¡Hola, amigos!

I hope you’ve had a gentle start to the year. January is always a strange one—full of ambition, resolutions, and that cold slap of reality. Personally, I think resolutions are a double-edged sword. They can push you forward or burn you out. So I hope you’re easing into the year and not letting the pressure get to you.

Goals for 2026

This year, I’ve set two big goals:

• Web Dev: Launch an advanced accessibility course platform (more about it in the next issues).

• Game Dev: Release a demo for The Runic Edda before the year ends.

I haven’t published any new articles this January, but one on Game Design is almost live. Meanwhile, here’s what’s been going on:

Biome & Lefthook at Work 🛠️

At work, we’ve been testing Biome and Lefthook. Biome is trying to be the all-in-one replacement for Prettier, ESLint, and more. Sadly, support for Svelte and Astro is still experimental, so we’re holding off for now. But it’s promising.

Lefthook is a fast, scriptable Git hook manager (think Husky but snappier). You can pair it with Biome to run checks before commits and even lint commit messages. Super handy setup.

Scroll Effects & A11Y Woes 🧵

I came across an article by David Bushell that critiques the widespread use of scroll-reveal animations. His take? These effects are often poorly implemented and hurt usability and performance. What really stuck with me was his idea that animations should be opt-in, not opt-out. That reminded me of the eternal challenge with toast notifications and accessibility.

From unreadable messages to fixed timing and visual-only alerts, toasts are often an accessibility mess. Wouldn’t it be nice if animation duration was user-configurable and defaulted to infinite? Big thoughts. Controversial topic.

AI Agents, Bots & Existential Dread 🤖

Agentic AI is everywhere. Between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, the pace is dizzying. Projects like ClawdBot/ Moltbot/OpenClaw are starting to feel like a sci-fi timeline.

Check out [this interesting interview with Peter Steinberger, the developer behind OpenClaw. It’s wild how fast this space is moving.

Netlify Move

I finally migrated my main projects (including this blog!) to Netlify. It was pretty smooth, just time-consuming. Looking forward to seeing how it holds up.

Fun Finds & Dev Gems

• What Are the Odds?: A fun site showing random probability facts based on your location (like 1 in 1,000 eggs being double-yolked 🥚)

• AIM (Anchor Interpolated Morphing): Article by Adam Argyle on achieving morphing UI without JS

Meet Me at CSS Day 🇳🇱

Some colleagues and I will be at CSS Day 2026 in Amsterdam. If you’re attending, let’s grab a coffee and nerd out about design systems and footnotes.

Thanks for sticking around into this new year. I hope it brings clarity, creativity, and better DX for all of us.

Until next time,

Manuel