Journal tags: us

Four years ago I wrote about something that has long puzzled me in the world of front-end development. Trust:

The mindset I’ve noticed is that many developers are suspicious of browser features but trusting of third-party libraries.

Developers are more likely to trust, say, Bootstrap than they are to trust CSS grid or custom properties. Developers are more likely to trust React than they are to trust web components.

That post got some thoughtful responses but I never really understood the imbalance of trust and suspicion:

I’m kind of confused by this prevalent mindset of trusting third-party code more than built-in browser features.

But something happened recently that helped me understand that mindset better.

I wrote a while back about how the datalist element on iOS has been completely fucked up. It’s worse than if Safari simply didn’t support it.

Breaking the web like that should be a five-alarm fire, but nobody is in any rush to fix it. I recall a similar lackadaisical attitude when Safari completely broke their implentation of IndexedDB.

I had it in my head that browser features followed a forward path generally. They’d be iterated on and improved on to iron out any glitches, but it was reasonable to expect things to get better with each new version of a browser.

Now I see that’s not necessarily the case.

Had I used an over-engineered JavaScript library instead of the datalist element, I wouldn’t be facing the current situation of having to use browser-sniffing to avoid sending a standard HTML element to any browser on iOS.

Sure, that third-party JavaScript would mean that users are downloading more code, and it probably wouldn’t work well with assistive technology, but as long as I didn’t touch it, it would continue to work. That should be true of web standards—I should be able to use them secure in the knowledge that they won’t suddenly shit the bed.

Perhaps I should be grateful to Apple for dispelling my naïveté. I now have much more empathy and understanding for web developers who are suspicious of web standards and prefer to use third-party libraries instead.

Good job, Apple. Happy anniversary.

People of Brighton, mark your calendars: Saturday, April 4th. That’s when Salter Cane will be playing in The Hope And Ruin.

It’s not just Salter Cane though. We’ll be joined by Skyscrapers from Lewes, and The Equatorial Group from Eastbourne. We’ve played with them before, and they’re superb!

Tickets are available now. They’re £8 in advance. It’ll be £10 on the door. So please get your ticket in advance!

Doors are at 7:30pm. Skyscrapers will be on stage at 8pm, The Equatorial group at 9pm, and Salter Cane at 10pm.

I’m really, really looking forward to rocking out playing songs from our newest album and I would love it if you could make it.

See you there!

In my previous post, I mentioned that I’ve used the web install API in production. Specifically, I’ve used it on The Session. In order to do that, I had to register for the origin trial.

I’ve just signed up for another origin trial. This time it’s for the proposed focusgroup attribute:

The focusgroup HTML attribute is a proposed declarative way to add keyboard arrow-key navigation to composite widgets such as toolbars, tablists, menus, listboxes, etc. without writing any roving-tabindex JavaScript. One attribute replaces hundreds of lines of boilerplate.

I’ve got an HTML web component on The Session called tab-controls. And yes, there’s a bunch of code in there to listen for keyboard events and respond appropriately. I would very much like to rip that code out.

So now that I’ve opted into the origin trial, I’ve added this to my HTML:

<tab-controls role="tablist" focusgroup="tablist">

If this focusgroup attribute takes off, I’ll be able to remove the role attribute but for now, it’s very much needed.

In the JavaScript for my tab-controls custom element, I need to be able to detect support for focusgroup. Here’s how I’m doing it:

if (!this.focusgroup) {
// do all my key handling stuff here
}

Here’s the important thing: don’t use getAttribute('focusgroup') to test for browser support. That will return true if the attribute is in the HTML. But the attribute will only get converted into a property if the browser understands it.

Jake has a lot more detail on the differences between attributes and properties.

Anyway, I figured I’d share that little snippet in case you too were interested in trying out the focusgroup proposal using progressive enhancement.

Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This knocked me for six when I read it back in 2022:

It’s like a slow-building sucker punch.

Like my other favourite book of that year—A Ghost In The Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa—it’s hard to classify. I think it’s autofiction. Not quite autobiography. Not quite fiction.

Will There Ever Be Another You is also autofiction. I think. It might also be poetry (which shouldn’t be surprising as Patricia Lockwood is a poet after all).

