Design
Get the number of auto-fit/auto-fill columns in CSS
The whole point of auto-fit and auto-fill is that you aren’t saying how many columns to use. But if you knew how many the browser chose, you can make nice design decisions.
Out-of-your-face AI
A very interesting aspect of the AI smashing its way into every software product known to man, is how it’s integrated. What does it look like? What does it do? Are we allowed to control it? UX patterns are evolving around this. In coding tools, I’ve felt the bar being turned up on “anticipate what […]
The HTML Review
The fourth issue of The HTML Review is out. Wonderful writing framed by entirely different and unusual interactive interfaces, brought to you by the power of web technology. A zine come to life. Just try to pick a favorite.
Our interfaces havelost their senses
Amelia Wattenberger asks in a wonderful blog post wondering about more human interfaces: Can we build something richer—something that moves with us, speaks our language, and molds to our bodies?
Mesh Gradient Generator
A nice tool for generating mesh gradients from Erik D. Kennedy. You might call it a bit of a trend, but as Erik pointed out in a recent newsletter, they can be quite versatile because it’s just a nice background look that doesn’t demand anything in particular from the brand.
‘Design Engineer’ as a Job Title
David Darnes asks: Is 2025 the Year of the ‘Design Engineer’? It’s arguably a bit of a new term and being used more and more as a job title. Like most job titles, it doesn’t have the strongest agreed upon definition, but it’s honing in around the front end and essentially a designer who can […]
Keeping Pixely Images Pixely (and Performant!)
With CSS’ `image-rendering: pixelated;` we can keep HTML images that have pixelated look anyway quite sharp looking, and possibly more performant to boot.
“Why does this have to be a modal?”
It’s not that modals are all automatically bad, it’s that, as Adrian Egger says, “modals are the crutch of the inarticulate design and developer” and they “are easily replaced with other patterns that are less jarring.” on the dedicated site for this crusade: modalzmodalzmodalz.com. Adrian’s personal site is sweet, too.
Figma Typography Variables
Figma has support for variables, and they work with the various typography features you may want to set. For instance, you could create a variable called “Header Font” with a value of “Ideal Sans” and use it in many places.