Another self-promo, this time I got a chance to chat with Chrisitan Heilmann on the latest Coffee with Developers podcast! It was really great to see, and talk with, Christian again. We have messaged back and forth a bit online, but haven’t had a chance for “face-to-face” since… a very distant Smashing Conference in Freiburg??? Big thanks to Christian, had a lot of fun blabbing about NoLoJS and all kinds of other nerdy web stuff! :-)
Anyhow, on with business!
Theo Soti starts off with a nice run-through on relative colors in CSS. It is such a refreshing way to arrive at a new color within the same palette!
Sadly, the deadline for the 2026 Web Almanac closed a little too quickly to get the entire CSS module updated. But that didn’t stop Bart Veneman from finishing it up on his own time, and delivering, for all of us, The CSS Selection – The state of real-world CSS usage, 2026 edition. It is basically the 2026 CSS Almanac…. Way to go, Bart, bravo, and Dank u wel!
If you are looking for inspiration, or just some really nice-looking, innovative components, take a gander at these Very Good Components. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out who the creator for these is, but they are amazing! So, if anyone knows who is responsible for them, and wouldn’t mind letting me know, I always like to share credit where it is due!
And while we’re appreciating great design, Rene Wang offers up a slew of great designer bits in detail.design, “A collection of small details that make big difference”. I love this quick tip for finding the perfect spacing around an element by blurring it!
In the world of web performance, few changes make more of an impact than “shipping less stuff”… Bob Cahill shares how Target.com recently made some great reductions by revisiting their analytics, which allowed them to adjust their browser matrix, which allowed them to reduce their JavaScript bundle size by 10%! And they already have targets set for future dates when new features will become usable, allowing for even further reductions! I love seeing such improvements, especially when they are data-driven!
Stoyan Stefanov shares a sweet little script he added to his build script to attain a minimal viable image optimization. Sweet, indeed!
Another short and sweet little bit, this time from Manuel Matuzović, as he recommends an improvement on the browser default for HTML popovers to help the popover more closely align with the popover trigger. A nice little addition to whatever CSS reset or starter you may use!
Not as short, but certainly still sweet, Patrick Brosset shows off some seriously cool Fun with the Web!
Speculation Rules have more than proven their worth, and even though they are not yet widely supported, they are a fantastic progressive enhancement, providing benefits where they are supported, and causing no harm where they are not. But they can be a little tricky to configure correctly. That’s why Arjen Karel created this Speculation rules generator. Note that if you scroll down below the tool, Arjen also offers a thorough Configuration Guide, explaining all the bits above.
Zoran Jambor is back again with another batch of DevTools tips. Love the first one, have been bugged by that many times!
Jemima Abu demonstrates new CSS features that she says are reshaping frontend development. Jemina first displays a table with all of the features she is excited about, briefly describing what each does, then goes on to explain and demonstrate several of them in full detail, including code blocks and CodePens! Man, I need to book some time to scroll through these all thoroughly…
Hashim Quraishi shares an experience of trying to help Accessibility, but ending up harming it, fully walking through the thinking and the lessons learned, before offering a wonderful set of rules that we can all follow to avoid this issue ourselves.
Handcrafted by Lea Verou and friends, comes the BrowerScore tool. Just open the tool in any browser and get a complete run-down of all supported, partially-supported and unsupported features. There are several other filters you can use to check how your browser fares.
For anyone supporting a Shopify site, Izaac Barratt shared a cool tool to compare your Shopify site to your competitors! The tool only takes Shopify URLs and uses CrUX data, so it won’t be comparing the currently-live version of your site, but it is a very useful tool! Note: Getting the report does require submitting your email address, but then you can see an overview of your site’s cumulative CWV:
An inspiring article from Sia Karamalegos as she explains how contributing to tech communities through writing, speaking, open source, etc., can be the best way to grow your tech career. Love it. Think of how often you have been stuck on a problem and found an answer just sitting there on the web. Or how often you have needed to do something, and downloaded/installed some free/open-source library/tool to get the job done. Or how many presentations you have seen, either live or on YouTube, that have inspired or educated you. All of that content came from someone taking the time to create it and make it available in one form or another. You might think that something you just figured out isn’t impressive, but the law of averages saws that if you had a problem with it, plenty of other people will too, and some might have more trouble figuring it out than you did. Also, I know all of my writing and open-source work has taught me a tremendous amount over the years!
And finally, I am firmly with Nolan Lawson on this one, as I too mourn the loss of our craft… Where we were once so proud of our hand-crafted, optimized pages and sites, we are increasingly being looked over in favor of any-old-slop that gets output by some WYSIWYG tool or AI agent and pushed to the web. Yes, there may be (and hopefully is!) a very talented web developer reviewing the code before it gets pushed live, but that is really not the same, is it? Well, its not for me. I love crafting rock-solid HTML, and the CSS and JS that makes it shine. I love figuring out how to make something do something. That’s the joy in this job. But increasingly, that is disappearing. Perhaps, just like a painter bemoaned the photograph, and the photographer bemoaned PhotoShop, or a carpenter was saddened by the arrival of IKEA, there really isn’t much to do about it, but that does not make me not sad…
Happy reading,
Atg
I remember being involved in an animated conversation about AI use in art and someone mentioned how artists hated digital art when that grew in prominence but we still have paintings and physical art forms just like acoustic musicians haven’t died out because of digital genres.
The thing with AI-everything in our craft is that people are trying to use it to stop the “analog” approaches and the practitioners who follow them and you’re either forced to use it with all its frustrations (and that still won’t guarantee that you keep your job) or choose a different craft which is depressing to think about.
So I think there’s a lot we can do to at least stem the flow but, like they say, it takes a village.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Luke!
I have no delusion that AI is stoppable, nor do I really think it absolutely should be, but I would like to see it be approached more sensibly, and honestly…
The chasm between the “AI can do anything and is going to take care of everything” and “AI is such slop and is turning us into code reviewers” camps is daunting… And of course neither tells the complete picture.
I do hate seeing it replace craftsmanship. As many others have bemoaned, why is it being used to create art and poetry, and not balancing my books and doing my taxes??? ;-)