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Hello RSS reader! This post contains an interactive feature. Please visit the canonical web page for an optimal viewing experience :) When I redesigned my website earlier this year I removed dark mode. I never liked the colours, and the light switch toggle was so 2010’s.Personally I prefer reading with a dark theme for long-form content. Dark is not my brand though and I don’t believe every website needs to support colour scheme preference automatically. A good browser has reader mode, I use…

When I’m not fighting WordPress I deliver static HTML or the occasional JavaScript framework integration. For personal projects I have ‘fun’ with my own static site generator.This week was a side quest (soon to be main quest) to build my new company website. We’re talking proper business here so I can’t be messing about. I figured an off the shelf SSG would be most suitable.I asked the socials, “11ty or Astro?” Both are popular but Astro had the edge. I gave Astro an early spin back in 2022 and…

Hello RSS reader! This post contains an interactive feature. Please visit the canonical web page for an optimal viewing experience :) At the risk of pissing on people’s chips I figured it’d be helpful to illustrate the three classes of AI user I’ve identified in the slopageddon. You might be thinking: “Hey, those personas are all negative!” — and you’re absolutely right!Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to shut up about “AI”.The thing is, not a week goes by without one of my peers crying…

1984, Minority Report, Black Mirror — bedtime stories compared to the horrors the UK Government publish, am I right?I’m led to believe “Watch this space” is the latest propaganda piece from His Majesty’s Nanny State. I haven’t read past the title but according to gaming site Dexerto, YouTube lawyers read it and YouTube ain’t happy. Poor little YouTube.The government is consulting on options, considering whether to make public service news easier to discover on sites like YouTube and TikTok,…

I’m a front-end developer not a medical practitioner. If you’re bleeding IRL visit the hospital and stop googling medical issues!The full-bleed layout — as described there by Josh Comeau — can be done with CSS grid (and subgrid). Sometimes you can’t grid the entire page.That’s where Andy Bell’s utility class is useful..full-bleed { width: 100vw; margin-left: calc(50% - 50vw); }But it ain’t perfect. The issue is that viewport units don’t solve the classic scrollbar problem. If you’re on macOS or…

Today I’m introducing the next generation of code editor. A modern app to satiate the needs of the discerning coder. We’re talkin’ blazing fast collaboration between man and machine.Try out the demo below (for best experience: desktop Chrome, obvs).If you’re reading this in RSS I have no clue what you’re about to see… maybe visit the demo it’s a fun one! The Modern EditorUpdate ready v0.420 (restart required) Error loading documentation. Please disable your adblocker and try again. We and our…

Please take a minute to understand what ARIA is and is not. ARIA and especially the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) are commonly misunderstood.I read an article the other day that had this facepalm moment:And with modern LLM agents, turning a spec into working code is surprisingly fast. Point the agent at the APG pattern, describe your component’s markup, and get a solid first draft you can refine and test.This is worrying, and the use of “LLM agents” isn’t the worst part!The APG is not a…

CSS is hard and it should be hard. For good reason:CSS isn’t just a complex language, it’s one of the most advanced graphics, layout, and typesetting languages available in computing.The deskilling of web dev is harming the product but, more importantly, it’s damaging our health – this is why burnout happens - Baldur BjarnasonHard isn’t a negative label. You know what else is hard? Applying silicone sealant to waterproof bathroom fixtures. It’s hard enough that such expertise are worthy of a…

This is an RSS-only post, thank you for subscribing :) If you’re only here for web and tech talk you can skip this one!I rescued an animal today! Probably…The UK has its fair share of canals. I like canals. They cut through urban life offering an escape back to nature and are teaming with wildlife.Canal towpaths are perfect for running. They’re easy underfoot — until late spring when the goslings hatch and then I’m doing a ballet to avoid trouble. Canada goose are the most visible bird living…

Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote was a snoozefest but one section left me rather perplexed. Early in the show Apple gave a performance about “child safety”. Apple ended the show with their new AI photo mangler.That’s some serious cognitive dissonance!404 Media recently reported on “How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart”. Kids are using deepfake apps (from Apple’s App Store) to victimise their classmates. Adults are doing it too, of course. Deepfakes on demand are a cornerstone of new Twitter.Apple…

Standard.site provides shared AT Protocol lexicons. Atproto is just spicy JSON and asymmetric cryptography. I’ve tried to explain atproto in more detail before.Bluesky has always supported a few open graph meta tags which I use to generated images for blog posts. That’s part of the social media game; get in people’s faces as loudly as possible. Now the game has changed!Fancy buttonI return Monday ready to work and suddenly I start seeing a fancy new “View publication” button appear in my…

I am back! Ten days “offline”. For me that just means online without talking to anyone.My break came at a time of high industry (and personal) stress.Seeing talented people lose motivation bums me the hell out.Reach out and say thanks - Kevin PowellThank you to those who reached out whilst I was offline :)Catching up on RSS and reading educators question their worth makes me angry. Seeing more people cite “AI” as a primary reason to exit tech boils my blood!AI was the last straw. Have you heard…

It’s Google I/O week and this year’s theme is performative slop. Budding Googlers battle it out on stage vying for executive eyeballs. The prize? Exemption from the next culling.As you might know AI isn’t my cup of tea and my AI policy explains why.AI peddlers like Google have made one thing abundantly clear: their product will take your skills. It will take your profession. It will dehumanise you and you’ll pay for it.Google’s webI figured Google’s Prompt API would be the most offensive attack…

