The new Animation Timeline API allows us to create dynamic scroll animations without any JavaScript! It’s honestly a very lovely API, and in this blog post, we’ll explore some of the super cool things we can do with it.

My shim might give the powers that be another reason to say native support isn't necessary, or if lots of people use my :nth-letter hack in the wild, the browser gods might recognize the need to implement it for real. Let’s Use the Nonexistent ::nth-letter Selector Now originally handwritten and pub

AI tools are eliminating the need to “bug” colleagues for help, but the informal interactions they replace are the very scaffolding that builds team trust, belonging, and innovation. Casey Hudetz and Eric Olive explore the research and potential impacts behind that risk and offer practical strategie

Discover some of the interesting features that have landed in stable and beta web browsers during April 2026.

Putting CSS’s more recent scrolling animation capabilities to the test to recreate a complex animation of the Apple Vision Pro headset from Apple's website. Recreating Apple’s Vision Pro Animation in CSS originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newslett

I use a Markdown Component for two main reasons: (1) It reduces the amount of markup I need to write, and (2) it converts typographic symbols. Here's how it works. Enhancing Astro With a Markdown Component originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsle

In a rush to embrace AI, the industry is redefining what it means to be a UX designer, blurring the line between design and engineering. Carrie Webster explores what’s gained, what’s lost, and why designers need to remain the guardians of the user experience.

Although Astro has built-in support for Markdown via .md files, I'd argue that your Markdown experience can be enhanced with MDX. Markdown + Astro = ❤️ originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

Poorly handled session timeouts are more than a technical inconvenience. They can become serious accessibility barriers that interrupt essential online tasks, especially for people with disabilities. Here is how to implement thoughtful session management that improves usability, reduces frustration,

This issue of What’s !important brings you clip-path jigsaws, a view transitions toolkit, name-only containers, the usual roundup of new, notable web platform features, and more. What’s !important #9: clip-path Jigsaws, View Transitions Toolkit, Name-only Containers, and More originally handwritten

Behind every technology, there should be a guide for its use. While JavaScript modules make it easier to write “big” programs, if there are no principles or systems for using them, things could easily become difficult to maintain. A Well-Designed JavaScript Module System is Your First Architecture D

One of the best-known examples of CSS state management is the checkbox hack. What if we want a component to be in one of three, four, or seven modes? That is where the Radio State Machine comes in. The Radio State Machine originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should reall

Read about various happenings with Baseline during March 2026.

Craving for a view transition? Sunkanmi has lots of common transitions you can drop into your website right now! 7 View Transitions Recipes to Try originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

Have you ever heard of Disney’s 12 Basic Principles of Animation? In this tutorial, we’ll explore how we can use the very first principle to create SVG micro-interactions that feel way more natural and believable. It’s one of those small things that has a big impact.

Practical guidelines for driving UX impact in organizations with legacy systems and broken processes. Brought to you by Measuring UX Impact, **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

A clever approach for selecting multiple dates on a calendar where the :nth-child()'s “n of selector” syntax does all the heavy lifting... even in the JavaScript. Selecting a Date Range in CSS originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

You may have spotted that MDN has a new frontend. There's plenty happening under the surface, so let's unpack the technologies we chose, the architectural decisions we made, and why we did a rebuild at all.

Cascade layers, specificity tricks, smarter ordering, and even some clever selector hacks can often replace !important with something cleaner, more predictable, and far less embarrassing to explain to your future self. Alternatives to the !important Keyword originally handwritten and published with

Designing for agentic AI requires attention to both the system’s behavior and the transparency of its actions. Between the black box and the data dump lies a more thoughtful approach. Victor Yocco explores how to map decision points and reveal the right moments to build trust through clarity, not no

Chrome 145 introduces the column-height and column-wrap properties, enabling us to wrap the additional content into a new row below, creating a vertical scroll instead of a horizontal scroll. Looking at New CSS Multi-Column Layout Wrapping Features originally handwritten and published with love on C

Creating rectangles, circles, and rounded rectangles is the basic of CSS. Creating more complex CSS shapes such as triangles, hexagons, stars, hearts, etc. is more challenging but still a simple task if we rely on modern features. Making Complex CSS Shapes Using shape() originally handwritten and pu

These are the historical pranks I consider the top 10 most noteworthy, rather than the “best.” You’ll see that some of them crossed the line and/or backfired. Front-End Fools: Top 10 April Fools’ UI Pranks of All Time originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really ge

A deep sniff of the new CSS Olfactive API, a set of proposed features for immersive user experiences using smell. Sniffing Out the CSS Olfactive API originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You should really get the newsletter as well.

