Tags: con

New CSS that can actually be used in 2024 | Thomasorus

Logical properties, container queries, :has, :is, :where, min(), max(), clamp(), nesting, cascade layers, subgrid, and more.

I went to the UX Brighton conference yesterday.

The quality of the presentations was really good this year, probably the best yet. Usually there are one or two stand-out speakers (like Tom Kerwin last year), but this year, the standard felt very high to me.

But…

The theme of the conference was UX and “AI”, and I’ve never been more disappointed by what wasn’t said at a conference.

Not a single speaker addressed where the training data for current large language models comes from (it comes from scraping other people’s copyrighted creative works).

Not a single speaker addressed the energy requirements for current large language models (the requirements are absolutely mahoosive—not just for the training, but for each and every query).

My charitable reading of the situation yesterday was that every speaker assumed that someone else would cover those issues.

The less charitable reading is that this was a deliberate decision.

Whenever the issue of ethics came up, it was only ever in relation to how we might use these tools: considering user needs, being transparent, all that good stuff. But never once did the question arise of whether it’s ethical to even use these tools.

In fact, the message was often the opposite: words like “responsibility” and “duty” came up, but only in the admonition that UX designers have a responsibility and duty to use these tools! And if that carrot didn’t work, there’s always the stick of scaring you into using these tools for fear of being left behind and having a machine replace you.

I was left feeling somewhat depressed about the deliberately narrow focus. Maggie’s talk was the only one that dealt with any externalities, looking at how the firehose of slop is blasting away at society. But again, the focus was only ever on how these tools are used or abused; nobody addressed the possibility of deliberately choosing not to use them.

If audience members weren’t yet using generative tools in their daily work, the assumption was that they were lagging behind and it was only a matter of time before they’d get on board the hype train. There was no room for the idea that someone might examine the roots of these tools and make a conscious choice not to fund their development.

There’s a quote by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen that UX designers like repeating:

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context. A chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

But none of the speakers at UX Brighton chose to examine the larger context of the tools they were encouraging us to use.

One speaker told us “Be curious!”, but clearly that curiosity should not extend to the foundations of the tools themselves. Ignore what’s behind the curtain. Instead look at all the cool stuff we can do now. Don’t worry about the fact that everything you do with these tools is built on a bedrock of exploitation and environmental harm. We should instead blithely build a new generation of user interfaces on the burial ground of human culture.

Whenever I get into a discussion about these issues, it always seems to come back ’round to whether these tools are actually any good or not. People point to the genuinely useful tasks they can accomplish. But that’s not my issue. There are absolutely smart and efficient ways to use large language models—in some situations, it’s like suddenly having a superpower. But as Molly White puts it:

The benefits, though extant, seem to pale in comparison to the costs.

There are no ethical uses of current large language models.

And if you believe that the ethical issues will somehow be ironed out in future iterations, then that’s all the more reason to stop using the current crop of exploitative large language models.

Anyway, like I said, all the talks at UX Brighton were very good. But I just wish just one of them had addressed the underlying questions that any good UX designer should ask: “Where did this data come from? What are the second-order effects of deploying this technology?”

Having a talk on those topics would’ve been nice, but I would’ve settled for having five minutes of one talk, or even one minute. But there was nothing.

There’s one possible explanation for this glaring absence that’s quite depressing to consider. It may be that these topics weren’t covered because there’s an assumption that everybody already knows about them, and frankly, doesn’t care.

To use an outdated movie reference, imagine a raving Charlton Heston shouting that “Soylent Green is people!”, only to be met with indifference. “Everyone knows Soylent Green is people. So what?”

Is it too early to start planning for 2025 already? Perhaps. But you might want to add some dates to your calender:

June 10th, 11th, and 12th, 2025.

That’s when UX London will return!

It’ll be be back in CodeNode. That’s the venue we tried for the first time this year and it worked out really well.

You can look forward to three days of UX talks and workshops:

1. Tuesday, June 10th is Discovery Day—user research, content strategy, and planning.
2. Wednesday, June 11th is Design Day—interaction design, accessibility, and interface design.
3. Thursday, June 12th is Delivery Day—iteration, design ops, and cross-team collaboration.

I realise that the alliteration of discovery, design, and delivery is a little forced but you get the idea. The flow of the event will follow the process of a typical design project.

The best way to experience UX London is to come for all three days, but each day also works as a standalone event.

I’m now starting the process of curating the line-up for each day: a mix of inspiring talks and hands-on workshops. If you trust me, you can get your ticket already at the super early-bird price.

