrangements that end up compromising your privacy, but ours is built from our data principles and commitment to be the world’s most trusted browser. More reasons to love Firefox: What’s new now, and what’s coming...
Jason Grigsby of Cloud Four has started a great blog series: Cookie Consent Management in 2026, Part 1: Overview. The easiest way to avoid cookie drama is to stop tracking on behalf of your “900 partners”. That’s out of my control as a...
“If you choose to opt out by March 31st 2026 11:59:59 PST ,Vercel will not use your data to train AI or share it with third parties. Updates to Terms of Service - Vercel”Speaking of fascist Vercel, if you’re mistakenly trapped hosting on the platform,...
I blogged about Deno’s Decline a year ago concluding: “Deno is done.” It appears as of this week, Deno is even more done. The Ides of March strike again. Yesterday at least five† key employees announced they had left the company. There’s been no...
Disclaimer: this post includes my worst idea yet! Until now my contact form submissions were posted to a Cloudflare worker. The worker encrypted the details with PGP encryption. It then used the Amazon AWS “Simple Email Service” API to send an email...
Yesterday was one of those days I try my best to build an accessible website but I’m reminded how hopelessly broken browsers are. This time it was and with CSS subgrid that destroyed my hope.
Below is a parody of Simon Willison’s What is agentic engineering? I use the term agentic engineering to describe the practice of casino gambling with the assistance of random superstitions. What are random superstitions? They’re superstitions that...
It should be obvious by now that GitHub is in a death spiral. Projects like Zig are fleeing, others like Jazzand are sunsetting. GitHub’s slopocalypse is cited as the primary reason. How much open source will be hurt before GitHub and Microsoft come...
After building a thing with AT Protocol I decided to read the documentation. OAuth and personal data like my bookmarks tool can be handled by direct PDS access. For social and aggregate features, you need to sync and listen to the event stream and...
The geolocation element is odd, writes Manuel Matuzović. Yeah, it’s odder than I thought! I was confused by it when it was discussed on ShopTalk Show. I get why it can’t just be a JavaScript API. That’d be abused or instigated at the wrong time. Users...
Perhaps my favourite JavaScript APIs live within the Internationalization namespace. A few neat things the Intl global allows: Natural alphanumeric sorting Relative date and times Currency formatting It’s powerful stuff and the browser or runtime...
At Protocol has got me! I’m morphing into an atmosphere nerd. AT Protocol — atproto for short — is the underlying tech that powers Bluesky and new social web apps. Atproto as I understand it is largely an authorization and data layer. Atproto data All...