Opinionated but ultimately pragmatic, Melanie Sumner has been enthusiastically building for the web since 1997.
Dear Crunchyroll, Every story has two versions: the one its creators intended to tell, and the one the audience ultimately experiences. For millions of viewers outside Japan, Crunchyroll exists between those two. I’ve been a paying subscriber since 2016. For nearly a decade, anime has been part of my weekend routine. Whenever possible, Saturdays are now “Anime Saturdays”; they are a chance to slow…
Every year we kind of have an overarching theme for holiday gifts. This year we thought it would be fun to build custom keyboards. We were only mostly right. It was fun and also frustrating. Anyway, I’ve tried to link to the things I used, but none of them are affiliate links. I was not compensated by anyone for anything I purchased or have linked to in this blog post.
I ran into some UI patterns that raised some red flags; one was having a modal/dialog triggered from…some other element that is already “on top” of the current page (e.g., other modals, dropdown menus, flyout panels/drawers). After digging into it a bit more, I figured out why it bothers me. I’ve compiled some points to consider, but the TL;DR is this: avoid mixing dropdowns, search boxes, and…
I work for a company that was recently acquired by IBM. We’re now HashiCorp, an IBM Company. Anyway, they had an offsite event to welcome us; flew most of us to Austin for a week. I found some interesting (to me) art while I was there, so I’m going to share the pieces I purchased and some of the things I’ve bought online since then (they were the larger pieces that would not have fit in my…
It’s Monday. More than that, it’s the Monday following CSUN ATC 2025, and the web is chock full of awesome takes, hot takes, and really bad takes. So I guess it’s time to add mine!
I spoke at axe-con last week, and it was one of the most satisfying talks I’ve given…ever. I rarely get a lot of feedback from talks, and I have generally assumed this was either because I am not great at speaking in public, or the subject matter is just not interesting enough to give feedback about, or even both. This time it was different. So I’m going to write them down, anonymously because I…
It’s a new year, and I’ve been participating in the typical new year rituals of editing and organizing. In attempt to wrangle some of my physical book collection, some of books I have naturally sort themselves into categories. These books have been super useful to me, so I’m going to share them.
Despite my persistent reticence to go anywhere during winter holidays, I received an invitation to attend a cousin’s wedding in California, and, after talking it through with my husband, decided to go. I hadn’t seen these cousins for nearly 30 years. I also found out that my two sisters planned to attend, and the three of us haven’t been in the same place at the same time since at least 2002. At…
For years, I felt like there was this persistent fog around my brain. If I could just try a little harder. If I could train my mind and focus a little more. I could do so much. I could be the best version of myself. If. The list was endless. Turns out, it wasn’t me, it was my brain. I had ADHD, I just didn’t know it yet. I’ve been on this journey for many years now, so maybe it’s time to talk…
I avoid using the word “care” when I talk about accessibility, and I believe that part of my success in reaching engineers is that I have avoided that word. I try to avoid all emotion words, really. Many web developers/software engineers get really upset if you use the word “care”, because in doing so, you’re implying some shortcoming on their end if they do not. And heavens forbid a software…