If you reckon you’d be a good addition to the line-up, here’s a form you can fill out.

Now, I’ll be up-front here: if you’re a typical white dude like me, you’re not going to be top of the pile. My priority for UX London is creating a diverse line-up of speakers.

So if you’re not a typical white dude like me and you’ve ever thought about giving a conference talk, fill out that form!

If you don’t fancy speaking, but you want to see your company represented at UX London, check out our sponsorship options.

If you don’t want to speak and you don’t want to sponsor, but you want to be at the best design conference of 2025, get your ticket now.

Speaking of serendipity, not long after I wrote about making a static archive of The Session for people to download and share, I came across a piece by Alex Chan about using static websites for tiny archives.

The use-case is slightly different—this is about personal archives, like paperwork, screenshots, and bookmarks. But we both came up with the same process:

I’m deliberately going low-scale, low-tech. There’s no web server, no build system, no dependencies, and no JavaScript frameworks.

And we share the same hope:

Because this system has no moving parts, and it’s just files on a disk, I hope it will last a long time.

You should read the whole thing, where Alex describes all the other approaches they took before settling on plain ol’ HTML files in a folder:

HTML is low maintenance, it’s flexible, and it’s not going anywhere. It’s the foundation of the entire web, and pretty much every modern computer has a web browser that can render HTML pages. These files will be usable for a very long time – probably decades, if not more.

I’m enjoying this approach, so I’m going to keep using it. What I particularly like is that the maintenance burden has been essentially zero – once I set up the initial site structure, I haven’t had to do anything to keep it working.

They also talk about digital preservation:

I’d love to see static websites get more use as a preservation tool.

I concur! And it’s particularly interesting for Alex to be making this observation in the context of working with the Flickr foundation. That’s where they’re experimenting with the concept of a data lifeboat

What should we do when a digital service sinks?

This is something that George spoke about at the final dConstruct in 2022. You can listen to the talk on the dConstruct archive.

Earlier this year I wrote about some performance improvements to The Session using the content-visibility property in CSS.

If you say content-visibility: auto you’re telling the browser not to bother calculating the layout and paint for an element until it needs to. But you need to combine it with the contain-intrinsic-block-size property so that the browser knows how much space to leave for the element.

I mentioned the browser support:

Right now content-visibility is only supported in Chrome and Edge. But that’s okay. This is a progressive enhancement. Adding this CSS has no detrimental effect on the browsers that don’t understand it (and when they do ship support for it, it’ll just start working).

Well, that’s happened! Safari 18 supports content-visibility. I didn’t have to do a thing and it just started working.

But …I think I’ve discovered a little bug in Safari’s implementation.

(I say I think it’s a bug with the browser because, like Jim, I’ve made the mistake in the past of thinking I had discovered a browser bug when in fact it was something caused by a browser extension. And when I say “in the past”, I mean yesterday.)

So here’s the issue: if you apply content-visibility: auto to an element that contains an SVG, and that SVG contains a text element, then Safari never paints that text to the screen.

To see an example, take a look at the fourth setting of Cooley’s reel on The Session archive. There’s a text element with the word “slide” (actually the text is inside a tspan element inside a text element). On Safari, that text never shows up.

I’m using a link to the archive of The Session I created recently rather than the live site because on the live site I’ve removed the content-visibility declaration for Safari until this bug gets resolved.

I’ve also created a reduced test case on Codepen. The only HTML is the element containing the SVGs. The only CSS—apart from the content-visibility stuff—is just a little declaration to push the content below the viewport so you have to scroll it into view (which is when the bug happens).

I’ve filed a bug report. I know it’s a fairly niche situation, but there are some other issues with Safari’s implementation of content-visibility so it’s possible that they’re all related.

Coming home | A Working Library

While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context. Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s thinking, but located within my own body of work. As I played with setting this up, I could immediately feel how that would change the kinds of things I would say, and it felt good. Really good. Like putting on a favorite t-shirt, or coming home to my solid, quiet house after a long time away.

Mandy’s writing positively soars and sings in this beautiful piece!

Living In A Lucid Dream

I love the way that Claire L. Evans writes.

I went along to this year’s State Of The Browser conference on Saturday. It was great!

Technically I wasn’t just an attendee. I was on the substitution bench. Dave asked if I’d be able to jump in and give my talk on declarative design should any of the speakers have to drop out. “No problem!”, I said. If everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t have to do anything. And if someone did have to pull out, I’d be the hero that sweeps in to save the day. Win-win.

As it turned out, everything went smoothly. All the speakers delivered their talks impeccably and the vibes were good.

