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...
8 days 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...
9 days 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...
10 days 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...
12 days 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...
17 days ago • 3 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, If you only have 10 or so minutes of free time for this email, instead of reading it, I’m going to ask that you either read this article or watch this video by Salma Alam-Naylor, where she explores her current thoughts on the tech industry and the impact AI is having on it. I’ve had a lot of thoughts on the current state of things circling around my head without being able to wrangle them in any coherent way, which she...
24 days ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, On Saturday morning, I passed 1 million subscribers on YouTube. I created my channel over 9 years ago. Around 5 months in, I hit 100 subscribers, and at the time, I was blown away that so many people liked my videos enough to bother subscribing. Three years later, I'd passed 100,000 subscribers, which I honestly didn't think was possible for a channel dedicated to vanilla HTML & CSS. And now it's one million. For a...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, This week, I’m formatting things a little differently because the comments on a YouTube video I posted got me a little riled up 😅. So, starting with that video, I took a look at Temani Afif’s mind-blowing CSS-only graph theory CodePen. And while most people were pretty blown away by this as well, there were a fair number of comments about how this is breaking the separation of concerns and how CSS shouldn’t be able to...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, First up, make sure you update your browser, because there is a zero-day CSS vulnerability. In other news, one of the joys of being over forty is managing to throw out your back while you sleep. Luckily I already had a physio appointment lined up this week for another injury… so yeah, things are going great over here! Other than that, things are going well, though. I’ve made some good progress on my big update of CSS...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read