Tuesday, August 4, 2026

It’s the dog days of summer (here in the northern hemisphere at least), and I’m taking a break from staring disapprovingly out my window 🤨 at the orange haze 🟠 (alas, wildfire smoke 🔥 from central Oregon has crossed over the Cascades to infect western Oregon) to bring you this jam-packed issue of That HTML Blog.

So let’s get cracking!

Hey, so you wanna keep learning about “vanilla” web tech and how to escape the hell of framework churn? Make sure you don't miss another issue of That HTML Blog:

Liquid Glass Got Good (Finally)

When Apple first unveiled the Liquid Glass design language last year, I went on record as being hugely excited about this shift away from 2010s-era “flat design”. I wrote for The Internet Review that “I’m finding myself drawn once again to the glory days of dimensional UI design” and revisiting what I loved most about UI design 20+ years ago. And regarding valid complaints of Liquid Glass introducing visual accessibility problems, I tooted “Readability problems will get worked out, I’m sure.”

Ahem. 🤨

But here we are in 2026, and it’s the dawn of Apple’s first major refinement of Liquid Glass as found in the i(Pad)OS 27 release cycle. I’m not sure folks are appreciating just how different this new version is. The changes may appear subtle at first, but they’re in fact quite profound—and they reflect a direction I’d hoped Apple would take all along: the resurrection of Aqua.

We write code by hand.

When I’m not writing for That HTML Blog, I’m usually writing for my other newsletter Cycles Hyped No More (or producing the ironically-named Vibe Coded podcast). And if you have any familiarity with those properties, you know my stance on LLMs. 😃

But I’ve always been of the opinion it’s better to criticize by creating, not simply criticize. And I’m also a huge believer in creators standing for something within community. So I’ve kicked off a new project:

🔗 https://handcraftedcode.org

As it says on the tin:

There are people who say “nobody authors code by hand any longer.”

We are here to say that’s incorrect. Because we do it. All the time.

We’re fast approaching 200 signatories of We write code by hand, and honestly I’ve been blown away by the response (1K+ boosts on Mastodon!). If you find yourself resonating with this movement and would like to add yourself to the list, please do! ☺️

I Don’t lhate This!

It’s time to embrace lh, a Baseline widely-available CSS unit which unlocks a variety of useful functionality.

Here is a bunch of examples presented by Ahmad Shadeed:

The CSS lh unit

A look at the CSS line height unit and how it works.

Declarative Navigation/Transition Styles (Speculative)

Nothing actionable here as of yet, but I think this proposal is quite interesting: exposing the page route to CSS so your stylesheet can affect different pages in specific ways. (Very helpful for slick cross-document view transitions!)

Styling the Navigation: Declarative Route and Navigation Matching in CSS – Bram.us

One of the things that we at Chrome have been thinking about for a while now is a way to do declarative route and navigation matching in CSS. Together with Noam Rosenthal and David Baron I’ve been working on it for the past few months.After an initial introduction at the CSS Working Group back in January, and a quick feedback session at CSS Day in June, we think we have something that is ready for further discussion.At next week’s CSS Working Group F2F (face-to-face) meeting in Berlin, we’ll be ...

Why Native Apps? We Got Web!

I’ve been saying this for a long time: I use relatively few “native apps” on a daily basis. Most of what I do is all web-based, and that seems to be a trend which is only increasing.

I’ll also admit I’ve sometimes been critical of adding too many APIs to the web merely to reach into advanced computer capabilities. Do we really need to run a full music production DAW or a 3D game engine in our web browsers? But given the state of native platform development these days, and the total PITA that is mobile in particular, I’ve thawed out. Let’s web all the things. 🕸️

And that matches the argument made by this article:

I particularly resonated with this:

I avoid most apps. It turns out this is easier than most people assume, because the app is almost never the only option. It is just the option the company wants you to take and not enough people question.

Exactly. Those horrible nag popups asking you to install their “app” are laughable because there’s virtually no reason to ever. Everything that app can do, the website can do (unless it’s been hobbled on purpose). And in many cases, for a variety of reasons, the web experience is actually superior.

All the rest…

A couple more items and then we’re done!

Tyler Sticka is calling out those weird passcode entry UIs which use multiple input elements. Like, please don’t do that! 😅

And this cartoon makes a compelling case for me to add a <b-side> custom element to my next web project. 😜

comiCSS: B-Side

comiCSS: A webcomic about CSS. Coded in CSS.

aaaaand that’s all I got. Stay safe and hopefully smoke-free. Oh and if you’d like to keep the conversation going:

Join the Human Web Collective Discord 💬

Cheers,
Jared

🤔🌩️ Things that make you think: 💡😃

In this document, I will review the latest ways in which people are restoring trust in their work in a noisy post-LLM world. Ways of demonstrating that effort went into their message. Ways of proving they care.

And this is the “document”:

Fascinating. ✍️