Archive • Jim Nielsen’s Blog • Buttondown

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Do You Even Personalize, Bro?

There’s a video on YouTube from “Technology Connections” — who I’ve never heard of or watched until now — called Algorithms are breaking how we think. I...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Setting Element Ordering With HTML Rewriter Using CSS

After shipping my work transforming HTML with Netlify’s edge functions I realized I have a little bug: the order of the icons specified in the URL doesn’t...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — An Analysis of Links From The White House’s “Wire” Website

A little while back I heard about the White House launching their version of a Drudge Report style website called White House Wire. According to Axios, a...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Transforming HTML With Netlify Edge Functions

I’ve long wanted the ability to create custom collections of icons from my icon gallery. Today I can browse collections of icons that share pre-defined...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Little Swarming Gnats of Data

Here’s a screenshot of my inbox from when I was on the last leg of my flight home from family summer vacation: That’s pretty representative of the flurry of...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — My Copy of The Internet Phone Book

I recently got my copy of the Internet Phone Book. Look who’s hiding on the bottom inside spread of page 32: The book is divided into a number of categories...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Becoming an Asshole

This post is a secret to everyone! Read more about RSS Club. I’ve been reading Apple in China by Patrick McGee. There’s this part in there where he’s talking...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Continuum From Static to Dynamic

Dan Abramov in “Static as a Server”: Static is a server that runs ahead of time. “Static” and “dynamic” don’t have to be binaries that describe an entire...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Web as URLs, Not Documents

Dan Abramov on his blog (emphasis mine): The division between the frontend and the backend is physical. We can’t escape from the fact that we’re writing...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Some Miscellaneous Thoughts on Visual Design Prodded By The Sameness of AI Company Logos

Radek Sienkiewicz in a funny-because-its-true piece titled “Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?“: We made a circular shape [logo] with some angles...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Notes from Andreas Fredriksson’s “Context is Everything”

I quite enjoyed this talk. Some of the technical details went over my head (I don’t know what “split 16-bit mask into two 8-bit LTUs” means) but I could...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Is It JavaScript?

OH: It’s just JavaScript, right? I know JavaScript. My coworker who will inevitably spend the rest of the day debugging an electron issue — @jonkuperman.com...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Tradeoffs to Continuous Software?

I came across this post from the tech collective crftd. about how software is in a process of “continuous disintegration”: One of the uncomfortable truths we...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Could I Have Some More Friction in My Life, Please?

A clip from “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy” features a former executive of an online retailer explaining how motivated they were to make buying easy....

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Webkit’s New Color Picker as an Example of Good Platform Defaults

I’ve written about how I don’t love the idea of overriding basic computing controls. Instead, I generally favor opting to respect user choice and provide the...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Product Pseudoscience

In his post about “Vibe Drive Development”, Robin Rendle warns against what I’ll call the pseudoscientific approach to product building prevalent across the...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Multiple Computers

I’ve spent so much time, had so many headaches, and encountered so much complexity from what, in my estimation, boils down to this: trying to get something...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Notes from Alexander Petros’ “Building the Hundred-Year Web Service”

I loved this talk from Alexander Petros titled “Building the Hundred-Year Web Service”. What follows is summation of my note-taking from watching the talk on...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Notes from the Chrome Team’s “Blink principles of web compatibility”

Following up on a previous article I wrote about backwards compatibility, I came across this document from Rick Byers of the Chrome team titled “Blink...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Language Needs Innovation

In his book “The Order of Time” Carlo Rovelli notes how we often asks ourselves questions about the fundamental nature of reality such as “What is real?” and...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Tumultuous Evolution of the Design Profession

Via Jeremy Keith’s link blog I found this article: Elizabeth Goodspeed on why graphic designers can’t stop joking about hating their jobs. It’s about the...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Backwards Compatibility in the Web, but Not Its Tools

After reading an article, I ended up on HackerNews and stumbled on this comment: The most frustrating thing about dipping in to the FE is that it seems like...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Craft and Satisfaction

Here’s Sean Voisen writing about how programming is a feeling: For those of us who enjoy programming, there is a deep satisfaction that comes from solving...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Brian Regan Helped Me Understand My Aversion to Job Titles

I like the job title “Design Engineer”. When required to label myself, I feel partial to that term (I should, I’ve written about it enough). Lately I’ve felt...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — “I Don’t See Why Not”

Excuse my rant. Nobel-prize winning CEO of DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, was on 60 Minutes and floored me when he predicted: We can cure all diseases with the...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — You’re Only As Strong As Your Weakest Point

In April 1945, as US soldiers overtook Merkers, Germany, stories began to surface to Army officials of stolen Nazi riches stored in the local salt mine....