Dave very kindly gave shout-outs to lots of other web conferences. Quite a few of the organisers were in the audience too. That offered me a nice opportunity to catch up with some of them, swap notes, and commiserate on how tough it is running an event these days.

Believe me, it’s tough.

Something that I confirmed that other conference organisers are also experiencing is last-minute ticket sales. This is something that happened with UX London this year. For most of the year, ticket sales were trickling along. Then in the last few weeks before the event we sold more tickets than we had sold in the six months previously.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m very happy we sold those tickets. But it was a very stressful few months before that. It felt like playing poker, holding on in the belief that those ticket sales would materialise.

Lots of other conferences are experiencing this. Front Conference had to cancel this year’s event because of the lack of ticket sales in advance. I know for a fact that some upcoming events are feeling the same squeeze.

When I was in Ireland I had a chat with a friend of mine who works at the Everyman Theatre in Cork. They’re experiencing something similar. So maybe it’s not related to the tech industry specifically.

Anyway, all that is to say that I echo Sophie’s entreaty: you should go to conferences. And buy your tickets early.

Soon I’ll be gearing up to start curating the line up for next year’s UX London (I’m very proud of this year’s event and it’s going to be tough to top it). I hope I won’t have to deal with the stress of late ticket sales, but I’m mentally preparing for it.

You should go to conferences - localghost

Obviously I’m biased, but I very much agree with Sophie.

Request for developer feedback: customizable select  |  Blog  |  Chrome for Developers

I’m very glad to see that work has moved away from a separate selectmenu element to instead enhancing the existing select element—I could never see an upgrade path for selectmenu, but now there are plenty of opportunities for progressive enhancement.

Kardashev Street

Matt has made a new website for tracking our collective progress levelling up the Kardashev scale:

Maximising energy generation, distribution and usage at street level, for as many people as possible, everyday.

Frostapalooza – Chris Coyier

The show itself was an unbelievable outpouring of energy and love. I couldn’t help but imagine if anyone in the audience had decided to go on a lark, not knowing anything about it. I would think they would have been pretty damn impressed. This wasn’t just a couple of nerds poking around at instruments (except me), these were some serious musicians giving it their all.

There are two kinds of advertising – Chris Coyier

Contextual advertising works. Targeted advertising? Who knows!

Let’s see all that proof that 400+ requests for thirsty ass always-running JavaScript is just what we have to do to make advertising good.

Frostapalooza in photos and videos | Brad Frost

These are great!!!

Adactio: Journal—Frostapalooza | Brad Frost

Aw, man, this gets me in the feels!

Just over here sobbing while reading Jeremy’s recount of Frostapalooza.

So Frostapalooza happened on Saturday.

It was joyous!

It all started back in July of last year when I got an email from Brad:

Next summer I’m turning 40, and I’m going to use that milestone as an excuse to play a big concert with and for all of my friends and family. It’ll sorta be like The Last Waltz, but with way more web nerds involved.

Originally it was slated for July of 2024, which was kind of awkward for me because it would clash with Belfast Trad Fest but I said to mark me down as interested. Then when the date got moved to August of 2024, it became more doable. I knew that Jessica and I would be making a transatlantic trip at some point anyway to see her parents, so we could try to combine the two.

In fact, the tentative plans we had to travel to the States in April of 2024 for the total solar eclipse ended up getting scrapped in favour of Brad’s shindig. That’s right—we chose rock’n’roll over the cosmic ballet.

Over the course of the last year, things began to shape up. There were playlists. There were spreadsheets. Dot voting was involved.

Anyone with any experience of playing live music was getting nervous. It’s hard enough to rehearse and soundcheck for a four piece, but Brad was planning to have over 40 musicians taking part!

We did what we could from afar, choosing which songs to play on, recording our parts and sending them onto Brad. Meanwhile Brad was practicing like hell with the core band. With Brad on bass and his brother Ian on drums for the whole night, we knew that the rhythm section would be tight.

A few months ago we booked our flights. We’d fly into to Boston first to hang out with Ethan and Liz (it had been too long!), then head down to Pittsburgh for Frostapalooza before heading on to Florida to meet up with Jessica’s parents.

When we got to Pittsburgh, we immediately met up with Chris and together we headed over to Brad’s for a rehearsal. We’d end up spending a lot of time playing music with Chris over the next couple of days. I loved every minute of it.

The evening before Frostapalooza, Brad threw a party at his place. It was great to meet so many of the other musicians he’d roped into this.

