While I’ve done a lot of reference documentation writing, my favourite type of work is writing tutorials and “how to” content. I enjoy the challenge of understanding a technology and an audience, then explaining the technology to that audience. AI seems to be particularly bad at creating this kind of content. When people try, they … More than words
A frequently asked multiple-column layout question is why a new paragraph at the start of the column has additional space above it. The space is the margin on the paragraph, which doesn’t collapse if the paragraph is inside a multicol container. The only fix is to not use a top margin on paragraphs. However, the … Remove start and end margins with the margin-trim property
In 2015 I started my CSS Layout News newsletter mostly to have my own venue to go on about CSS grid, at the time unavailable in any stable browser. I got to 2023 and 343 issues and it fizzled out. Partly because I got busy, but mostly because the newsletter signup form on the platform … CSS Layout News in the ATmosphere
Recently implemented in Chrome are two of my top asks for CSS—the concept of rows in multiple-column layout, and gap decorations for rows and columns in grid, flexbox, and multicol. Rows (using column-wrap) provide a way to use multicol on the web without risking scrolling up and down to read if the columns become taller … Multiple-column layout, rows, rules, and floats
The beauty of AT Protocol is that all of your data from different apps is available on your PDS, your own folder on the internet containing your stuff as JSON. This means that you can switch which app you use to view that data, without losing anything. It also makes it very easy to make … How do we talk about atproto to non-developers?
I’ve been playing around with AT Protocol. The posts on this site are now published to standard.site, and I’ve written a (very basic) WordPress plugin to display posts from my PDS on the Now page of this site. As a developer, I’ve spent a good chunk of my working life building apps that stored things … Understanding AT Protocol
I’m not someone who keeps a lot of memorabilia, but I do have a large collection of conference badges. Most of these are from events I spoke at, and a few from other memorable events. While decorating my new garden office I decided to pin them to a corkboard. It turned out that I had … Over 15 years of conference speaking
For most of my career I ran a very small company. When you run a tiny company your resources (both time and money) are limited, and you want to use them on the things that will have the most impact. You have to quickly stop doing things that aren’t cost-effective, to avoid “throwing good money … Where’s the holistic AI productivity data?
I don’t post to or visit the social network formerly known as Twitter, but as a very early Twitter user, I can’t quite bring myself to delete all my old posts. There’s so much history there, not just personal history but the stories of a lot of the work I’ve done. This is the problem … Joining the atmosphere
In 2004 I published the first edition of The CSS Anthology with Sitepoint. The idea for the book was to take the entire CSS 2.1 specification, and come up with 101 examples to show people how to use all of the CSS that existed. I have a copy on my shelf, but recently discovered you … What would a 2026 CSS Anthology look like?