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...
12 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...
18 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...
26 days ago • 4 min read
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...
about 1 month 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...
about 2 months 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...
2 months 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....
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...
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...
2 months ago • 2 min read