After reading a few posts about browser diversity I realized that I need to put my money where my mouth is and make the switch to Firefox. And so, despite my initial hesitation, that’s what I did last week and actually I’m loving everything so far. There’s a few things about the DevTools that are in fact a big...

What troubles me most about Brexit, despite that abomination of a name, is the wasted intellectual, emotional, and creative resources that have been spent on it so far. Two years of doubt, anxiety, and arguments. For nothing. I sometimes imagine all the problems we could be solving as a nation; fighting climate...

David Crawshaw has a wondrous idea for a new type of search engine that doesn’t scan the commerical web and instead indexes indie blogs, podcasts, and art instead: What I miss is that I could "go on the internet" and be in a creative corner of the human experience. Today if you "go on the internet", that means you...

I really like how Andy Baio describes Quora’s practices as “isolationist” in this post about why you should never use their service: All of Quora’s value is derived from the answers provided by its users, and they go to great lengths to make a well-designed platform for finding and replying to questions. But they do...

Chris Beard has written about all the drama surrounding Microsoft killing off EdgeHTML and he makes a lot of great points: Will Microsoft’s decision make it harder for Firefox to prosper? It could. Making Google more powerful is risky on many fronts. And a big part of the answer depends on what the web developers...

I love this talk by Mina Markham all about her work on designing systems at Slack and Hillary for America. What I particularly love about this talk though is that Mina digs into what she screwed up along the way and how she fixed it. My reaction to her talk is probably because I tend to see far too much bragging and...

In The Victorian Internet Tom Standage investigates how the telegraph was developed and how it changed the world. He writes about the laying of the Transatlantic submarine cables, the design of codes and the codebreakers, as well as the fraudsters that used the telegraph to find their marks, and those that used it...

Today we published something over on CSS-Tricks that I’ve been thinking about over the past year or so. A lot of folks tend to think that front-end development is a problem to be solved with tools, processes, or frameworks. And I disagree: I reckon HTML and CSS deserve better than to be processed, compiled, and spat...

I’m reading Gary Kamiya’s Cool Gray City of Love at the moment which is an account of the history of San Francisco and it’s architecture, culture, and people. If you’re interested in the history of San Francisco then I’d certainly recommend it. But this week Gary’s book reminded me of an idea I can’t shake for a...

Over on CSS-Tricks I’ve written a bit about how we write CSS today at Gusto and how I’ve been thinking about the whole “functional vs. regular CSS” debate. I apologize profusely in advance for all the nuance because here’s the thing: I think using both systems is actually what we need to write maintainable CSS. I...

Nick Cave’s newsletter is called The Red Hand Files – he typically answers questions from his fans in an agony aunt fashion – and in one of the more recent entries he writes about recovering from tragedy: So how do we return to our lives – to the awe of existence – and reclaim a sense of wonder? Well, for me, it had...

Hannu Rajaniemi has made something marvelous; his latest novel Summerland is the best spy thriller I’ve read in years. The story is set in the early 20th century and in an alternative timeline where the British discovered the afterlife and began to colonize it. Queen Victoria’s spirit still rules over England, even...