Generative UI Notes
I’m really interested in this emerging idea that the future of web design is Generative UI Design. We see hints of this already in products,…
Read MoreGenerative UI Notes
Experimenting With Scroll-Driven corner-shape Animations
Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of talk about and experimentation with scroll-driven animations. It’s a very shiny feature for sure, and…
JavaScript for Everyone: Destructuring
Editor’s note: Mat Marquis and Andy Bell have released JavaScript for Everyone, an online course offered exclusively at Piccalilli. This post is an excerpt from…
What’s !important #7: random(), Folded Corners, Anchored Container Queries, and More
For this issue of What’s !important, we have a healthy balance of old CSS that you might’ve missed and new CSS that you don’t want…
4 Reasons That Make Tailwind Great for Building Layouts
When I talk about layouts, I’m referring to how you place items on a page. The CSS properties that are widely used here include: display…
Abusing Customizable Selects
Web browsers ship new features all the time, but what fun is it if we can’t build silly and fun things with them? In this…
The Value of z-index
The z-index property is one of the most important tools any UI developer has at their disposal, as it allows you to control the stacking…
The Different Ways to Select in CSS
Temani Afif recently did this exercise and I thought I’d build off of it. Some of these are useful. Many of them are not. There’s…
Popover API or Dialog API: Which to Choose?
Choosing between Popover API and Dialog API is difficult because they seem to do the same job, but they don’t! After a bit lots of…
What’s !important #6: :heading, border-shape, Truncating Text From the Middle, and More
Despite what’s been a sleepy couple of weeks for new Web Platform Features, we have an issue of What’s !important that’s prrrretty jam-packed. The web…
Yet Another Way to Center an (Absolute) Element
TL;DR: We can center absolute-positioned elements in three lines of CSS. And it works on all browsers! .element { position: absolute; place-self: center; inset: 0;…
An Exploit … in CSS?!
Ok, take a deep breath. We’ll have some fun understanding this vulnerability once you make sure your browser isn’t affected, using the table below. Chromium-based…
A Complete Guide to Bookmarklets
You’re surely no stranger to bookmarks. The ability to favorite, save, or “bookmark” web pages has been a staple browser feature for decades. Browsers don’t…
Loading Smarter: SVG vs. Raster Loaders in Modern Web Design
I got this interesting question in an SVG workshop: “What is the performance difference between an SVG loader and simply rotating an image for a…
Potentially Coming to a Browser :near() You
Just before we wrapped up 2025, I saw this proposal for :near(), a pseudo-class that would match if the pointer were to go near the…