The evolving state of CSS and the web


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PRE-S: Proposals for Interop 2026 are now open. For those who don't know, Interop is an initiative to ensure that all browsers properly implement features outlined in the web specifications, which means not only do they support those features, but they are bug-free. You can learn more about it here, and if you would like to propose a feature, I'd suggest you read this guide first.

Hello Reader,

Working from home has a lot of benefits, but during the summer when my kids are home, they have a hard time understanding that if I’m in my office, it means I’m “at work.”

And as my kids get older, I also realize I need to cherish the moments when they still want to spend time with me… but damn does it make it hard to get much work done 😅.

Today, though, I have some peace and quiet as I write this, because they left for the first day of school just minutes ago. It feels a little strange to celebrate that, but it is nice to have some quiet work time!

And boy, do I need to get to work 😂.

I’ve got a long list of things that I’m working on, as I talked about in last week’s podcast episode, and I’m trying to sort everything out and stay organized and on top of it all, and making sure to keep my priorities straight while I’m at it, because I’m also very good at getting distracted!

So because of that, we’re going to keep this intro a little shorter this week and jump into the content, and as you might be able to tell from the formatting below, the "I like the sections with the background colors" overwhelmingly won the vote, followed by no-preference didn't notice, with only 4.6% of people saying they liked it less.

🙋‍♂️ What I've been up to this week

1,000 video spectacular

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I hit 1,000 videos this week, so to celebrate, I did a live stream where I started by playing a CSS Quiz game and then a long AMA, mixed in with random demos and playing around with CSS throughout.

(I said I would send out an email when I had planned a specific date for this and completely forgot to, sorry about that!)

HTML & CSS form tutorial / Frontend Mentor

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In this video I take a look at styling up a form that looks deceptively simple, but has a few intersting things, such as the radio button areas, and I show an issue with fieldset styling, and how to overcome it.

Two Idiots Argue With Kevin Powell About CSS

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Forgot to add this last week, but I was a guest on ShopTalk show! This was pretty special, as I've been listening to Dave and Chris since before I even started my YouTube channel, and it was an absolute blast talking about content creation, CSS, and more.

If you prefer, here is the podcast/audio-only version.

Deep dive into the fr unit

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This is a special release that won't go public on my YouTube channel. I did this live over on my Discord server, as I was trying to talk out loud to help me figure out the best way to explain how the `fr` unit works.

It involves some poking around in the spec and mucking around with demos, and in the end I'm happy with where I got!

I didn't think of recording it at the start, so the beginning is a bit abrupt, but you won't have missed anything important.

At the end, I got asked a question about Grid and having a bit more content around it, so I'm planning to do a CSS Grid Workshop over in the Discord two weeks from now.

I realize Discord isn't for everyone, but it worked well here with the live chat, along with a "call in" option as well.

⚡ Quick tips of the week

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A quick look at a couple of use cases for single colour gradients.

🎙️ Podcast

Conferences & Community: A Chat with Henri Helvetica

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Conferences & Community: A C...
Oct 10 · General Musings with Kev...
58:18
Spotify Logo
 

In this episode I chat with Henri Helvetica, a performance engineer and active member of the web community. We dive into the significance of conferences and meetups, and how COVID-19 has affected in-person events. Henri offers insights on event organizing, the need for new in-person experiences, and what makes a good event. We also explore the value of community and networking, and how to find events and meetups in today's landscape.

LISTEN ON: APPLE | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE | WEB

🔗 Other awesome stuff around from the web

📝 Quiz time!

Which of the following CSS properties allows us to resize image elements within their boxes, the same way we can do `background-size: cover` or `background-size: contain` for background images?

  1. image-position
  2. image-size
  3. object-fit
  4. object-size

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.

🏁

Have a fantastic week!
Kevin


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Hi! I'm Kevin

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!) Hello Reader, A bit of a different email this Sunday, as I don't have any new content to share (which is the first time I haven't had anything in a long time). Instead, I'm writing to let you know on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I’m giving a workshop with Frontend Masters called Modern CSS Fundamentals. The workshop is for anyone ready to move from doing their best to getting CSS to work to truly understanding it. Whether...

View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, I’m going to keep the intro short on this ones because there is a lot going on in the What I’ve Been up to section, but before we jump into into that, two quick things: As an experiment for Interop 2026, Jake Archibald and the team at Firefox habe put together a way to gather more feedback on what features matter most to developers. So, if you head on over here, you can pick the proposals that are important to you, and...

View this email in your browser (or share it with a friend!) Hello Reader, A few weeks ago, I posted a video about the current state of the internet after I had a terrible AI-generated CSS article showing up in my news feed. I was saddened by how it was getting priority over quality content from sites like Piccalilli, Smashing Magazine, CSS-Tricks, and countless other excellent sources (I’ve put a bunch in the other links around the web section below if you’re looking for more to follow). At...