General Musings with Kevin Powell

The podcast is back! And in this episode, I talked about how the difficulties of semantic HTML. If you ask any front-end developer what the easiest language is between HTML, CSS, and JS, and everyone is going to say HTML, right?It’s funny though, because most of the things I hem and haw over the longest are often related to how to mark something up in my HTML.Links My newsletter: https://kevinpowell.co/newsletter The Discord community: https://kevinpowell.co/discord Stephanie Eckle's article on the difficulty of semantic HTML: https://thinkdobecreate.com/articles/a-call-for-consensus-on-html-semantics/ The twitter post I mentioned: https://twitter.com/KevinJPowell/status/1773035208175911301

The year in review: https://kevin-powell.ck.page/posts/year-in-review-and-my-plans-for-2024I should be back by March 😊

A shorter episode than normal as we head into the holidays.Other awesome stuff around the web: Stephanie Eckles 12-days of Web Oh No, Overflow! Observation: color-mix and currentColor Elevate your CSS debugging skills with these Chrome DevTools tricks in 2024What I’ve been up to this week: Incredible scroll-based animations with CSS-only The man behind some of the craziest CSS I’ve ever seen Use this instead of :focus in your CSS How I use AI to boost my productivity while CodingFind me elsewhere on the web: My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads

A recent video of mine has made me realize that a lot of people don’t realize that cross-site caching isn’t a thing anymore, so in this episode, I talk about that, as well as how we do still need to optimize things, how great CSS is becoming, and more.Other awesome stuff around the web: The hanging-punctuation property by Chris Coyier Behavior belongs in the HTML by Alex PetrosWhat I’ve been up to this week: Two better alternatives to overflow: hidden True parallax with CSS These font stacks will improve your site’s performanceFind me elsewhere on the web: My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads

Today is a bit of a story about how sometimes it can take a really long time to realize that you’ve actually had a really good idea. Or, well, that’s the case for me, at least. You see, I recently have become so excited about how we can use a CSS feature that I’m changing my approach to creating the core structure for websites going forward. The sort of final version of this idea I’m talking about is something that I posted about this week on my main channel, but in reality, it’s something I figured out over five years ago, and I just never realized how great it was at the time. Or rather, I realized I was onto something, and then, for reasons we’ll get to later, I stopped bothering with it and eventually totally forgot about it.Other awesome stuff around the web: CSS Wrapped: 2023 on the Chrome for Developers blog A few ways CSS is easier to write in 2023 by Geoff GrahamWhat I’ve been up to this week (and other links of mine that I mentioned): My first video on Grid My video from 2018 on grid as a container replacement My recent video on using grid as a container replacement My video from this week that expands on that idea I ranked the CSS units into different tiers

This week, I focus on two of the most important skills a developer can have, which also happen to be two of the hardest ones to teach: The thought process to break down more complex problems. Being able to dive into existing code and quickly make sense of it.These are probably two of the most important skills you can have as a developer, but they don’t get much attention because they aren’t as easy to convey as “follow along as I code this up”.I’ll give some tips on how you can improve your skills on both of these though, and as a bonus it can even be a little fun!Other awesome stuff around the web: ShopTalk show’s How to Think like a Frontend Developer Hyperplexed’s channel Hyperplexed video that I mentioned: CSS4 is coming by CSS Weekly Workarounds for Buggy Gradients by Keith J. GrantWhat I’ve been up to this week: The code behind a Hyperplexed video Awesome filtering animation with vanilla JS CSS Shorthands aren’t always worth itFind me elsewhere on the web: My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads

This week, I’m going to be talking a lot about CSS length units because one of the complaints I hear about CSS is the number of length units it has, with a total of 54 (not all of them are supported yet, though).That is a lot of units. But this is a feature and not a bug.Other awesome stuff around the web:z Sara Soueidan’s article on setting up screen readersWhat I’ve been up to this week: The flowchart The flowchart video Keeping up with CSS: The features released in 2023 Select all siblings of an element using :has()Find me elsewhere on the web: My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads

This week is going to be a bit of a preview for a more in-depth video on my main channel that will be coming out in a few weeks because I’m in the middle of breaking down a few interviews that I’ve done to get some insight on helping people get their first jobs.In the video I’ll be talking about everything from positioning yourself to help you land interviews, how to have a successful interview, and how you can sometimes even skip a few steps along the way, but for this edpisode focus on how do you even know that you’re ready to start applying for jobs.Other awesome stuff around the web: Modular CSS and different ways to structure your stylesheets by Chris Ferdinandi The Three Cs: 🤝 Concatenate, 🗜️ Compress, 🗳️ Cache by Harry Roberts Why you suck at CSS by Zach JenszWhat I’ve been up to this week CSS position deep dive Use these instead of vh Combining transform with the individual rotate property makes things so much easierFind me elsewhere on the web My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads

This week, I’m going to be talking about the results of the survey I ran last week asking about people’s primary pain point with CSS and exploring if we can find any correlation between years of experience and specific pain points—spoiler alert, we can!—as well as sharing a few of my favorite resources that I use to keep up with CSS.Other awesome stuff around the web: Stephanie’s newsletter CSS weekly newsletter Ryan Mulligan’s Layou Breakouts with CSS Grid Breakout of the container snippet by Stephanie EcklesWhat I’ve been up to this week: A new approach to container and wrapper classes A better image reset CSS animation keyframe tipsFind me elsewhere on the web: My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads

The survey: https://kevinpowell.co/painpointsA lot of people get frustrated by CSS, but there are so many different aspects of it that seem to drive people crazy, and I’d love to know what they are for you!Other awesome stuff around the web: Chris Coyier on light-dark() (and other cool CSS functions) Bramus’ article on @scope Una taking a look at horizontal rules in select elementsWhat I’ve been up to this week: One of the most common CSS issues people run into True parallax with CSS-only is now possible 7 simple ways to center with CSSFind me elsewhere on the web: My Newsletter This podcast’s YouTube channel My Primary YouTube Channel Twitter Threads