rachelandrew

Reading flow ships in Chrome 137

I’m really excited that the reading-flow and reading-order properties are in Chrome 137 (current beta, will be Chrome stable as of May 27, 2025). Finding a way to deal with the visual and source order disconnect created by grid and flex layout has been something I’ve kept returning to ever since grid shipped in browsers. Reading flow ships in Chrome 137

CSS multicol block direction wrapping

Ever since I became an editor of the Multiple-column layout specification I’ve wanted to add the ability to let overflow columns wrap in the block direction, rather than extend out in the inline direction—creating the sort of horizontal scrollbar that almost nobody wants. And, now we’re doing it. I’m working on the specification (which is CSS multicol block direction wrapping

Blog questions challenge

I was tagged by Jon Hicks and it seems like as good a time as any to return to ye olde blogge days, so here’s my answers. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I had some personal notes on an older incarnation of this site, and when blogging became a thing, I Blog questions challenge

2024 in review

2024 went fast, and this post looks back at some of the things that featured in another far too busy year. Work Life at Google has not got any less challenging or busy during 2024, but I’m proud of the things my team and I have achieved. Everything that ends up on web.dev or developer.chrome.com 2024 in review

Public speaking in 2024

In the before times—before COVID, before I was a Google employee, before the seismic shift my life took in 2020 and 2021—I travelled for around half of the year, speaking at conferences and leading workshops. These days, I don’t do as much speaking, but I get to do some, and I’ve had some great opportunities Public speaking in 2024

A progress update on reading-flow

There’s a First Public Working Draft of CSS Display 4, which includes the work on the new reading-flow property. The property aims to solve the issue where the source (and therefore tab) order of a page gets disconnected from layout when using CSS grid layout or flexbox. This is a problem I’ve been talking and A progress update on reading-flow

Masonry and good defaults

I’ve been writing about and teaching people CSS layout for a very long time. People sometimes call me an expert in CSS. I don’t know about that, but I’m confident in claiming expertise in teaching and writing about CSS. I’ve been doing this for a long time, about 25 years. Over that time I’ve learned Masonry and good defaults

Masonry and reading order

I recently wrote a post about the CSS masonry proposal on the Chrome for Developers blog. I was keen not to muddy the waters with anything that wasn’t the main point of that post—which was to explain why the Chrome team felt that masonry should be specified outside of grid. Since then, a couple of Masonry and reading order

On having no visual memory

I have aphantasia—no ability to create images in my mind, or to remember things in a visual way. For well over half of my life I lived under the assumption that suggestions to visualize things were entirely metaphorical, and also that I was incredibly stupid in certain ways, finding things that everyone else seemed to On having no visual memory