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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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...