¡Hola, amigos!

Almost the last newsletter of the year! Once December’s edition is out, I’ll have completed a full year writing this monthly summary. Every issue is a bit of a snapshot of what I’ve been exploring—sometimes it’s game development with Godot, other times it’s accessibility or performance. A mix of topics, just like my daily work and interests.

Blog Posts

• Compound Components Pattern. This one slipped through the cracks in the last issue! It’s worth checking out. I explain how to avoid “prop soup” in your components using the compound components pattern (popular in libraries like shadcn).

• CSS Typed Arithmetic: A Quick Guide This marks blog post number 50! 🎉 I wrote it after attending a Dev & UX Meetup in Hamburg, where Alex gave a great talk on CSS Typed Arithmetic. It’s a topic that’s surprisingly under-covered—aside from a post by Amid Sheen for CSS Tricks—so I added some practical examples and my take on it.

Dev Tools I Use & Recommend

Addy Osmani’s Tools

• Squish: Simple bulk image compression. Alternative to Squoosh (simpler but bulk!)

• Background Remover: Great for removing backgrounds in seconds.

• Addy Osmani on GitHub: Tons of projects and inspiration.

Metadata Testing

• MetaTags.io: I use this to test how metadata is displayed across platforms.

Icons

• All SVG Icons: A huge library of SVG icons ready to use.

CSS Tip of the Month

If you want a container with a max-width but still need to keep consistent horizontal padding on small screens, here’s a useful trick—no media queries needed:

This approach allows you to respect both the screen width and your defined layout max-width. Super helpful for responsive layouts.

container {
  max-width: min(100% - 2 * var(--space-l), var(--max-width));
  margin: 0 auto;
}

Advent Content is Live 🎄

Today we’re kicking off the Advent of A11Y: Check it out here: https://www.manuelsanchezdev.com/advent-2025

Also make sure not to miss Manuel Matuzović’s excellent calendar: HTML Hell Advent Calendar — I’m featured on Day 13 with a special article.

Thanks for reading and being here all year long. I’ll see you in one month for the final newsletter of 2025!

Take care until then 👋

Manuel