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Be Mindful of What You Make Easy

Carson Gross has a post about vendoring which brought back memories of how I used to build websites in ye olden days, back in the dark times before npm....

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Some Love For Interoperable Apps

I like to try different apps. What makes trying different apps incredible is a layer of interoperability — standardized protocols, data formats, etc. When I...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Ductility on the Web

I learned a new word: ductile. Do you know it? I’m particularly interested in its usage in a physics/engineering setting when talking about materials. Here’s...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Background Image Opacity in CSS

The other day I was working on something where I needed to use CSS to apply multiple background images to an element, e.g. <div> My content with background...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Tag, You’re It

I saw these going around, but didn’t think I’d ever see myself get tagged — then Eric assuaged my FOMO. As I’ve done elsewhere talking about how I blog, I’m...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Flow State and Surfing

Jack Johnson is on Rick Rubin’s podcast Tetragrammaton talking about music, film making, creativity, and surfing. At one point (~24:30) Johnson talks about...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Don’t Forget the Meta Theme-Color Tag

Ever used a website where you toggle from light mode to dark mode and the web site changes but the chrome around the browser doesn’t? To illustrate, take a...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Value of Experience

Adam Silver has an article titled “Do you trust design advice from ChatGPT?” wherein he prompted the LLM: How do you add hint text to radio buttons? It gave...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Book Notes: “The Order of Time” by Carlo Rovelli

I recently finished Carlo Rovelli’s book “The Order of Time” and, of course, had a few web-adjacent thoughts come to mind. Who says lessons from physics...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — A Few Thoughts on Customizable Form Controls

Web developers have been waiting years for traction in styling HTML form controls. Is it possible the day has come? Here’s Jen Simmons on Mastodon: My team...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Proving Binaries

Heydon Pickering has an intriguing video dealing with the question: “Why is everything binary?” The gist of the video, to me, distills to this insight: The...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Ecosystems vs. Artifacts: Don’t Break the Web

Here’s Gordon Brander in an article titled “Don't fork the ecosystem”: Most of our software has been shaped by chance decisions made in haste by people who...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Building WebSites With LLMS

And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S). I recently shipped some updates to my blog. Through the design/development process, I had some...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — AX, DX, UX

Matt Biilman, CEO of Netlify, published an interesting piece called “Introducing AX: Why Agent Experience Matters” where he argues the coming importance of a...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Can You Get Better Doing a Bad Job?

February 28, 2025

Rick Rubin has an interview with Woody Harrelson on his podcast Tetragrammaton. Right at the beginning Woody talks about his experience acting and how he’s...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Limitations vs. Capabilities

February 26, 2025

Andy Jiang over on the Deno blog writes “If you're not using npm specifiers, you're doing it wrong”: During the early days of Deno, we recommended importing...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Sanding UI, pt. II

February 24, 2025

Let’s say you make a UI to gather some user feedback. Nothing complicated. Just a thumbs up/down widget. It starts out neutral, but when the user clicks up...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — CSS Space Toggles

February 19, 2025

I’ve been working on a transition to using light-dark() function in CSS. What this boils down to is, rather than CSS that looks like this: :root { color-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Aspect Ratio Changes With CSS View Transitions

February 17, 2025

So here I am playing with CSS view transitions (again). I’ve got Dave Rupert’s post open in one tab, which serves as my recurring reference for the question,...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Search Results Without JavaScript

February 13, 2025

I’m currently looking to add a search feature to my blog. It’s a client-side approach, which means I was planning on using my favorite progressive-...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Art of Making Websites

February 10, 2025

Hidde de Vries gave a great talked titled “Creativity cannot be computed” (you can checkout the slides or watch the video). In his slides he has lots of...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Software Pliability

February 7, 2025

Quoting myself from former days on Twitter: Businesses have a mental model of what they do. Businesses build software to help them do it—a concrete...

blog.jim-nielsen.com — Blown Away By the Unexpected

February 4, 2025

A friend gave me a copy of the book “Perfect Wave” by Dave Hickey. I’ve been slowly reading through each essay and highlighting parts with my red pencil....

blog.jim-nielsen.com — UI Pace Layers

February 3, 2025

Jeremy Keith, Chris Coyier, and others (see Jeremy’s post) have written about the idea of “pace layers” and now I’m going to take a stab at applying it to...