The other day I was working on something where I needed to use CSS to apply multiple background images to an element, e.g. <div> My content with background images. </div> <style> div { background-image: url(image-one.jpg), url(image-two.jpg); background-position: top right, bottom left; /* etc. */ } </style> As I was tweaking the appearance of these images, I found myself wanting to control the opacity of each one. A voice in my head from circa 2012 chimed in, “Um, remember Jim, there is no background-opacity rule. Can’t be done.” Then that voice started rattling off the alternatives: You’ll have to use opacity but that will apply to the entire element, which you have text in, so that won’t work. You’ll have to create a new empty element, apply the background images there, then use opacity. Or: You can use pseudo elements (:before & :after), apply the background images to those, then use opacity. Then modern me interrupted this old guy. “I haven’t reached for background-opacity in a long time. Surely there’s a way to do this with more modern CSS?” So I started searching and found this StackOverflow answer which says you can use background-color in combination with background-blend-mode to achieve a similar effect, e.g. div { /* Use some images */ background-image: url(image-one.jpg), url(image-two.jpg); /* Turn down their 'opacity' by blending them into the background color */ background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.6); background-blend-mode: lighten; } Worked like a charm! It probably won’t work in every scenario like a dedicated background-image-opacity might, but for my particular use case at that moment in time it was perfect! I love little moments like this where I reach to do something in CSS that was impossible back when I really cut my teeth on the language, and now there’s a one- or two-line modern solution! [Sits back and gets existential for a moment.] We all face moments like this where we have to balance leveraging hard-won expertise with seeking new knowledge and greater understanding, which requires giving up the lessons of previous experience in order to make room for incorporating new lessons of experiences. It’s hard to give up the old, but it’s the only way to make room for the new — death of the old is birth of the new. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky

I saw these going around, but didn’t think I’d ever see myself get tagged — then Eric assuaged my FOMO. As I’ve done elsewhere talking about how I blog, I’m gonna try and impose a character limit to my answers (~240). I’m not sure if that makes my job as the writer easier or harder, but it should make your job as the reader easier. Why did you start blogging in the first place? I think I started because everything I learned about building on the web came from reading other people’s blogs online, so I wanted to be a “web person” like them. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? At the time of this writing (April 2025): I write in iA Writer. Code for my blog and notes is on GitHub. Deployment/hosting is via Netlify. I’ve arrived at this setup less from a combination of choice and evolution. As me and my writing evolve, my process and tools evolve too. Have you blogged on other platforms before? Blogspot, way back in the day. It’s no longer up, which is probably for the best. I was posting stuff I made from following “make this in Photoshop” tutorials. Or I’d practice trying to visually express silly puns. Or I’d make visual mashups of culture at the time. How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog? For a detailed history of changes on how I blog, I blog about blogging under #myBlog and I blog about microblogging under #myNotes. Read any of those posts for insights into my ever-changing process. When do you feel most inspired to write? When I read other people’s thoughts. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? I’m a simmerer. Rarely does a post go from thought to published in one sitting. For example, here’s a screenshot of my current simmering drafts (note my sophisticated editorial process of assigning each draft a letter prefix for sorting based on my appetite for finishing it). What are you generally interested in writing about? Stuff I make. Or stuff others make. Or thoughts I think while reading thoughts others think. I have a tags page that tries to capture what I write categorically — for example, I blog notes from books I read, and podcasts I listen to — but TBH it’s not the greatest taxonomy of my writing. Reductively: I blog about web design and development. Who are you writing for? Whoa, that question got me more introspective than I expected. Gonna move on before this becomes an existential crisis. What’s your favorite post on your blog? I used to highlight some of my favs on my home page, but I stopped. Choosing favorites is hard. My blog posts are like my kids: I love them all equally, lol. I suppose my favorite blog post is the one I’ll publish next. Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature? Will I redesign? Lol, the question is: when will you redesign? Tag ‘em Sorry if I mention someone who’s already been tagged: Piper Haywood — Love Piper’s mix of the personal and professional. Still have bookmarked to try grandma’s recipe. Tyler Gaw — Have loved and respected this dude since I met him at my first “real” webdev job in NYC. David Bushnell — Been enjoying David’s short- and long-form writing a lot as of late. Plus we feel the same about Deno & HTTP modules. Katie Langerman - Ah gotcha, that’s not a blog link. It’s Bluesky. But I’ve followed Katie on the socials and always enjoy her perspective. Not sure she has a personal blog, so this is a vote of confidence in her starting one :) Jan Miksovsky — Jan is doing really cool stuff with Web Origami (also just a super nice guy). Sorry, I’m not gonna ping any of these folks. If they read my blog, they’ll see their names. Otherwise, dear reader, consider it a suggestion to go subscribe to their stuff. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky

Ever used a website where you toggle from light mode to dark mode and the web site changes but the chrome around the browser doesn’t? To illustrate, take a look at this capture of my blog on an iPhone. When you toggle the theme from light to dark, note how the website turns white but status bar stays black. Only once I refresh the page or navigate does the status bar then turn white. When the user changes the theme on my site, I want it to propagate all the way to the surrounding context of the browser. In this case, to the status bar on the iPhone. Like this: There we go! That’s what I want. So what was wrong? A popular way to indicate the active theme is to put a class on the root of the document, e.g. <html class="dark"> <style> html { background: white } html.dark { background: black } </style> </html> Then we simply add/remove the dark class when the user toggles the theme. But that will only change the in-page styles. It won’t tell the browser to update the color of whatever ambient user interface elements its drawing. For that, you’ll need the meta theme-color tag: The theme-color value for the name attribute of the <meta> element indicates a suggested color that user agents should use to customize the display of the page or of the surrounding user interface. So when you respond to the user changing their theme, don’t forget to update the <meta name='theme-color'> tag in addition to whatever you do to modify the in-page styles. That’ll give you the effect you want in the surrounding browser UI (for browsers that support it). Oh, and it’s worth pointing out: don’t forget the color-scheme property either. That’s what will tell the browser to update other in-page UI elements it draws. So, when responding to a user preference to update a website’s theme: Toggle some global attribute that triggers style changes for all your custom, in-page elements. Set the color-scheme property so the browser draws the things its responsible for correctly (form controls, scroll bars, etc.). Set the <meta name='theme-color'> value appropriately so contextual browser UI can adapt to your site’s styles. I wrote this post as a friendly reminder, because friends don’t let friends forget the meta theme-color tag. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky

Adam Silver has an article titled “Do you trust design advice from ChatGPT?” wherein he prompted the LLM: How do you add hint text to radio buttons? It gave various suggestions, each of which Adam breaks down. Here’s an an example response from ChatGPT: If you want the hint to appear when the user hovers on the radio button, use a tooltip for a cleaner design Adam’s response: ‘If you want’ Design is not about what you want. It’s about what users need. ‘use a tooltip’ If a hint is useful, why hide it behind a difficult-to-use and inaccessible interaction? ‘for a cleaner design’ Design is about clarity, not cleanliness. Adam’s point-by-point breakdowns are excellent. The entire article is a great example of how plausible-sounding ideas can quickly fall apart under scrutiny from an expert who reframes the issue. It’s funny how prevalent this feels in our age of fast-paced information overload. You read an argument and it seems rational — that is, if you don’t think about it too long, which who has the time? But an expert with deep experience can quickly refute these mediocre rationales and offer a more informed perspective that leaves you wondering how you ever nodded along to the original argument in the first place. Humorously, it reminds me of the culture of conspiracy theories where the burden of proof is on you to disprove the bare assertions being made (a time-consuming job). Hence the value of experience (and what’s experience but an investment of time?) to pierce through these kinds of middle-of-the-road rationales. Experience helps clarify and articulate what lesser experience cannot see, let alone articulate. That all leads me back to Adam: ChatGPT pulls unreliable, uninformed and untrustworthy design advice from the internet and delivers it with confidence. I mean you can certainly listen to its advice. But I think it’s better to develop the instinct to ask the right questions and be able to recognise bad advice when you see it. There’s no shortcut to gaining experience. You can’t consume enough content to get it. You have to do. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky