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
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
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
I started edgeofmyseat.com in September 2001. I was a young single mother with a background as a dancer, staggering out of the dotcom meltdown, with a tiny grant from The Prince’s Trust and a belief that my ability to sniff out and fix problems in code might just pay the bills. I didn’t know what … Closing time
Facebook reminds me that it’s been 11 years since I went for an ill-advised run in the snow, fell, and shattered my elbow. I’ve had four surgeries since—the initial one to reconstruct it, with a bunch of metal. Two to remove the metal, and one in 2016 to scrape out scar tissue. The final procedure … 11 years
Here we are again, with another year completed. I’ve now been at Google for over two years, I’ve managed to avoid collecting any additional cats or new broken bones, but I have gained a son-in-law! Work 2023 was the most challenging year of my career to date. Previous downturns in the industry haven’t posed much … 2023 in review
My daughter came to stay for a few days at Christmas, and we pulled out a box of old photographs. I found this photo of me, taken in December of 1996. I was 21 and pregnant, and had just been let go from my backstage job in the theatre. The computer—a Packard Bell 486 “all … 1996
Despite what you might read in some corners of the internet, it’s been possible to vertically centre an element inside a parent for a very long time now. The align-content property from the Box Alignment spec does the job, however browsers require that you make the parent element either a flex or a grid layout. … align-content in block layout
I was chatting with a couple of long-time web folk today. As often happens when those of us who lived through the browser wars get together, the talk turned to old browsers, and old hacks to get round the issues in those browsers. I was thinking through the timeframe of CSS becoming usable at all … Why are we not still using tables-for-layout?
I don’t remember being taught to cook. Cooking was just something that happened in my vicinity. Growing up in the 1970s and 80s in the UK, people didn’t go out to eat. I can remember the few occasions that we did—the deep pan pizzas near Trafalgar Square, a meal in an Indian restaurant because some … Cooking