Then it was time for the big day. We had a whole afternoon to soundcheck, but we needed it. Drums, a percussion station, a horn section …not to mention all the people coming and going on different songs. Fortunately the tech folks at the venue were fantastic and handled it all with aplomb.

We finished soundchecking around 5:30pm. Doors were at 7pm. Time to change into our rock’n’roll outfits and hang out backstage getting nervous and excited.

Right before showtime, Brad gave a heartfelt little speech.

Then the fun really began.

I wasn’t playing on the first few songs so I got to watch the audience’s reaction as they realised what was in store. Maybe they thought this would be a cute gathering of Brad and his buddies jamming through some stuff. What they got was an incredibly tight powerhouse of energy from a seriously awesome collection of musicians.

I had the honour of playing on five songs over the course of the night. I had an absolute blast! But to be honest, I had just as much fun being in the audience dancing my ass off.

Oh, I was playing mandolin. I probably should’ve mentioned that.

The first song I played on was The Weight by The Band. There was a real Last Waltz vibe as Brad’s extended family joined him on stage, along with me and and Chris.

';"> Later I hopped on stage as one excellent song segued into another—Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

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I’ve loved this song since the first time I heard it. In the dot-voting rounds to figure out the set list, this was my super vote.

You know the way it starts with that single note tremelo on the guitar? I figured that would work on the mandolin. And I know how to tremelo.

Jessica was on bass. Jessi Hall was on vocals. It. Rocked.

I stayed on stage for Radiohead’s The National Anthem complete with horns, musical saw, and two basses played by Brad and Jessica absolutely killing it. I added a little texture over the singing with some picked notes on the mandolin.

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Then it got truly epic. We played Wake Up by Arcade Fire. So. Much. Fun! Again, I laid down some tremelo over the rousing chorus. I’m sure no one could hear it but it didn’t matter. Everyone was just lifted along by the sheer scale of the thing.

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That was supposed to be it for me. But during the rehearsal the day before, I played a little bit on Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain and Brad said, “You should do that!”

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So I did. I think it worked. I certainly enjoyed it!

With that, my musical duties were done and I just danced and danced, singing along to everything.

At the end of the night, everyone got back on stage. It was a tight fit. We then attempted to sing Bohemian Rhapsody together. It was a recipe for disaster …but amazingly, it worked!

That could describe the whole evening. It shouldn’t have worked. It was far too ambitious. But not only did it work, it absolutely rocked!

What really stood out for me was how nice and kind everyone was. There was nary an ego to be found. I had never met most of these people before but we all came together and bonded over this shared creation. It was genuinely special.

Days later I’m still buzzing from it all. I’m so, so grateful to Brad and Melissa for pulling off this incredible feat, and for allowing me to be a part of it.

They’ve had a shitty few years. I know we all had a shitty time over the past few years, but the shit kept on coming for them:

And then in the middle of this traumatic medical emergency, our mentally-unstable neighbor across the street began accosting my family, flipping off our toddler and nanny, racially harassing my wife, and making violent threats. We fled our home for fear of our safety because he was out in the street exposing himself, shouting belligerence, and threatening violence.

After that, Brad started working with Project Healthy Minds. In fact, all the proceeds from Frostapalooza go to that organisation along with NextStep Pittsburgh.

Just think about that. Confronted with intimidation and racism, Brad and Melissa still managed to see the underlying systemic inequality, and work towards making things better for the person who drove them out of their home.

Good people, man. Good people.

I sincererly hope they got some catharsis from Frostapalooza. I can tell you that I felt frickin’ great after being part of an incredible event filled with joy and love and some of the best music I’ve ever heard.

There’s a write-up of Frostapalooza on CSS Tricks and Will Browar has posted his incredible photographs from the night—some seriously superb photography!

Bohemian Rhapsody finale @ Frostapalooza - YouTube

I love how into it everyone is here, both on stage and in the audience—just look at Jina rocking out!

Will Browar | Photographing Frostapalooza

Wow! The photos that Will took at Frostapalooza (and in the run-up) are absolutely fantastic!

He also shares the technical details for all you camera nerds.

On The Ground At Frostapalooza | CSS-Tricks

I can’t say I would have ever expected to see Jeremy Keith performing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Maps”, but then again, I don’t know what I expected to happen at Frostapalooza.

Aboard Newsletter: Why So Bad, AI Ads?

The human desire to connect with others is very profound, and the desire of technology companies to interject themselves even more into that desire—either by communicating on behalf of humans, or by pretending to be human—works in the opposite direction. These technologies don’t seem to be encouraging connection as much as commoditizing it.