View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, In the last three days, I’ve created more content than I usually do in one week (and no, don’t worry, I’m not about to try and sell you some productivity system 😆). As I sat down to write this, I wondered what I had done differently to get so much done, and at least some of it was due to a small tweak I made to my workflow on Monday. I won’t bore you with the details, but I want to talk about the idea of removing...
13 days ago • 7 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, And I’m back from Smashing Conf Amsterdam, where I had an absolutely wonderful time! Amsterdam is such a beautiful city Amsterdam is one of my favourite cities to visit, and Smashing knows how to put on a wonderful conference, so I had high expectations in combining the two, and it didn't disappoint 😊. As for my talk, it went great… and what an amazing venue to speak at! The Pathé Tuschinski theatre As for my talk, the...
27 days ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, I’m writing this from the airport, a few hours into a nine-hour layover. When I booked the flight, I knew this would be a long one, but I have a pile of work to get through, so it’s been a surprisingly productive Saturday. I normally try to avoid working on weekends, but over the last two months, it’s been more the norm than the exception. The launch of CSS Demystified, which just wrapped up, followed by my talk and...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Sometimes you run into a CSS problem, and you do everything right, but still can't figure out what is going on. You don’t pile on Band-Aids. You stop and think about why it’s happening. You narrow it down to a specific question. You search for an answer. And you get nothing. This happened to one of my students a while back. They added padding to an element, and that padding covered the text of the paragraph above it. They played around with it and tried a few different things....
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Yesterday I told you about the mindset shift that changed everything for me, and how I started working with the browser instead of against it. I’ve spent a long time figuring out how to pass that same shift on to others, and that’s why I created CSS Demystified, which is now open for enrollment. Before I get into the details, I want to tell you why I built it the way I did. I spent five years teaching in a classroom before I moved to online education full-time. And the thing...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, Creating websites was a hobby of mine for a long time. I started making my first sites in the late 90s with Photoshop slicing, table layouts, and image maps. I never thought writing HTML and CSS would become such an important part of my life. After a wandering path of unrelated degrees, I ended up as a graphic designer at a small agency. I loved it, but the pay was terrible, so I started freelancing on the side as well, mostly designing websites. After a few jobs, I figured that...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, A couple of days ago, I talked about how CSS is designed for uncertainty, meant to adapt to unknowns. When we don’t think about it that way, we fight it. And when we fight it, things get messy fast. We add what seems like an innocent enough property, but it doesn't quite fix things the way we wanted, so we add another. Then another. Then another. By the end of it, somehow, everything is worse than when we started. Once again, there's a meme that does a good job of showing how...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
PRE-S: With my course CSS Demystified about to relaunch, I'm going to be sending a lot more emails than usual. If you'd like, you can stay on my regular Sunday list, but opt-out of the extra emails. Hello Reader, I’m sure you’ve seen this before. Most people use it to poke fun at CSS and use it as an example of one of the many problems with CSS. The thing is, it’s actually an example of how CSS solves a problem the user created. Most problems we run into don’t happen because CSS is broken or...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, Looks like I’ll be in Amsterdam a lot this year! First, I’m heading there in less than a month from now for Smashing Conf, where I’m giving a talk and an in-person workshop (I've got a link with a discount below if you are able to make it). And, if you can’t make it to that, I’m happy to announce I’ll be back in Amsterdam in June for CSS Day! I’m so excited to be going back to CSS Day again. Speaking there in 2024 was...
2 months ago • 3 min read