I can’t say that this one had the same emotional impact of No One Is Talking About This for me but then again, very little could.

The writing feels very impressionistic, with each chapter trying on a different mode. It’s kinda Joycean …if James Joyce was stuck indoors during a global pandemic.

The narrative—such as it is—revolves around The Situation from 2020 onwards. That was a surreal bizarre time so it makes sense that this is a surreal bizarre book.

I think I liked it. I can’t quite tell. I just let the language wash over me.

It’s the 25th of February and it’s a beautiful day here in Brighton. I had lunch sitting outside—that’s how unseasonably warm it is. Like a little whiff of Summer to remind us of what’s yet to come.

It’s also my birthday. The beautiful weather is an auspicious augery.

Mozilla also released a new version of Firefox. I was hoping for cross-document view transitions and scroll-driven animations for my birthday, but alas I may have to wait another year.

Later, Jessica is going to take me out for some excellent Japanese food before we head on to a session in a cosy pub. I can think of no better way to celebrate my birthday than playing a rake of jigs and reels.

I’m 55 now. It feels like a meaningful number. I think I’ve moved down an option in the select menus that ask for your age range.

I got letters in the post from my pension provider reminding me that 55 is the age when you can technically start taking money out of your pension. Something that retired people do.

I have to admit, this birthday has me entertaining retirement options. I’m already down to just three days a week. It wouldn’t take much to wind that down over the next few years. There’d be even more opportunities to savour the sunshine on a sunny day.

Anyway. Just pondering. You know, the kind of thoughts a 55-year old has.

I watched a good film last night. Tornado from the same writer and director of the also-excellent Slow West.

Tornado is a Scottish Samurai Western set in the 1790s. Although it’s not likely that many Samurai would’ve been in Scotland during the sakoku period, I was willingly able to suspend my disbelief …until something quite minor happened on screen.

One of the characters is seen playing a concertina. “Hang on”, I thought, “1790s? That’s not right!”

And indeed, once the film was over I reached for my laptop and confirmed that the concertina is very much a 19th century invention.

Look, it’s not that I know when most musical instruments were invented, but I happened to know about the concertina’s origin because of a different technology.

See, the concertina was invented by one Charles Wheatsone. He invented quite a few things. He, along with William Cooke, more or less created the electric telegraph, around the same time as Samuel Morse.

I only know this because of the excellent book by Tom Standage called The Victorian Internet:

The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s online pioneers.

Prompted by that book, I found out more about Wheatstone, including the fact that he invented the concertina. So that’s why I found myself slightly taken out of the action when watching that film last night. In the 1790s, nobody was playing the concertina in Scotland or anywhere else.

Today, though, the concertina is thriving, especially in Ireland. It’s particularly popular in County Clare. Though, as I’m writing this, I’m listening to the playing of a Kerryman, Cormac Begley.

I’ll be seeing him play tonight in the Brighton Dome where he’ll be providing the music for the superb Teaċ Damhsa production, MÁM. This’ll be my second time experiencing it. Táim ar bís!

For the past few years, I’ve been taking a trip to Spain at the end of September for the Cáceres Irish Fleadh. Last year I convinced my friends Liam and Monica to come along and they had a great time.

Like me, Liam just loves playing in sessions. Also like me, Liam likes to spend the gloomy short days of January thinking about travelling somewhere …and then playing in sessions there.

I told him I’d put together a list of potential trips for the discerning session hound. I figured I might as well share it here too…

First of all, there are Irish music festivals. Alas, most festivals don’t happen in the sunny climes of Spain. As you’d expect, most of them are in Ireland.

I’m heading to Carlingford at the end of this month for a weekend of Féile na Tána. I haven’t been before but it looks good. There’ll be the usual amalgam of workshops, concerts, and sessions.

Myself and Jessica will fly in to Belfast, then take the train down to Newry and get to Carlingford from there. You could fly into Dublin and get the train up to Dundalk, but the only Gatwick flights to Dublin are Ryan Air, and I’d rather entrust my instrument to EasyJet.

At the end of March we’re heading to Tullamore Trad Fest. That’s another one we haven’t been to before. Again, there’ll be workshops, concerts, and sessions.

Tullamore is just an hour away from Dublin by train and has plenty of accommodation options. We’ve booked into a nice-looking B&B.