How do you stay sharp as a web developer and/or designer?I’ll share my advice below. I’m also looking for front-end folk to advise me too. What are your whetstones? That is to say: sources of news and knowledge to level up professionally. Does that metaphor work? We’re sharpening our minds, and I suppose the web too with our minds… are minds the whetstone here?Moving swiftly on, in rough order of preference:RSS feedsPeople love to declare “RSS is dead” because they’ve chosen the likes of Google…

The web and tech industry is a veritable sausage party. We don’t need surveys to prove it but we have surveys to prove it. State of surveys have been running for a decade now.Let’s look at the 2025 survey demographics: Survey Men White JS 93% 70% CSS 86% 80% HTML 87% 82% React 90% 66% AI 90% 77% Devs 82% 80% Yes I think “sausage party” is accurate. Weißwurstfest even. And yes cock jo

Giving lightbulbs a MAC address was a mistake that I’m living with.I’m literally unscrewing lightbulbs to renew their DHCP lease@dbushell.com - BlueskyInstead of enjoying the bank holiday Monday I updated my homelab software. I was ‘inspired’ by the Copy Fail Linux bug to run full distro upgrades. This is my self-hosted update for Spring 2026 (rough documentation to give future me a chance).Monday’s fun risked a week of pain. I do have backups but restoring them on a broken LAN is tricky. I…

TL;DR: GitHub used to be cool and now it’s a lame slop graveyard.GitHub is racing towards the mythical zero nines of uptime. Users are starting to notice that GitHub is now a Microsoft product. Eww!Official uptime paints a concerning chart. The missing status page tell a far worse story. Whatever the truth, it’s impossible to miss the delightful experience that is Microsoft GitHub if you use it semi-regularly.GitHub’s Historic UptimeMicrosoft acquired GitHub and applied their unique brand of…

My regular schedule of CSS and HTML tips will return after this brief look at the sorry state of the web and tech industry. It’s grim.Our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that…Alternative facts - Kellyanne Conway (Wikipedia)Following the 2017 inauguration of Mr “grab ’em by the pussy” the world was treated to a deluge of alternative facts. Few were prepared for the new era of “you can just say things”. The rule books were torn to shreds. Whilst liberals were angsting over…

Today Sabastian Sawe ran an historic sub-two-hour marathon in a competitive race.A marathon is around 42 kilometres, aka 26 miles in freedom units (we use miles in the UK too but not for running distances). I feel the record is a little unfair on Kipchoge who achieved the milestone first under non-competitive conditions. Even more unfair on Kejelcha who finishing second today in 1:59:41. Two unbelievable athletes in the same day.If my maths is correct that’s not far off a 14 min 5km pace.…

My website has a new page! The /uses URL pathname is an “official” slash page. I’m only listing web tools I use for now. My default apps change too frequently. The list is an evolution of an old post I was secretly maintaining.Web toolsWeb tools are web-based tools, obviously. Used in a web browser without a download. Some may be installed as progressive web apps but I prefer a progressive browser tabs. Most tools do one thing and do it well. Some of my links are actually just text information,…

CSS cascade layers are the ultimate tool to win the specificity wars. Used alongside the :where selector, specificity problems are a thing of the past. Or so I thought. Turns out cascade layers are leakier than a xenonite sieve. Cross-layer shenanigans can make bad CSS even badder. […]

This year I’ve been asked more than ever before what web development “stack” I use. I always respond: none. We shouldn’t have a go-to stack! Let me explain why. What stack? My understanding is that a “stack” is a choice of software used to build a website. […]

I’m all aboard the CSS subgrid train. Now I’m seeing subgrid everywhere. Seriously, what was I doing before subgrid? I feel like I was bashing rocks together. Consider the follower HTML: The content could be simple headings and paragraphs. […]

… is what I’m reading far too often! Some of you are losing faith! A growing sentiment amongst my peers — those who haven’t already resigned to an NPC career path† — is that blogging is over. Coding is cooked. What’s the point of sharing insights and expertise when the Cognitive Dark Forest will […]

Figma is the industry standard for painting pretty pictures of websites. It’s where designers spend my designated dev time pushing pixels around one too many artboards. Figma promises to remove the proverbial fence between design and development. […]

This is an RSS-only post, which I like to do sporadically! Thank you for subscribing :) Today’s question Am I burning out? Let me know what you think, internet doctors. I work a four day week and I have done so for many years. Fridays are mine to have fun. […]

I should build a game! I feel like that’s a common dream, right? Game development is what got me interested in design and programming to begin with. I learnt ECMAScript via Flash ActionScript many moons ago. Some time later “Thoughts on Flash” brought a swift demise and ruined legacy to Flash. […]

I visited deno.com yesterday. I wanted to know if the hundreds of hours I’d spent mastering Deno was a sunk cost. Do I continue building for the runtime, or go back to Node? Well I guess that pretty much sums up why a good chunk of Deno employees left the company over the last week. […]

Disclaimer: this post includes my worst idea yet! Until now my contact form submissions were posted to a Cloudflare worker. The worker encrypted the details with PGP encryption. It then used the Amazon AWS “Simple Email Service” API to send an email to myself. […]