profile

Hi! I'm Kevin

CSS Patterns, nesting gotchas, and AI is a dead end?

Published about 13 hours ago • 4 min read

​View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!)

Hello Reader,

The pattern of shorter newsletters continues for me, as I continue my prep for CSS Day.

I’m writing this on Thursday morning (my normal newsletter writing time), and yesterday, as I was rehearsing my talk, I realized I had a pretty big oversight in my talk, so I spent the rest of the day reshuffling things and updating the demos I’m using.

It all means it’ll be a stronger talk, but I’ll be on the plane to the Netherlands as you get this email in Amsterdam, since I forgot to schedule sending it, so I’d have much rathered this not have happened close to when I leave 😅.

I also wanted to mention that if you are in or around Amsterdam but can’t attend CSS Day itself, there is the completely free Web You Want Conf happening on June 10th. There are still tickets available, and CSS Cafe is also putting on a free popup event on June 13th.

I don’t think I’ll be at the Web You Want since I’m travelling with my wife this time around, and there’s only so many web events I can drag her to, but I will be at the CSS Cafe event.

If you are going to be at CSS Day or the CSS Cafe event, please do make sure to stop me and say hi, and if you like stickers, I’ll have some that I’m giving away as well 😊.

📺 Three CSS patterns I use in every project

video preview​

A quick look at three of my favorite patterns, the .stack, .pile, and .prose.

I’ve talked about these before, but I tried to share a few ways that I use them, and some different use cases for the .pile than might seem obvious at first.

⚡ Two NSS nesting gotchas

video preview​

Native CSS nesting is awesome, but there are a few side effects you need to watch out for.

🎙️AI Coding is a dead end

video preview​

I realize the title of this one is a bit click-baity, but my video from two weeks ago was a bit of a downer, and I wanted something more upbeat, so in this one, I talk about how, even as AI becomes more promninate, actually having skills is still important, and the only way to have them is by coding some things yourself still.

🔗 Other awesome stuff from around the web

📝 Quiz time!

When using native CSS nesting, if you did this .card { &__title { color: red; } }, what actually happens?

  1. The browser sees it as .card__title
  2. The browser sees it as card.card__title
  3. The browser sees it as :is(.card)__title which is invalid and doesn’t work
  4. The browser sees it as :is(.card).card__title

As per usual, you'll have to head on over to YouTube to take a stab at the quiz, and once you answer, you'll see if you were right or not.

​

🏁

Very good chance there’s no newsletter next week, so until I am back in your inbox, cheers!

Kevin

Are you looking to step up your CSS? I've got both free and premium courses to help with that! They cover a range of skill levels too 👇

Beginner friendly (and free)

HTML & CSS for Absolute Beginners

A free course that starts with the absolute basics, and gets to creating some layouts with Flexbox and Grid.

​Enroll →​

Intermediate

CSS Demystified

For those who've been writing CSS for a little bit now, but want to step up their game and start writing CSS with confidence!

​Enroll →​

Intermediate (Frontend Masters)

Build a Modern Site from Scratch

Build a fully responsive site using modern CSS features, along with some polished animations.

​Enroll → (25% off first month of Frontend Masters if you use this affiliate link)
​

If you no longer want to get any emails from me, you can unsubscribe or you can edit your preferences if you'd like pick which emails you get from me.
600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246

Hi! I'm Kevin

Helping people fall in love with CSS

Weekly newsletter, where I talk about tangentially-related front-end development topics and share what I've been up to in the last week, plus any cool/fun/interesting/useful links I come across as well.

Read more from Hi! I'm Kevin

View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) PRE-S: A quick reminder that the State of CSS survey is currently open. The browser vendors all pay a lot of attention to the results of these “State of” surveys, and the more people who take them, the more representative the results are… plus they are a great way to learn about features you didn’t know about! Hello Reader, A bit of a short newsletter this week, as I've been focusing on getting some content created and working on my...

8 days ago • 3 min read

View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, More and more people I deeply respect and have learned a lot from over the years feel like they are speaking into a void, to the point where they are losing motivation to continue making content. And I know it’s not only people making content, either. While some people are embracing the changes, many feel things have changed and that their jobs are no longer what they signed up for, leading them to lose the passion for...

15 days ago • 4 min read

View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, Earlier this week, I posted this on Bluesky. I’m not panicking about the talk itself right now, but as I’ve spent time working on my talk this week, imposter syndrome has hit hard. I know for a lot of people, and especially with newer developers, I’m either the person or one of a handful of people they think of when they think of CSS, so it might seem a little crazy for me to be having imposter syndrome, but boy is it...

22 days ago • 4 min read