There’s no avoiding Ryan Air for this trip and I want to take my good mandolin, so I’ve gone ahead and booked a separate seat for it. I don’t want to take any chances with an airline that actively seeks to elevate misery.

The festival I heartily recommend is Belfast Trad Fest at the end of July. It’s super convenient to get to with EasyJet flights from Gatwick—go to Belfast city airport, which is right downtown.

The festival offers a really good accommodation deal in modern student flats. The workshops are top-notch, and best of all, it has a really well-organised session trail. You can easily play in sessions all afternoon and evening.

This year, for the first time ever, Belfast trad fest is immediately followed by the all-Ireland fleadh, which promises to be pandemonium. I’ve never been to the fleadh before but I’m going to stick around Belfast for it.

You could head to the Willie Clancy Festival in Miltown Malbay at the start of July (the website seems to be having some issues right now). But good luck finding accommodation. The event is so big now that unless you’re camping, there’s not much chance of finding a place to stay. If you make it there though, non-stop sessions await. Non-stop chaos awaits too. That’s part of the deal. Great workshops though!

There are other festivals I haven’t been to but I’ve heard great things about. The Pádraig O’Keeffe Festival in Kerry in October sounds fantastic, especially if you like your polkas and slides. But it’s in Castleisland, which doesn’t have much in the way of accommodation. So unless you’ve got transport, it’s going to be tricky.

There’s a trad fest in Kilkenny in March. I’ve never been but they’ve got a session trail. You’d need to fly into either Dublin or Cork and then get on a bus. Either way, it’s Ryan Air from Gatwick.

I’ve also never been to the Ennis Trad Fest in county Clare in November but I’ve heard good things. Accommodation for the 2026 event is already in short supply though.

But you don’t need a festival to play in sessions. In fact, the kind of sessions you end up in at festivals have a different vibe to the usual sessions, simply because they’re formed of a hodge-podge of visiting players.

There a few spots in Ireland where you’re guaranteed a session pretty much any night of the week.

I love Galway. There are afternoon sessions in Taafe’s and Tigh Cóilí as well as evening sessions in the Crane and other places. You’d need to fly into Dublin and get the train from there. It takes about two hours.

Galway is busy in the summer time and accommodation can be pricy, but if you go off-season you can find some cheaper options.

Ennis has music most nights. There’s a regular bus service between Ennis and Shannon airport that’s nice and quick. You’d need to fly Ryan Air from Gatwick though.

And then there’s Belfast again. Even when the trad fest isn’t happening, Belfast has sessions seven nights a week. Check out the Belfast session guide Instagram account for up-to-date details.

I recommend staying in The Flint, but make sure you ask for a room on the top floor far away from the nightclub if you’re there on a weekend.

So, to recap, here are some festivals to check out:

• Féile na Tána in Carlingford, county Louth in January (I’m going),
• Tullamore Trad Fest in county Offaly in March (I’m going),
• Kilkenny Trad Fest also in March,
• Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy in Miltown Malbay, county Clare in July,
• Belfast Trad Fest at the end of July (I’m going),
• Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann also in Belfast at the start of August (I’m going),
• Cáceres Irish Fleadh in Spain in September (I’m going),
• The Pádraig O’Keeffe festival in Castleisland, county Kerry in October, and
• Ennis Trad Fest in county Clare in November.

And then for year-round session action, you can visit:

• Galway,
• Ennis, and
• Belfast

Here’s the new year, same as the old year. Well, not the same, but pretty similar.

At the end of 2024, I wrote:

It was a year dominated by Ukraine and Gaza. Utterly horrific and unnecessary death courtesy of Putin and Netanyahu

See what I mean?

2025 added an extra dose of American carnage with Trump’s psychotic combination of cruelty and incompetence directed at the very foundations of the country. I’ve got to be honest, I’m tired of the USA living rent-free in my head so I’ve issued an eviction notice. It’s not that I don’t have sympathy and empathy for what’s happening there, but a majority of the country voted for this …again. Like a dog voting to have its nose rubbed in its own shit. Maybe this time the lesson will stick.

Anyway, leaving world events aside (yes, please!), I also said this at the end of last year:

For me personally, 2024 was just fine. I was relatively healthy all year. The people I love were relatively healthy too. I don’t take that for granted.

