WeissKlang L1 โ Punching Above Its Weight ๐
In November 1928, Georg Neumann and Erich Rickmann founded Georg Neumann & Co. in a Berlin workshop and by the end of that year, Neumann had debuted t [...]
Matthias Ott
Posts
Continvoucly Morged Value ๐
You might have seen the diagram before. The one Vincent Driessen put up on his website a few years ago to explain the concept of a Git branching model [...]
Webspace Invaders ๐
A couple of weeks back, Iโm sitting at my desk when a direct message from my frontend friend Kevin Powell pops up. Kevinโs a genuinely kind guy. He ma [...]
To Affinity and Beyond ๐
If there is one thing that Iโve learned in my roughly 30 years of working with design tools, it is that they come and go and that you should always st [...]
The Mystery of Storytelling ๐
Humans love stories. Maybe that is because for thousands of years, stories were the way information was preserved and passed on to others, to the next [...]
Amateurs! ๐
I have to confess that I am not reading that many books these days. Most of the time, I resort to listening to them in audio form. But every once in a [...]
Echoes of Connection ๐
In 1977, NASA launched two spaceships carrying two golden records into the void of interstellar space. The Voyager Golden Records contained instructio [...]
Linear() Is Not (That) Linear ๐
My gut feeling tells me that not that many people have yet heard of or used the linear() easing function, one of the most exciting newer additions to [...]
View Transitions: The Smooth Parts ๐
Now that cross-document view transitions are gradually making their way into modern browsers, now seems like the perfect time to explore them, if you [...]
Adding AVIF and WebP Support to My Craft CMS Site ๐
Five years ago, I wrote about AVIF: A New Image Format (back then). Since then, Iโve implemented WebP and AVIF support on numerous client sites for co [...]
Challenge ๐
Itโs the early nineties. Legendary comic book artist Frank Miller had just broken away from the major publishers, after creating titles like Daredevil [...]
Acoustic Room Treatment and Building Sound Panels, Part 1: Planning ๐
Whether you are running online workshops, recording audio or video, or making music, itโs worth spending some time on acoustic treatment for your room [...]
Play On ๐
In the late 1960s, a young musician was recording the sounds he played on his synthesizer onto his Revox tape recorders, when he suddenly discovered: [...]
Overshoot ๐
I still remember that moment. Do You? For me, that was a moment I never thought Iโd see. The le [...]
The HTML Output Element ๐
p code { background: rgb(134 134 134 / 30%); border-radius: 4px; } One of the most amazi [...]
Listening Closely ๐
My son, who is the violinist in our family, recently told me an interesting little fact about Augustin Hadelich, one of the greatest violinists alive: [...]
Compressed Fluid Typography ๐
When it comes to web typography, Iโm a sucker for fluid type. I love that it creates a harmonious rhythm for the typography of a project. I love how i [...]
The Lifeblood of the Web ๐
One Thursday in May, I was sitting in a slightly delayed train, heading home from Dรผsseldorf after three days of meeting good friends and making new o [...]
What Could Go Wrong? ๐
p:has(+ .quote) { margin-bottom: 0 } .quote p { margin-bottom: 2rem; font-size: calc(var(--fluid-2)); line-height: 1.25 }); [...]
Thatโs My Rank ๐
Have you ever wondered why new CSS features and other web technologies very often seem to just work across browsers these days? The reason is probabl [...]
Making Space ๐
Gregory Scott, founder of Kush Audio, shared an interesting insight about mixing music the other day: Sometimes, to bring something forward in the mix [...]
CSS :is() :where() the Magic Happens ๐
For Blogtober, I dug up a draft about the two CSS pseudo-class functions :is() and :where() that Iโd had lying around in my drafts folder for quite so [...]
Visual Regression Testing for External URLs With Playwright ๐
Weโve all been there: You write a bit of CSS, check whether everything looks right. You deploy. Then someone sends you a screenshot: the mobile naviga [...]
Jane Goodallโs Famous Last Words ๐
Jane Goodall, the scientist, conservationist, and educator who died last Wednesday at 91, will always be remembered for her singular, field-defining w [...]
European Tech Alternatives ๐ช๐บ ๐
For a European with lots of friends and like-minded web folks in the US, it is both heartbreaking and bewildering to see how the political and societa [...]
Tweaking the Circuits ๐
When the people at EMI ordered a bunch of Altec 436B compressors in the late 1950s for Abbey Road Studios, they were hoping for that legendary America [...]
Age Quod Agis ๐
Age quod agis. This Latin phrase, attributed to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, translates to โdo what you are doing.โ Do what y [...]
Blogtober 2025 - Day 1 ๐
Itโs Blogtober again. And this time, Iโve (more or less spontaneously) decided to take part in it. For those of you who donโt know what it is: Blogtob [...]
Best Free Synthesizer Plugins in 2025 ๐
I am convinced that it makes total sense to spend a certain amount of your (spare) time on this planet tinkering around and exploring stuff that seems [...]
An Internet Archive Plugin for Craft CMS 5 ๐
Now that the Webmention plugin is finally Craft 5 compatible after last week's update, I jumped at the chance and updated another plugin I had once wr [...]
Webmention for Craft CMS 5 ๐
Imagine my surprise, when, roughly two weeks ago, I received a direct message on Mastodon from Brandon Kelly, the founder and head of the team behind [...]
Owning It ๐
For the second time now, someone mentioned to me that it is kind of paradoxical that my newsletter, which is called โOwn Your Webโ, is not hosted on m [...]
Free Audio Plugins: Accusonus ERA 6 Bundle ๐
Iโve been down in an audio plugin rabbit hole lately. More on that in a later blog post. But I just stumbled upon a set of free plugins that might be [...]
