Frontend Engineering Explained

Mountains are shrouded in thick, blue clouds.

Explained: The Mysterious HTML Dialog Sizing Case

Hello internet friends! 👋 I sincerely hope you all are having a decent time on this beautiful planet. I will be honest and say this newsletter was a little rushed and might even be a little late, but hey, better late than never. 😁

What if...

A little bit of a philosophical piece if you will. What if we embraced authenticity, took creative risks, and lived deliberately without fear of judgment - a reflection on finding freedom through self-acceptance in both personal and technical pursuits?

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TechCats

I made a little website for the cats in the lives of those who make websites. I have for the longest time wanted to build something with 11ty and not too long ago came across DogsOf.dev and was inspired.

Have A Look And Submit Your Friend

If you find value in the work I do and want to support the future of the newsletter, my writing, and education, please consider a subscription on Patreon or buy me a coffee - I ♥️ coffee 😁

In My LinkStack

That is enough about me, let's see what I have in my LinkStack.

Another uncalled-for blog post about the ethics of using AI - Richard Rutter

What I do know is that I find LLMs useful on occasion, but every time I use one I die a little inside. - Richard Rutter

Google Being Forced To Sell Chrome is Not Good for the Web - Chris Coyier
CSS holographic mask effects - Christian Alder 🤯
1st animation principle in pure CSS - Ana Tudor ♥️
Design Systems Report 2025
Our interfaces have lost their senses - Amelia Wattenberger
- A custom element that uses the CSS Custom Highlight API for syntax highlighting - André Ruffert
A tool's errand - Some Web Content Accessibility Guidelines success criteria is best tested manually
Accessibility of machine learning and generative AI - Call for feedback W3C
Leading Effective Engineering Teams in the Age of GenAI - Addy Osmani

From My Ears To Yours

Podcast episodes I have enjoyed and possibly shared elsewhere.

What Does Dismantling USAID Mean For Global Health? - Science Friday
The stream is up: The politics of Twitch personality Hasan Piker and his dedicated community - Endless Thread
After 15 months of displacement, a Palestinian reporter finally returns home - NPR (Note: This was days before the war in Gaza was resumed)
The $1.5 Billion Crypto Heist & Vibe Coding Beats Big Tech Interviews - Hacked
What if we stopped shopping? - Today Explained
Viruses in the Air - Search Engine
Trump Official Brendan Carr's War on Free Speech - Power User
David Darnes on Web Components and Design Systems - Shoptalk Show

Good Robot - Unexplainable/Future Perfect

I absolutely loved this series. Very highly recommended.

The AI revolution is here. Can we build a Good Robot?

MakerBench

Some tools I have added or are potentially adding to my Maker Bench.

Neumorphism.io
Umami - Privacy-respecting analytics that is self-hostable, with a great free tier.
Web Platform Features Explorer - Use the Web Platform Features Explorer to discover new features and APIs and stay up-to-date with changes.
Thoughtlesss - Not a maker tool, but made by a maker for those times you just need to brain dump without it going anywhere.
CSS Anchor Positioning Tool - Incredibly useful

Artificial Friends

Granola - This sounds like it just might be actually useful
Code with LLM - Mixed feelings, but better to know, right?? (I have many complicated thoughts. Way too many for a newsletter)
OpenAI.fm - An interactive demo for developers to try the new text-to-speech model in the OpenAI API.

It is not all a good robot experience

FEDSA Focus

Frontend Development South Africa is a not-for-profit in South Africa that I am involved with and I will be highlighting some of the work we do as part of the newsletter. Also, just because it has South Africa in the name, please do not be deterred. Everyone from everywhere and all skill levels are welcome. We also have a thriving and growing Discord server which you are invited to join.

Open Sourcery

Octokit - Recently used this again and it is still the way to go.
Octokit - Plugin Rest Endpoint Methods - Especially when combined with this one.
CSS Anchor Positioning Polyfill - OddBird (might have already shared this one)