Hello Reader,

Today’s newsletter is a bit different.

It's almost like a journal entry. I started writing it to try and help me figure out how I ended up where I am today with this whole CSS thing.

I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

I'm often asked how this became my thing, and my usual answer is to talk about the meandering path that took me here.

That doesn't explain the why, just the how.

And that's because I never really knew why I actually stuck with it.

I always tell people how I’ve surprised myself with how I’ve stuck with this for so long now, because that’s not the usual pattern that I follow with, well, anything in my life!

To bring home that point, let’s talk a little bit about World of Warcraft, which, if you don’t know it, is one of those large-scale, online RPG games.

I used to play World of Warcraft.

A lot.

Despite logging way more hours in the game than I’d like to admit, I’d rarely get a character past level 20.

I enjoyed exploring different classes and playstyles in those early stages, but I would lose interest once the real grinding began.

Occasionally I’d tell myself that this time I’m going to break that pattern and get a character up to level 60.

I’d then abandon ship around level 20-25 and start fresh 😆.

This pattern isn’t unique to my World of Warcraft days - it shows up in my hobbies to this day (much to my wife’s chagrin). I dive into something new, enjoy the initial learning curve, then move on to the next new thing.

Which makes it surprising that I ended up sticking with CSS, of all things.

CSS seems perfect for my usual pattern - quick wins, surface-level knowledge allowing me to do some stuff, and then moving on.

Somehow, though, here I am, having taught CSS for longer than I’ve done anything else in my life.

In trying to figure out why that's happened, I think it's because I started teaching.

I was all right at making websites back before I started teaching, and CSS was my strongest skillset from the very beginning, but it was just a part of the job.

Once I started teaching, I was forced to start understanding it at a deeper level.

I couldn’t distract myself and go for some easy wins, like learning about some other new language or framework, sort of like how I would start a new character in WoW.

Instead, I had to get into the weeds and start leveling up my knowledge so that I could properly explain the why when students would invariably ask questions when I showed them how to do something.

And while this sounds obvious now, it took me a little while to realize that the more I learned about CSS, the easier everything got.

Even the parts I understood and had used for years suddenly made more sense.

Everything started coming together more and more.

And, for basically the first time in my life, I started to enjoy the grind of diving deep into a topic rather than just having broad or surface-level knowledge of a topic.

Unlike gaming, where the game gets harder as you level up, the opposite happens with practical skills - the more you level up, the easier everything gets!

And, I think because of that, the more I learn about it and the better I get at it, the more I enjoy it.

🙋‍♂️ What I’ve been up to this week

CSS Popover + Anchor Positioning is Magical

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If you’ve ever needed the positioning of an element to be connected (or anchored) to the position of another element, then you’ll be very excited about anchor positioning in CSS!

It is new (as of the time of recording), but thankfully, we have a really good Polyfill, so we don’t have to worry about browser support!

And if you just want to poke around with the demo I created, you can find it here (though the polyfill isn’t used in that Codepen, so it’s Chromium only).

The beginner mindset

​The podcast is back!​

I hadn’t put out an episode since mid-July, but it’ll be back to weekly episodes for the foreseeable future.

In this episode, I mostly talk about the beginner mindset, and why I’m having a harder time getting into it now compared to when I first started making YouTube videos.

🔗 Other awesome stuff around from the web

Anchoreum

If you like CSS games like Flexbox Froggy, there’s a new one for anchor positioning called Anchoreum!

There are a fair number of new properties and values with anchor positioning, so whether you just want to explore what they all are, or you want to grind a little to commit them better to memory, this is a fun way explore how it works.

Early and upcoming Black Friday sales

I know Black Friday is a bit less than a week away, but a lot of sales have started, or have been announced already, so a quick list of some products, courses, and dev-related stuff that I’m happy to recommend that are having Black Friday Sales:

• ​Polypane is 25% off
• ​Complete CSS by Andy Bell is dong a launch sale starting the 26th (I haven’t seen the course yet, but I’ve learned enough from Andy over the years to recommend anything he puts out).
• While not a Black Friday sale, Ahmad Shadeed recently reduced the price of Debugging CSS by 40%.
• ​Smashing Magazine is giving $30 off if you purchase 3+ books, and is giving 30% off if you purchase 3+ workshops.
• Josh Comeau will be running a sale for his two courses starting on Monday.

🏁 </newsletter>

Have a fantastic week!
Kevin

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