Killian tagged me in this blog chain letter type thing to answer some questions about blogging. I accept 🙂
Why did you start blogging in the first place? #
My first exploration into blogging was Wordpress, I called it Geek Devigner. I wanted to share about the cross of development and design (devigner). I didn't write on it much, I was still making mostly Flash and jQuery stuff. Needless to say, this wasn't a super popular topic to be blogging about.
Later I wrote posts on Medium or Devto. This was mostly during the JAMstack wave, and I was really intent on optimizing the build systems so Jade was only rendering the render trees that changed all while making my own isomorphic framework. I also like Grunt more than Gulp, so again, this wasn't a super popular topic to be blogging about.
After blogging and writing articles at Google, I wanted to write in my own voice and showcase CSS features while talking about CSS features. I figured most people these days are scrolling cards and like content feeds, so I modelled my site after these interactions and started blogging about CSS, Javascript and HTML stuff consistently for the first time.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? #
My current site/blog is built on Deno and their Fresh framework. I blogged about it here.
For me it was a decently minimal set of features that Fresh brought while Deno brought a small, safe, web standards focused server.
I wanted to do lots of custom things, so I needed something that wasn't going to be in the way. I wanted to make something server first, a bit more socially integrated than previous static sites I'd built, and to try out islands front-end architecture.
How do you write your posts? #
I write posts in a markdown file with some custom frontmatter. Notes have slightly different frontmatter than blog posts, otherwise they're the same.
I've written all my own adapters for images, code snippets and videos. The images are swapped for a <picture> with optimised sources. The code snippets are rendered server side. Videos are also optimized, given poster images, and other cool stuff.
All of this is done in a code editor. Currently Zed, but often Windsurf, Sublime or VS Code (I flop around alot, but usually go back to Sublime for the nicer text rendering and bootup speeds).
If I need any special examples or interactives, I either write an inline style or script tag, or make a web component.
When do you feel most inspired to write? #
When reading my RSS feed. But, that's not when I write… that's once the kids are asleep.
Do you publish immediately? #
Longer form posts definitely simmer or chill in a branch for a while. Shorter form posts though, those can be authored and published in just a few minutes. I needed to have both opportunities, was important to me that both types of thoughts could be posted to my site.
What are you generally interested in writing about? #
CSS, almost exclusively. However, every once in a while I'll share a JS tip (which is usually CSS adjacent).
What’s your favourite post on your blog? #
There's a few that come to mind, but the winner is Headless, boneless and skinless UI. I liked how the piece came together around Halloween when the content was totally morbib sounding out of context.
Who are you writing for? #
UI and UX engineers, a few designers and other folks who want to stay up to date on CSS. Mostly writing for professionals or experts, but do try to make things minimal to reduce learning friction for everyone.
Any future plans for your blog? #
I've got quite a long list of features in the backlog.
I'd like to add a bunch more "slashers", which are just cool slash pages like /follows and /404. So far I've got /talks, /experiments, /avatar, /toolkit, and /links in the backlog.
I've got the personas already, but I want to give them their own profile pages with all their specific posts. They'd also get their own RSS feeds 😉
The most notable backlog item, is to have Balatro style powerups and "shiny" type effects for the cards on the home feed. Just a little piece of frontmatter that adds a class to the card, then CSS does the rest: makes a post foiled, or cracked, or holographic. Be so fun to make.
Who am I going to tag? #
Maybe you? Anyone out there want to be tagged?
I'll tag you right here.
