CSS or BS?
We show you a CSS property name. You tell us if it’s real or if we made it up. That’s it. It starts easy. It does not stay easy.
Eight years ago, I asked some questions. Here are some answers.
We show you a CSS property name. You tell us if it’s real or if we made it up. That’s it. It starts easy. It does not stay easy.
Web development follows a familiar cycle. First we glue together a solution with whatever we have — JavaScript, image hacks, Flash, anything. Then the platform matures, and CSS or HTML eventually makes that same workaround native. Rounded corners, custom fonts, smooth scrolling, sticky positioning: all of these started as JavaScript-heavy hacks before CSS turned them into a single declaration.
We are in another one of those transition moments. A new wave of long-requested CSS features is finally landing, and many of them are explicitly designed to replace patterns that used to require JavaScript. Not as approximations — as first-class platform primitives that handle the edge cases, run in the right thread, and need zero dependencies.
I’m slapping my forehead—progressive web components is a perfect name for what I’ve been calling HTML web components. Why didn’t I think of that?
A Progressive Web Component is a native Custom Element designed in two layers: a base layer of HTML and CSS that renders immediately, without JavaScript, and an enhancement layer of JavaScript that adds reactivity, event handling, and more advanced templating.
This is a clever technique for a CSS/HTML only way of just-in-time loading of iframes using details and summary.
This is an excellent one-stop shop of interface patterns:
This is an organic collection of common JS patterns that can be replaced with just HTML, CSS, and no, or very low, JS. As HTML and CSS continue to mature, this collection should expand.
Reminding myself just how much you can do with CSS these days.
Have you got the perfect talk for this event? Let me know!
A one-day event all about what you can in web browsers today: Brighton, March 12th, 2026. Tickets are just £225+VAT!
How to make the distance of link underlines proportional to the line height of the text.
Make your links beautiful and accessible.