Building a design token system
A very detailed and thorough overview of how to use design tokens to power a distributed design system and site architecture. The crux is ensuring design (Figma), code (CSS), and content management […]
Archives
2023: By The Numbers
A look back over the twelve months that made up 2023, via the lens of the data captured about my life.
Removing list styles without affecting semantics.
A simple tweak that simplifies the common approach to "lists that don't look like lists" with HTML/CSS and sidesteps any semantic/accessibility concerns. […]
A history of painting (with dinosaurs)
Ultimately, this is a book review, but it's a very good one that helps dissect the topic of where palaeoart fits in with the wider canon of art itself. It certainly gave me pause for thought on how […]
When to use <meter>
A solid example of where HTML semantics can be a little problematic: the <meter> element. Also a good overview of where/when this element is […]
A collection of single-purpose tools
An incredibly extensive collection of single-user tools. Need to check colour contrast? Grab image metadata? Generate a gradient? Yup, all of those are in here. The list is immense and the tools are […]
Be the main character, but not the antagonist
I'm a fan of TomSka. Have been for a long time. I did not expect to be pulling a quote from one of his 2023 "Last Month" vlogs on the nature of personal goals and relationships, but here we are. […]
Make any feed an RSS feed
A clever service that takes any input URL and attempts to identify lists of links (i.e. a feed) and then convert this into an RSS feed that anyone can subscribe to. Great for pulling content out of […]
Time to rethink mobile-first CSS?
An interesting look at whether the current mobile-first paradigm is problematic. Ultimately, the title feels a little like click-bait; to me the solution proposed remains mobile-first, but suggests […]
A Bookmark Feed
Mastodon makes saving interesting links for later very easy, but getting these into a feed reader or note-taking service seemed impossible until I came across a neat little hosted solution.
Event.target.closest
A lot of JavaScript used on web pages simply waits for a user to click on some element on the page, and then executes a […]
The chicken-egg problem of movie microformats
Sara proposes some broader microformats support for media consumption, beyond the existing u-watch-of. The existing option does little to differentiate the type of content (YouTube versus […]
Resurrecting web marginalia
A few careful thoughts about the utility of "web marginalia", in this case for discovery; things like blogrolls, feed lists, and webrings. John wonders if their demise is in part due to the loss of […]
Internet artifacts
The early Internet's greatest hits. From the hamster dance to Homestar Runner; the first webcam to the first online video. It's a real trip down memory lane for those of us who grew up on this […]
TypeScript string literal arrays
A useful trick when working with tokenised values is that you can generate an "immutable tuple" within a "const context" (computer science gibberish overload 😂) and reference that. So if you have […]
Bookmarklet for responsive image linting
Not overly tested, but covers a lot of the common gotchas around building responsive images for the web, and quickly identifies areas for improvement. Definitely feels like something that could be […]
Visions of an alternate, slightly more habitable Mars
A remarkably complex and detailed spec-bio project, with a focus on an alternative history where early 20th century ideas about the ecosystems of Mars turned out to be much more accurate than in our […]
WCAG 2.2 simplified
A useful overview of the new success criteria coming in WCAG 2.2 (though the author is quick to note that changes are still at least a little […]