Again, same. No major health issues in 2025. My loved ones are well. My gratitude grows.

I’ve already written about how much music I played in 2025. I’m hoping to continue that trajectory in 2026 with lots of sessions. We’re four days into the year and I’ve already had two excellent sessions. There are another three lined up this week.

One of the highlights of 2025 was my trip with Jessica to Donegal. Learning Irish by day, playing in sessions by night, all while surrounded by gorgeous scenery. I’ve already got a return trip planned for 2026. I’m also planning to be back in Belfast for the annual tradfest.

Other 2025 highlights include:

• Curating an excellent edition of UX London.
• Releasing the new Salter Cane album and playing those songs live—I want to do more of that in 2026.

Most of my travel in 2025 was either for music or family.

I made three trips to the States to see the in-laws: California, Florida, and most recently, Arizona. I can’t say I feel very comfortable going to the States right now, especially to Florida, where people openly display their intolerance on their T-shirts, and Arizona where they openly display their guns.

I went back to my hometown of Cobh a few times during the year to visit my mother.

Aside from those family trips, I went to Belfast, Donegal, Galway, and Clare in Ireland, Cáceres in Spain, Namur in Belgium, and Amsterdam. Only that last one was work-related. I always make sure to get to CSS Day.

Meanwhile here on my website, I posted 695 times in 2025. That includes 345 notes, 262 links, and 86 blog posts. Here are some I’m quite fond of:

• The web on mobile
• Portugeating
• Style your underlines
• Hounds Of Love
• Research
• Bóthar
• Why use React?
• Tunes and typefaces

All in all, 2025 was a grand year for me. It wasn’t all that different from the year before. I’m at an age where the years aren’t all that differentiated from one another. I’m okay with that because I’m also at an age where I know what brings me joy and satisfaction, and I can focus on those things.

So here’s to 2026, which I hope I will spend doing more of what I did in 2025: playing music, speaking Irish, eating good food, hanging out with friends, reading good books, travelling to interesting places, and staying relatively healthy.

I really like it when people post their end-of-year music round-up. Colly, Jon, and Naz have all posted about music they listened to in 2025.

I recognise almost none of the albums that they’ve listed. That’s because my musical brain has been almost entirely conquered by Irish traditional music.

2025 was a year filled with music for me. Mostly it was music that I was playing. I think I might’ve spent more time playing music than listening to music this year. I like that ratio.

Brighton has a healthy session scene. Most weeks I get to play in more than one. Even better, I had some great tunes outside of the pub environment, calling around to people’s houses or having them over for a nice cup of tea with some jigs’n’reels.

Most of my travel in 2025 was music-based. The Willie Clancy Summer School in County Clare. Belfast Trad Fest in Northern Ireland. The Cáceres fleadh in Spain. The inaugural Namur Irish Music Festival in Belgium.

There’s nothing better than being in a good session, and I enjoyed some great ones this year. I think my mandolin-playing has benefited from it too.

I also got hold of some albums released in 2025…

The second Copley Street album is, unsurprisingly, excellent.

The second volume of Mná na bPíob is, also unsurprisingly, also excellent.

But I think my favourite album of 2025 is Òran na hEala by Maurice Bradley. Terrific tunes, superb piping, and equally superb fiddle playing.

I’ve been in a session two with Maurice Bradley during previous tradfests in Belfast. I was looking forward to seeing him there again this year to tell him how much I like the album. Alas, he passed away shortly after the album was released. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. A great loss to Irish music.

Oh, I did get one album released in 2025 that isn’t traditional Irish music, and it’s really, really good:

Deep Black Water by Salter Cane.

Okay, that’s cheating because I’m in the band, but honestly, I think the album is genuinely excellent. Every track is a banger, in my somewhat-biased opinion. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think.

My wish for 2026 is that I’ll have plenty of opportunities to play those songs live. In between all the sessions.

In an Irish session, tunes are almost never played in isolation. They’re played in sets.

A set of tunes might be as few as two. More usually, it’s three or more.

It’s unusual to change from one tune type into another. You tend to get a set of jigs, or a set of reels, or a set of hornpipes. But it’s very common to change key within a set. In fact, that’s often where a good set really stands out. There can be a real joy at that moment of switching. You might get a “Hup!” from someone listening to the session at that changeover.

So how do you decide what tunes to play in a set?

There are no real rules to this. Some people make up the set on the fly. Or you might try playing a set that you’ve heard other people play, maybe on a recording you like.

On the one hand, you’re looking for contrast. You probably don’t want to play three tunes all in the same key. On the other hand, it’s nice when there’s some kind of connection between the tunes—something about the phrasing or emphasis perhaps.

Pairing tunes for sets always reminds me of pairing typefaces. You don’t want the body copy and the headlines to be too similar, but you do want them to share some quality.

In his classic book, On Web Typography, Jason says:

When it comes to choosing and pairing typefaces, I keep two things in mind: distinction and harmony. To keep the system you’ve created for visual communication properly balanced, you need to choose typefaces that don’t compete too much with each other, but aren’t so similar as to be indistinguishable.

The same could be said for pairing tunes in sets!

Jason also says:

As another approach, opt for typefaces that share the same maker.

That can work for sets of tunes too. While most tunes are traditional, with no known composer, the really good composed tunes have entered the canon.

I’ve taken Jason’s advice for typefaces and applied to sets by playing a set of tunes by Junior Crehan or a set of tunes by Vincent Broderick.

Mostly though, there’s no real system to it. Or at least, not one that can be easily articulated. Like Jason says:

And we’re back to that old chestnut about rules: there are many right answers, and no answers are really wrong; there are just different degrees of good.

Maureen has written a really good overview of web feeds for this year’s HTMHell advent calendar.

The common belief is that nobody uses RSS feeds these days. And while it’s true that I wish more people used feed readers—the perfect antidote to being fed from an algorithm—the truth is that millions of people use RSS feeds every time they listen to a podcast. That’s what a podcast is: an RSS feed with enclosure elements that point to audio files.

And just as a web feed doesn’t necessarily need to represent a list of blog posts, a podcast doesn’t necessarily need to be two or more people having a recorded conversation (though that does seem to be the most common format). A podcast can tell a story. I like those kinds of podcasts.

The BBC are particularly good at this kind of episodic audio storytelling. I really enjoyed their series Thirteen minutes to the moon, all about the Apollo 11 mission. They followed it up with a series on Apollo 13, and most recently, a series on the space shuttle.

Here’s the RSS feed for the 13 minutes podcast.

Right now, the BBC have an ongoing series about the history of the atomic bomb. The first series was about Leo Szilard, the second series was about Klaus Fuchs, and the third series running right now is about the Cuban missile crisis.

The hook is that each series is presented by people with a family connection to the events. The first series is presented by the granddaughter of one of the Oak Ridge scientists. The second series is presented by the granddaughter of Klaus Fuch’s spy handler in the UK—blimey! And the current series is presented by Nina Khrushcheva and Max Kennedy—double blimey!

Here’s the RSS feed for The Bomb podcast.

If you want a really deep dive into another pivotal twentieth century event, Evgeny Morozov made a podcast all about Stafford Beer and Salvadore Allende’s collaboration on cybernetics in Chile, the fabled Project Cybercyn. It’s fascinating stuff, though there’s an inevitable feeling of dread hanging over events because we know how this ends.

The podcast is called The Santiago Boys, though I almost hesitate to call it a podcast because for some reason, the website does its best to hide the RSS feed, linking only to the silos of Spotify and Apple. Fortunately, thanks to this handy tool, I can say:

Here’s the RSS feed for The Santiago Boys podcast.

The unifying force behind all three of these stories is the cold war:

• 13 Minutes—the space race, from the perspective of the United States.
• The Bomb—the nuclear arms race, from Los Alamos to Cuba.
• The Santiago Boys—the CIA-backed overthrow of a socialist democracy in Chile.

I don’t get out to gigs as much as I’d like. But for some reason, the past week has been packed with live music.

On Tuesday I saw Ye Vagabonds. I’m particularly partial to their nice mandolin playing. It was a nice concert that felt like being in a Greenwich Village folk club in the ’60s. It’s great to see how popular Ye Vagabonds are with indie kids, even if I’m slightly perplexed by the extent of the popularity—see also Lankum.

On Thursday it was time for Robert Forster and his band. I’m a huge fan of The Go-Betweens, as well as Forster’s solo work. He gave us a thoroughly enjoyable show, interspersing some select Go-Betweens tracks, including quite a few off 16 Lovers Lane.

On Saturday Jessica and I made the journey over to Lewes to see The Wilderness Yet at the folk club. We know Rowan and Rosie from when they used to live ‘round here and it was lovely to see and hear them again.

Then last night we went out to see DakhaBrakha. The Ukrainian population of Brighton came out to give them a very warm welcome. The band themselves were, unsurprisingly, brilliant. Like I said last time they came to town:

Imagine if Tom Waits and Cocteau Twins came from Eastern Europe and joined forces. Well, DakhaBrakha are even better than that.

A good week of music from Ireland, Australia, England, and Ukraine.

I was messing about with some images on a website recently and while I was happy enough with the arrangement on large screens, I thought it would be better to have the images in a kind of carousel on smaller screens—a swipable gallery.

My old brain immediately thought this would be fairly complicated to do, but actually it’s ludicrously straightforward. Just stick this bit of CSS on the containing element inside a media query (or better yet, a container query):

display: flex;
overflow-x: auto;

That’s it.

Oh, and you can swap out overflow-x for overflow-inline if, like me, you’re a fan of logical properties. But support for that only just landed in Safari so I’d probably wait a little while before removing the old syntax.

Here’s an example using pictures of some of the lovely people who will be speaking at Web Day Out:

While you’re at it, add this:

overscroll-behavior-inline: contain;

Thats prevents the user accidentally triggering a backwards/forwards navigation when they’re swiping.

You could add some more little niceties like this, but you don’t have to:

scroll-snap-type: inline mandatory;
scroll-behavior: smooth;

And maybe this on the individual items:

scroll-snap-align: center;

You could progressively enhance even more with the new pseudo-elements like ::scroll-button() and ::scroll-marker for Chromium browsers.

Apart from that last bit, none of this is particularly new or groundbreaking. But it was a pleasant reminder for me that interactions that used to be complicated to implement are now very straightforward indeed.

Here’s another example that Ana Tudor brought up yesterday:

You have a section with a p on the left & an img on the right. How do you make the img height always be determined by the p with the tiniest bit of CSS? 😼

No changing the HTML structure in any way, no pseudos, no background declarations, no JS. Just a tiny bit of #CSS.

Old me would’ve said it can’t be done. But with a little bit of investigating, I found a nice straightforward solution:

section >  img {
  contain: size;
  place-self: stretch;
  object-fit: cover;
}

That’ll work whether the section has its display set to flex or grid.

There’s something very, very satisfying in finding a simple solution to something you thought would be complicated.

Honestly, I feel like web developers are constantly being gaslit into thinking that complex over-engineered solutions are the only option. When the discourse is being dominated by people invested in frameworks and libraries, all our default thinking will involve frameworks and libraries. That’s not good for users, and I don’t think it’s good for us either.

Of course, the trick is knowing that the simpler solution exists. The information probably isn’t going to fall in your lap—especially when the discourse is dominated by overly-complex JavaScript.

So get yourself a ticket for Web Day Out. It’s on Thursday, March 12th, 2026 right here in Brighton.

I guarantee you’ll hear about some magnificent techniques that will allow you to rip out plenty of complex code in favour of letting the browser do the work.

It’s October. Autumn is wrapping itself around us, squeezing the leaves from the trees. Summer has slipped away, though it gave us a parting gift of a few pleasant days this week to sit outside at lunchtime.

I’ve got a bit of a ritual now for the end of September. I go to Spain and soak up the last of the sun. There’s an Irish music festival in the beautiful medieval town of Cáceres.

It’s not easy to get to, but that’s all part of the ritual. Set out for Madrid or Seville and spend a night there. Then get on a train for the long journey through a landscape straight out of a spaghetti western.

Once you get to Cáceres there’s nothing to do but enjoy the sun, the food, and the music. So much music! Open-air concerts in a medieval square that go well past midnight. Non-stop sessions scattered throughout the town’s pedestrianised streets.

For me, it’s the perfect way to see out the summer.