What You Need to Know about Modern CSS (2024 Edition)

By Chris Coyier on

My goal with this bookmarkable guide is to provide a list of (frankly: incredible) new additions to CSS lately. There is no hardline criteria for this list other than that these things are all fairly new and my sense is that many people aren’t aware of these things. Or even if they are, they don’t […]

Arguments for opening links in a new tab or window

By Chris Coyier on

I feel like I’ve always been in the minority on this: I don’t think you should use target=”_blank” on links. Unless you have a very good reason, that is, like there is currently-playing media that would stop, or a user has unsaved work you don’t want to interrupt. But I find that most people disagree, and have their own philosophy.

A design portfolio mistake

By Chris Coyier on

Matej Latin has rejected the vast majority of portfolios he’s seen in his career for one reason, a “linear design process”: By “linear design process” I mean cookie-cutter case studies that always read the same. The designer learned about a problem, conducted user interviews, created user personas, proceeded to sketches, then mockups and wireframes, made […]

Chill Scroll Snapping: Article Headers

By Chris Coyier on

CSS has a feature called scroll snapping. A lot of the demos and examples, rightfully so, focus around things that benefit highly from it. For instance, an image slider, carousel, or grid of things that just beg to be aligned after scrolling. But you don’t have to be in such a strict and rigid situation […]

Design Engineers

By Chris Coyier on

The job title “Design Engineer” has been having a moment. I commented on Jim Nielsen’s takes recently. To me it makes a logical sense. The engineer aspect means they know the tech (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), and the design aspect means they are building and refining the look and experience. You don’t have to be both. […]

What is safe alignment in CSS?

By Chris Coyier on

Stefan Judis covered this recently, and like Stefan, I first heard of the safe keyword in CSS from Rachel Andrews at an AEA conference years ago. It’s used in addition to other alignment keywords in layout like this for example: The extra value safe here is essentially saying “don’t let the alignment force a situation […]

DOM to PNG Directly in the Browser

By Chris Coyier on

You could design something on the web then take a screenshot of it. That is, in a basic sense, converting DOM to PNG. But a screenshot is rather manual and finicky. If you had to do this over and over, or you needed a very exact size (like a social media card), you can actually […]

Eloquent JavaScript (4th edition)

By Chris Coyier on

An awful lot of JavaScript developers I know speak of Eloquent JavaScript as a very formative book for them in their path toward becoming the developer they are today. It’s certainly on my bookshelf. Eloquent JavaScript is now in it’s 4th edition, and available free online. Pretty sweet complementary learning resource right there, goes nicely […]

Modern Font Stacks

By Chris Coyier on

Just a little appreciation for Dan Klammer’s Modern Font Stacks project. Not loading any custom fonts doesn’t need to mean being relegated to the Helvetica/Arial hole, system fonts (even though I do kinda love San Francisco), or some bummer typeface you feel pushed into. I particularly like the Geometric Humanist stack: