Bad at CSS

Web design tools are great but they still fall short of all the incredible intrinsic based features of CSS. While there are features like auto-layout in Figma, they still fall so short of all the content driven features of The Web. Why is it that we still try to paint pretty pictures in a design tool and act like the web works that way? We can't control every details of what happens when our website is loaded on different devices over different networks and across different user preferences. Mattias Ott joins the show to discuss why design tools have fallen behind CSS and the mindset and skills we need to progress in our web designs.

Links
Mattias Ott - https://matthiasott.com/
Bad at CSS - https://x.com/badatcss   
Adam Twitter - https://x.com/argyleink   
David Twitter - https://x.com/_davideast

CSS: The Definitive Guide is exactly 1126 pages, written by Eric Meyer and Estelle Weyl. As they both said, "We read the CSS spec so you didn't have to." We ask them a ton of CSS questions and they gave us a ton of CSS answers.

Apologies for the audio only upload. There were issues with getting the video feed published but check out YouTube for the video.

CSS Day put on 14 different talks about some pretty interesting topics in CSS. It ended up being almost 12 hours of amazing CSS content and we’re going to give you an overview of each talk in just an hour. We’re going to talk about how design tools are falling behind with CSS, which I’m starting to really believe more and more every day. We’ll cover How Tailwind CSS isn’t at all like inline styles and this talk was brave. Then there’s incredible font features in CSS, like seriously these ones are unreal. And also the magic of Anchor Positioning... to be honest I still barely know this one is. And so many other great topics so, let us be your guide.  

Links

• CSS Day - https://cssday.nl/2024
• CSS Day Playlist -  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjnstNlepBvO0-I7iwqpkOY_fwAop6Pl-
• Bad at CSS - https://x.com/badatcss 
• Adam Twitter - https://x.com/argyleink 
• David Twitter - https://x.com/_davideast

There are so many things we spend time on thinking they’ll save us more in the long run but really, do they? Today on Bad at CSS we’re going to dive into a list of things we think are Time Wasters disguised as Time Savers.

0:00 - Is the juice worth the squeeze?
0:50 - Tests
6:07 - CI/CD*
13:37 - Build systems
16:02 - Rewrites
22:42 - Note taking apps
31:27 - Courses
38:37 - A tangent on Objective-C and fixing squiggles
41:37 - More CI/CD problems
44:07 - Append Only
46:07 - Color and Dark Mode
56:28 - Designing with constraint
60:00 - Not engagement farming… tell us your time wasters

Links
Bad at CSS — https://x.com/badatcss
Adam Argyle — https://x.com/argyleink
David East — https://x.com/_davideast

What can you do with a single CSS keyframe? A metric ton.

0:00 - 50% keyframes are magic
0:49 - Animation is easier than you think
2:17 - Why at 50%?
6:51 - Trick 1 Shake
12:00 - Trick 2 Pulse
23:25 - Trick 3 Glitch
27:55 - Trick 4 Flip  
32:45 - Trick 5 Fill  
41:20 - Trick 6 Sheen  
44:25 - Trick 7 Emphasize  
46:50 - Trick 8 Censor  
48:35 - Trick 900 Tony Hawk    

Links
Bad at CSS - https://twitter.com/badatcss
Adam Twitter - https://twitter.com/argyleink
David Twitter - https://twitter.com/_davideast
Codepen Demo: https://codepen.io/davideast/pen/MWxvzjm
Open Props: https://open-props.style

Container Queries are one of those CSS features everyone is so hyped about and with good reason. They give us a modern way to build and scope responsive components based on the size of the parent element rather than the browser view port. But, I’m not gonna lie. There’s a lot to this new feature.

Dave Rupert knows his inputs and we got a lot to learn.

Dave's great blog - https://daverupert.com/
Dave on Twitter - https://twitter.com/davatron5000

CSS is Hard. Each and every year. So what are the things that we should improve on in 2024?

We promise that after this episode you'll never forget the three parameters of the clamp() function ever again.

We promise. This episode is actually about CSS... I mean we get to it eventually. But what happens when you get a TypeScript fan (David) and a TypeScript skeptic (Adam) in a discussion? Well, a lot of spicy things are said.

NOTE: We swear we recorded this before the whole DHH Turbo TypeScript fiasco.