Design principles with references, examples, and methods for quick look-up. Brought to you by Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, **friendly video courses on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

Short n’ sweet but ever so neat, this issue covers light/dark favicons, @mixin, anchor-interpolated morphing, object-view-box, new web features, and more. What’s !important #8: Light/Dark Favicons, @mixin, object-view-box, and More originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks. You sh

With the new month just around the corner, could there be a better occasion to freshen up your desktop? If you’re looking for some unique and inspiring wallpapers to accompany you on all those adventures that April may bring — and maybe spark some new ideas, too — well, this post has got you covered

Read about various happenings with Baseline during February 2026.

Discover some of the interesting features that have landed in stable and beta web browsers during March 2026.

Success in modern UX isn’t about having the most content. It’s about having the most findable content. Yet even with more data and better tools than ever, internal search often fails, leaving users to rely on global search engines to find a single page on a local site. Why does the “Big Box” still w

Accessibility works best when it blends into everyday design workflows. The goal isn’t a big transformation, but simple work processes that fit naturally into a team’s routine. With Figma variables, testing font size increases becomes part of the design flow itself, making accessibility feel almost

There is a lil’ UI detail on this blog. Most people don’t even notice it, but the ones who do often reach out, asking how on earth it works. It feels like it defies the rules of CSS! In this blog post, I’ll break down the surprisingly-straightforward implementation so you can start using this trick

How to choose between modals and pages, when to avoid modals, and how to determine the right level of interruption or navigation. Brought to you by Smart Interface Design Patterns, a **friendly video course on UX** and design patterns by Vitaly.

Design is about pacing and feelings as much as pixels and patterns. Alan Cohen explores Emotion in Flow and Emotion in Conflict, showing how anime like Dan Da Dan and superhero films like James Gunn’s Superman manage emotional shifts and translating those ideas into practical patterns for product de

Semantic search alone wasn't good enough. Here's how I improved search on kentcdodds.com through three rounds of iteration with Cursor and GPT-5.4, each time learning something that the previous design missed.

The way JavaScript handles time has evolved significantly, from the built-in `Date` API to Moment.js and now Temporal. The new standard fills gaps in the original `Date` API while addressing limitations found in Moment and other libraries. Joe Attardi shares practical “recipes” for migrating Moment-

For years, developers have been hacking around the limitations of `border-radius`, using clip-path, SVG masks, and fragile workarounds just to get anything other than round corners. The new `corner-shape` property finally changes that, opening the door to beveled, scooped, and squircle corners.

How I replaced a long-lived Cloudflare Container with a one-shot Cloudflare Sandbox, deleted most of the control-plane code, and let an agent do the heavy lifting in less than an hour of my own time.

Some forms stay UI, while others quietly become rule engines. Here’s why these two different approaches exist and how to choose between them.

The interesting part of moving kentcdodds.com to npm workspaces was not the file moves. It was everything the file moves broke.

Many product teams still lean on usability improvements and isolated behavioral tweaks to address weak activation, drop-offs, and low retention – only to see results plateau or slip into shallow gamification. Anders Toxboe updates persuasive design for today’s reality, clarifying what has actually h

How I moved Call Kent podcast episode processing off my primary Fly.io app server and onto Cloudflare Queues and Containers: what broke, what I missed, and whether it was worth the complexity.

UX design is entering a new phase, with designers shifting from makers of outputs to directors of intent. AI can now generate wireframes, prototypes, and even design systems in minutes, but UX has never been only about creating interfaces. It’s about navigating ambiguity, advocating for humans in sy

Our newest Smashing Book, “Accessible UX Research” by Michele Williams, is finally shipping worldwide — and we couldn’t be happier! This book is about research, but you’ll also learn about assistive technology, different types of disability, and how to build accessibility into the entire design proc

What happens if you rebuild a single tooltip using the browser’s native model without the aid of a library? The Popover API turns tooltips from something you simulate into something the browser actually understands. Opening and closing, keyboard interaction, Escape handling, and much of the accessib

Read about various happenings with Baseline during January 2026

Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers is for you. Designed by the community for the community, the wallpapers in this collection are the perfect opportunity to get your desktop ready for spring — and, who knows, maybe they’ll spark some new ideas, too

Meet our brand new conference for designers and UI engineers who love the web. That’s [SmashingConf Amsterdam](https://smashingconf.com/amsterdam-2026), taking place in the legendary Pathé Tuschinski, on April 13–16, 2026.

Discover some of the interesting features that have landed in stable and beta web browsers during February 2026.

I've added some pretty cool AI-powered features to kentcdodds.com and I want to tell you all about it.