My random thoughts, normally web dev related.
I struggle with the words. I say that every year and at this point it will probably be in every post where I try to convey my thoughts to you. Twenty. I truly can't believe it; it feels just like yesterday that the nurses brought in a fancy dinner to celebrate your birth. Matt graduates this year, which is also shocking, and I think you'd be really pleased with what he's interested in persuing.…
For years, web developers and designers have grappled with the elusive beast that is the HTML <select> element. It’s a foundational aspect of the web, yet one that has caused countless headaches due to its stubborn resistance to style it, insert more complex content (even images), and extensibility. But I'm thrilled to share that, thanks to years of dedicated effort across the community, the tide…
Practical steps to make it a reality After sipping a drink filled with caffeine and cracking my knuckles I'm prepared to author my first blog post on this dusty site in over four years. A lot has happened in that time but before I turn this introduction into one that resembles the ramblings of a recipe site; I'll smoothly transition from my lack of writing to the purpose of this post. As the title…
I was about 11 years old when I took my first crack at working with web technology. I can still recall the simple pleasure of inserting some markup and create something unique to my little corner of the web. At that point I wasn't really allowed to "surf" the web but did manage to get a few tips from my brother and some recycled printed out sections from the HTML Goodies website. I'd finally get…
When working in Product Management one important aspect to determine the importance of a bug or feature in the product is how the person responds to the question or task you have them do. People give off many emotions, even subtle ones, that help you determine relative priority of potential work items. In my previous post regarding the native browser Controls & Components , I saw frustration at…
I've written in the past about how to adjust your site to provide a useful experience to users that turn on Windows High Contrast (if you haven't read about it, jump over here to read it and then come back). Some background An issue was brought to my attention recently Adrian Roselli where he asked, "... am unable to get Edge to properly do text in button on focus/hover when inverting values as it…
While the move to Chromium is bitter sweet for me, one of the things that has me excited is being able to take some of the time that the team has spent devoting to compat and investing it in trying to address the many pain points that we’ve heard through the years. One area that we’re beginning to investigate is the problem of form controls and components built into the browser. Initially, we…
What is Resize Observer? ResizeObserver is built on top of the same functionality of MutationObserver that allows you to attach a callback event to an element. When an element's layout content box changes in size the callback that you registered with the observer is called and it gets passed an entry object which has the layout information about the content box. This is a very useful API to use if…
Dear Karen, I can see it my mind's eye like it was yesterday; we're both walking along railroad ties in our church parking lot like they're tight ropes and talking. I said something that makes you laugh and you look back over your shoulder and that warm summer glow dances through your hair and illuminates the smile that continues to take my breath away. Like many young couples, we primarily talked…
The subtle clack of the keys joins the chorus of beeps and whirs of medical devices in my daughter's hospital room. She was diagnosed with brain cancer in January and quickly had two tumors removed. We're now over half way through her chemo treatments, and we're all getting used to this as our current reality. One evening my wife and I were talking about some scenarios that we had encountered…
Edge is updating it's implementation of CSS Grid. YAY! I was thrilled to fire up a test build and take it for a spin and check out a few of the most common CSS Grid demos as a good first pass at real life scenarios. Then I hopped over to a great repo set up by Rachel Andrew that shows live sites using CSS Grid. I discovered something unfortunate while looking at Bryan Robinson's awesome portfolio…
NOTE: This content is now outdated, I recommend referencing Microsoft Edge's blog post about the standardized solution This post is in response to Patrick H. Lauke's post titled, Windows High Contrast Mode: the limited utility of -ms-high-contrast. Since this is a response post, I recommend reading his first and then come back to read this, I'll wait. I mentioned in the twitter thread that I'd try…