CSS or BS?
We show you a CSS property name. You tell us if it’s real or if we made it up. That’s it. It starts easy. It does not stay easy.
Link tags: gui
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How to be a web developer: Stuff Everybody Knows
This is a guide to how to be a web developer.
Really good advice from Laurie.
What this site is not is a tutorial. Tutorials are very specific to a time and a technology. This is intended to be a guide to tell you all the things you can learn, so you can then go off and learn them.
Reimagine the Date Picker – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)
This is a superb way to deprecate a little JavaScript library. Now that you can just use HTML instead, the website for Pikaday has been turned into a guide to choosing the right design pattern for your needs. Bravo!
Pikaday is no longer a JavaScript date picker. Pikaday is now a friendly guide for front-end developers. I want to push developers away from the classic date picker entirely. Especially fat JavaScript libraries.
AI ambivalence | Read the Tea Leaves
Here’s the main problem I’ve found with generative AI, and with “vibe coding” in general: it completely sucks out the joy of software development for me.
I hate the way they’ve taken over the software industry, I hate how they make me feel while I’m using them, and I hate the human-intelligence-insulting postulation that a glorified Excel spreadsheet can do what I can but better.
Monzo tone of voice
Some good—if overlong—writing advice.
- Focus on what matters to readers
- Be welcoming to everyone
- Swap formal words for normal ones
- When we have to say sorry, say it sincerely
- Watch out for jargon
- Avoid ambiguity: write in the active voice
- Use vivid words & delightful wordplay
- Make references most people would understand
- Avoid empty adjectives & marketing cliches
- Make people feel they’re in on the joke – don’t punch down
- Add a pinch of humour, not a dollop
- Smart asides, not cheap puns and cliches
- Be self-assured, but never arrogant
The web we want: A beginner’s guide to the IndieWeb · Paul Robert Lloyd
This is a terrific presentation from Paul. He gives a history lesson and then focuses on what makes the indie web such a powerful idea (hint: it’s not about specific technologies).
PENGUIN SERIES DESIGN – the art of Penguin book covers
Exploring the graphic design history of Penguin books:
The covers presented on this site are all from my own collection of about 1400 Penguins, which have been chosen for the beauty or interest of their cover designs. They span the history of the company all the way back to 1935 when Penguin Books was launched.
Do That After This – Terence Eden’s Blog
Good advice for documentation—always document steps in the order that they’ll be taken. Seems obvious, but it really matters at the sentence level.
An Interactive Guide to CSS Container Queries
Another terrific interactive tutorial from Ahmad, this time on container queries.
CSS :has() Interactive Guide
This isn’t just a great explanation of :has(), it’s an excellent way of understanding selectors in general. I love how the examples are interactive!
Designing better target sizes
This is a wonderfully in-depth interactive explainer on touch target sizes, with plenty of examples.
An Interactive Guide to CSS Grid
This is a terrific interactive explainer!
Getting started with CSS container queries | MDN Blog
Michelle has written a detailed practical guide to container queries here.
Link colors and the rule of tincture
When you think of heraldry what comes to mind is probably knights in shining armor, damsels in distress, jousting, that sort of thing. Medieval stuff. But I prefer to think of it as one of the earliest design systems.
This totally checks out.
Community Guidelines for Kottke.org
I like Jason’s guidelines—very in keeping with The Session’s house rules.
And I really like his motivation for trying out comments:
The timing feels right. Twitter has imploded and social sites/services like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are jockeying to replace it (for various definitions of “replace”). People are re-thinking what they want out of social media on the internet and I believe there’s an opportunity for sites like kottke.org to provide a different and perhaps even better experience for sharing and discussing information. Shit, maybe I’m wrong but it’s definitely worth a try.
Yes! More experiments like this please! Experiments that aren’t just “let’s clone Twitter”.
A history of metaphors for the internet - The Verge
No one says “information superhighway” anymore, but whenever anyone explains net neutrality, they do so in terms of fast lanes and tolls. Twitter is a “town square,” a metaphor that was once used for the internet as a whole. These old metaphors had been joined by a few new ones: I have a feeling that “the cloud” will soon feel as dated as “cyberspace.”
The other side of egoism | A Working Library
Mandy takes a deep dive into the treatment of altruism in Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
WPDS - Accessibility | Resources
I didn’t know the Washington Post had a design system or that the system has this good section on accessibility.
We need to tell people ChatGPT will lie to them, not debate linguistics
There’s a time for linguistics, and there’s a time for grabbing the general public by the shoulders and shouting “It lies! The computer lies to you! Don’t trust anything it says!”
Readability Guidelines
Imagine a collaboratively developed, universal content style guide, based on usability evidence.