Design and Engineering, As One · Matthias Ott
A thoughtful piece by Matthias that’s a must-read for both designers and developers.
Link tags: design
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The Great CSS Expansion | Butler’s Log
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.
What we think is a decline in literacy is a design problem | Aeon Essays
The choice isn’t between books and screens. The choice is between intentional design and profitable chaos. Between habitats that cultivate human potential and platforms that extract human attention.
ZIP Code First
I mean, I would ask for the country first (because not all countries have zip/postal codes), but the point stands…
The Last Quiet Thing | Terry Godier
Most of your screen time isn’t leisure. It isn’t addiction. It isn’t even a choice.
It’s maintenance.
Constraints and the Lost Art of Optimization — Den Odell
The entire intellectual and creative output of a team that reinvented personal computing fits in a space that, today, we wouldn’t think twice about wasting on a single font file.
Somewhere in the years that followed we’ve lost the creative solutions, the art of optimization, that being constrained in that way produces.
The best engineers I’ve worked with carry this instinct even when others might think it crazy. They impose their own constraints. They ask what this would look like if it had to be half the size, or run twice as fast, or use a tenth of the memory. Not because anyone demanded it, but because just by thinking there could be a better, more efficient solution, one often emerges.
Smaller and dumber - daverupert.com
The principle of least power expressed nicely:
Smaller, dumber things have more applications, go more places, and require less maintenance.
Permacomputing principles
Here are some design princples I can get behind: long-term thinking, resilience, flexibility and seamfulness.
Molly guard in reverse – Unsung
Marcin’s history of “molly guards” in hardware and software:
Old-school computing has a term “molly guard”: it’s the little plastic safety cover you have to move out of the way before you press some button of significance.
What’s new in web typography? | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
There have been so many advances in HTML, CSS and browser support over the past few years. These are enabling phenomenal creativity and refinement in web typography, and I’ve got a mere 28 minutes to tell you all about it.
I’ve been talking to Rich about his Web Day Out talk, and let me tell you, you don’t want to miss it!
It’s gonna be a wild ride! Join me at Web Day Out in Brighton on 12 March 2026. Use JOIN_RICH to get 10% off and you’ll also get a free online ticket for State of the Browser.
Saying “No” In an Age of Abundance - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
In an age of abundance, restraint becomes the only scarce thing left, which means saying “no” is more valuable than ever.
I’m as proud of the things I haven’t generated as the things I have.
You Can Just Say No to the Data - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Appealing to data as the ultimate authority — especially when fueled by engineered desire — isn’t neutrality, it’s an abdication of responsibility.
Don’t judge a book by its cover
Some neat CSS from Tess that’s a great example of progressive enhancement; these book covers look good in all browsers, but they look even better in some.
It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons @ tonsky.me
I’m avoiding Mac OS Tahoe because of the disgraceful liquid glass debacle, but it looks like the rot goes even deeper. Here’s a detailed look at the sad state of iconography in application menus.
I know that changes in an OS update can take time to get used to, but this isn’t a case of “one step forwards, two steps back”—it’s just a lot of steps back with no forwards.
NoLoJS: Reducing the JS Workload with HTML and CSS - Web Performance Calendar
You might not need (much) JavaScript for these common interface patterns.
While we all love the power and flexibility JS provides, we should also respect it, and our users, by limiting its use to only what it needs to do.
Yes! Client-side JavaScript should do what only client-side JavaScript can do.
Responsive Letter Spacing – Cloud Four
Another clever use of clamp() and calc() for web typography, but this time it’s adjusting letter-spacing.
Reimagine the Date Picker – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)
This is a superb way to deprecate a little JavaScript library. Now that you can just use HTML instead, the website for Pikaday has been turned into a guide to choosing the right design pattern for your needs. Bravo!
Pikaday is no longer a JavaScript date picker. Pikaday is now a friendly guide for front-end developers. I want to push developers away from the classic date picker entirely. Especially fat JavaScript libraries.
Your URL Is Your State
How often do we, as frontend engineers, overlook the URL as a state management tool? We reach for all sorts of abstractions to manage state such as global stores, contexts, and caches while ignoring one of the web’s most elegant and oldest features: the humble URL.
Jeremy Keith: Speaker profile at beyond tellerrand
Beyond Tellerrand has a new website and it’s beautiful!
And look! Past speakers like me get our own page.
In fact there’s a great big archive of all the past talks—that very much deserves your support as a friend of Beyond Tellerrand.