Interesting Links (by date)

This page is a bunch of links I got from various newsletters and assorted sources that I think are interesting. New links are added as I find them, hopefully ordered by date.

April 2025

• If it works, it’s right
  Another great article by Andy Bell, that goes over different ways to design websites and concludes (rightly) that any way to build a website is correct as long as you actually build the website.
• Cowardly Defaults and Courageous Overrides with Modern CSS
  An article that showcases modern techniques to create CSS classes with default values. The main techniques are :where selectors, @layers, and gratuitous use of my favorite CSS feature: custom properties (variables).
• Does AI really make you more productive?
  The answer won't surprise you. This article also brings actual data to prove the point that AI trades short-term productivity for long-term problems.
• Some features that every JavaScript developer should know in 2025
• My petite-vue review
  petit-vue is a really nice minimal subset of Vue, designed to compete (sort of, but not really) with Alpine.
• On the foolishness of "natural language programming"
  An article predicting generative AI, and explaining why natural languages shouldn't be used for programming. Side-not, and this might be because I'm a stupid millennial, but the language used is really obtuse and I actually think the article is pretty hard to read.

March 2025

• This page is under construction
  A really wonderful article encouraging people to build their own website. A must-read for everyone thinking about it.
• Cool native HTML elements you should already be using
  A list of modern and underused html elements that work well without any JavaScript.
• Patterns.dev
  A cool free book with web development design patterns that can teach you to be better developer (for free!)
• Modern Font Stacks
  A list of fonts families built into modern operating sytems that you can use without depending on Google Fonts.
• Fontsource
  Related to the previous link, this is a way to locally host the fonts available on Google Fonts. In short, don't use Google Fonts directly if you can.
• While you generally shouldn't use named colors (according to the experts, not me), this Sorted CSS Colors tool lets you see all of the named colors by hue.
• Here's an assortment of CSS tools:
  • Easing Graphs and Easing Wizard to generate animation timing functions
  • Utopia and Type Scale Generator for generating fluid type scales.
  • CSS Grid Generator

February 2025

• Understanding the trade-offs of using Tailwind CSS
  I've tried Tailwind a few more times and I still hate using it, but a lot of people seem to love it.
• Popover API lands in Baseline
  This article is a bit old, but the Popover API is still worth learning now that it's widely supported. No-JS tooltips?!

January 2025

• Accessibility essentials every front-end developer should know
  An excellent article with a bunch of pretty simple tips to make your site more accessible. The number one tip is to just use semantic HTML!
• Using static websites for tiny archives
  This is an excellent idea because it's so simple but brilliant. HTML is easy enough to write that you can just make a quick webpage, instead the horror that is making native applications.
• Cascade Layers are useless*
  I think cascade layers are a really cool feature, and I don't see them used enough. This is an excellent article on how to use them, so go do it!
• Don't Fuck With Scroll
  Extremely important. If a website messes with scrolling, I'm already thinking of leaving immedately.

December 2024

• ecsstatic is a really cool styling library. It's a lot like styled-components, but it's framework-agnostic.

October 2024

• Passwords have problems, but passkeys have more
  I vehemently agree with DHH on this point. My work has started using passkeys and they just make everything more complicated with not clear benefits.
• Why Gumroad Didn't Choose htmx
  I don't hate htmx but I also don't think it fits any of my use cases. Anyway, this article is a good example of how you should actually pick your tools based on your requirements instead of trying to fix every problem with the same tool. People who use React seem particularly intent on using it for literally everything.
• Web Components are not Framework Components — and That's Okay
  An interesting article by Lea Verou about the past, present, and speculations of the future of web components.

August 2024

• Micro-libraries need to die already
  A really good article argumenting against libraries like left-pad and is-number. Keep a check on your dependencies!
• Phoenix Code
  A nice IDE for web development, with some live debugging features that VSCode doesn't have. On the other hand, it doesn't seem as featureful as VSCode. It also has an online version so you can easily test it.

July 2024

• Opinions for Writing Good CSS
  A bunch of generally good guidelines for writing CSS. I agree with most of them, although I'm not sure about avoiding margin and padding.
• CSS Grid Areas
  If you are interested in CSS, you probably already know Shadeed. This article gives very clear explanations are real-world examples of grid areas. It's a very interesting feature of CSS Grid that's, as far as I know, supported by every browser.

June 2024

• Why I retired from the tech crusades
  The best advertisement for your framework or library is making a great product. Trying to convince people to use your tech with just words is generally useless.
• Data ownership and agency
  Another anti-social media article. I agree with not just letting large companies have all of your data. I fully support people using any tool they can to make their own personal site. It is not even that hard.

May 2024

• The perfect site doesn’t exist
  A good motivational article about not worrying too much about getting things perfect and instead getting them done first.
• A brief history of web development. And why your framework doesn't matter.
  I completely agree with this article; for the most part your choice of framework doesn't matter. The only time it really matters is when you're building a large enterprise project and you need to find maintenance developers in the future.
• Programming mantras are proverbs
  An interesting way to think about programming mantras. The short of it is, you shouldn't just follow the rules without thinking about why you're doing it. Otherwise, you might as well be a generative AI.
• The New !important
  An interesting way to manipulate specificity in CSS. using :not, you can add a hook to "undo" styling.
• Bear Blog
  It's not for me personally, but a free (privacy-conscious) website service is always handy.
• Free for Developers
  An index of free resources for development, including some free BaaS and hosting services.
• happy-dom
  A JavaScript DOM parser. Possible faster alternative for jsdom?

April 2024

• What's new in Astro - March 2024
  Contains links to some interesting tutorials concering the new Astro DB, including:

  • How to Build a Views Counter with Astro DB
  • Going full-stack on Astro with Cloudflare D1 and Drizzle

• Waku; a nice minimalistic SSG, like Next.js but a lot smaller.

• Modern CSS patterns in Campfire
  A bunch of nice illustrations on ways to use modern CSS.

• Wedges
  Although I don't use React too much, this looks like a nice component library. MIT licensed.

• Front End Developer/Engineer Handbook 2024
  A nice (and extremely extensive) list of front-end technologies and paradigms to check. By FrontendMasters.

Before april 2024 (genesis)

• 100 things you can do on your personal website
  Self-explanatory but contains some pretty cool things I hadn't thought of. This article is one of the things that inspired me to make this list, actually.
• Flavio's list of sample Web App Ideas
  Flavio generally makes pretty good articles and sites, and this one has a bunch of nice ideas that seem both interesting and do-able as small projects to test new libraries and frameworks.
• No Maintenance Intended
  A badge for open source projects which are provided as-is. Will probably be using this.
• MAGICK.CSS (src)
  A classless CSS framework that's styled after LaTeX documents (among others) and looks like a scientific document. Pretty cool.
• Bootswatch
  A pretty old resource, with open source Bootstrap themes. People keep saying all Bootstrap sites look the same, but I think these themes show that you can pretty easily customize Bootstrap to look different.
• Foundation templates & Building Block Kits
  I don't use Foundation itself, but these templates provide a general structure that's actually pretty easy to translate into any other CSS framework.