How to Set Your Domain as Your Bluesky Handle ๐
As Twitter is (far too) slowly falling apart and more and more people are looking for alternatives, Bluesky is enjoying a surge in popularity at the m [...]
Highlighting Blogging on Mastodon ๐
In what looks like a very smart move, the team at Mastodon just released a very nice new feature for media organizations, journalists and bloggers: wh [...]
Fixing the Logitech Spotlight ๐
The Logitech Spotlight presentation remote is a sleek piece of hardware. It is comparatively small, fits nicely in the palm of your hand, and the butt [...]
Making Own Your Web More Sustainable ๐
I just published the 11th issue of Own Your Web, my newsletter about designing, building, creating, and publishing on the Web. When I started the news [...]
Welcome to the IndieWeb ๐
Imagine you post and make new friends on an online network for more than a decade โ and suddenly, your account gets suspended for no apparent reason. [...]
Links Worth Sharing ๐
Every day, we browse the Web and scroll our timelines. And every day, we find even more interesting websites, blog posts, articles, videos, podcasts, [...]
We โค๏ธ RSS ๐
In the last issue of Own Your Web, we looked at blogrolls as one way to improve the visibility and discoverability of our sites. Whether or not you wa [...]
All Things Being Equalized ๐
For my birthday, I got a new pair of speakers for my home office / home studio. After looking around for quite some time, I settled on the ADAM Audio [...]
42 for 42 ๐
ol { list-style-position: outside; padding-left: 1em; } ol li { margin-bottom: 0.5em; } [...]
Tour De-Noise ๐
Whether you are running online workshops, hosting a live stream, or recording audio or video content, optimal audio quality is absolutely essential. P [...]
Whatโs Too Good to Be True? ๐
The web platform is changing rapidly these days. With every major browser release, more and more powerful features get added, many of which are based [...]
The Best Comment Section on the Internet ๐
Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, recently sat down with Tim Ferriss to talk about a bunch of different things. One of th [...]
2024: The Year of the Personal Website ๐
At the beginning of 2023, I wrote in a blog post which I titled The Year of the Personal Website: In the search for a permanent home on the web, more [...]
Climate Optimism ๐
Itโs not going well. After all-time heat records were shattered worldwide during heat waves across all continents and ongoing wildfires eradicated 5 [...]
No Borders ๐
Where were you in 2013 and what were you doing back then? What have you done over those last ten years? How have the last ten years changed your life, [...]
My New Newsletter: Own Your Web ๐
I just sent out the first issue of my new newsletter Own Your Web. Own Your Web is a newsletter for anyone who wants to design, build, create, and pu [...]
My Favorite Mac Apps in 2023 ๐
h3 a {text-decoration: underline} After three years, I finally replaced my old Intel MacBook [...]
WOFF Has Left the Building ๐
In a recent project, the web fonts I bought and downloaded were only available as WOFF2 files. Staring in disbelief at the unpacked folder full of WOF [...]
Pointing Fingers ๐
Donโt use your finger!โ Regardless of which country and school system you grew up in, chances are you have heard this sentence at least once from one [...]
Good Riddance, GPTBot ๐
Just like Google is constantly indexing the Web, OpenAI is now crawling the open Web to scrape content from websites for free to train their LLM (lucr [...]
The New CSS ๐
Alright, letโs write more about CSS! CSS! CSS! Change Iโve been writing CSS since the early 2000s, shortly after we ditched building web layouts with [...]
Writing, Fragments, and the Memex Method ๐
This piece by Cory Doctorow about blogging, which I read a few days ago, is exceptional. Why? I already knew that blogging โ and having a personal web [...]
Simple Truths About Personal Websites ๐
Nobody knows you. You are not entitled to anyoneโs attention. Be respectful, be helpful, be kind. Your personal website isnโt a replacement for social [...]
CSS Custom Properties Beyond the :root ๐
Manuel asked: Is there aย good reaยญson why weโre definยญing globยญal cusยญtom propยญerยญties on :root/โhtml and not onย body?โ Itโs a great question: Everybo [...]
Starting A New Kirby Project ๐
Today, I started a new project with Kirby CMS. (No, itโs not my personal site. That oneโs still brewingโฆ) Kirby is a lightweight, no-fuzz content mana [...]
A README Template โ With an Automatically Generated Table of Contents ๐
A while ago, I wrote about what you could include in a README file for a project. Based on this post and a few practical examples of READMEs, I create [...]
How I (Usually) Write Blog Posts ๐
Manuel shared how he approaches writing and publishing blog posts on his personal site. If you follow him, and especially if his RSS feed is on your l [...]
How To README ๐
Solid documentation of a project is important, especially if youโre working in a team. When all information about how to install, deploy, or contribut [...]
Synthe Size Me ๐
Leonie Watson just shared an interesting audio snippet on Mastodon: https://front-end.social/@tink/110007014963441869 What sounds like her speaking ab [...]
Dig Deeper ๐
After about a year of living in our new home, after waiting for our neighbors to finish their driveway (life lesson: donโt expect gratitude from stran [...]
Expand and Stabilize, Explore and Craft ๐
Dave wrote about what he calls The Feature Work โ Maintenance Work Loop: he often finds himself working in cycles of Feature Work and Maintenance Work [...]
Web Push It Real Good ๐
Letโs call it what it is: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) were a great idea full of potential but they never really caught on. One reason for that was tha [...]
CSS Speech Module Level 1 ๐
As I noted yesterday, screen readers donโt convey the semantics of many HTML elements like strong or em. When I shared my post on Mastodon, Stรฉphane D [...]
Screen Readers Donโt Convey the Semantics of STRONG and EM ๐
I always was under the impression that if I add emphasis to a piece of text in HTML by adding an em or a strong element, this emphasis would also be [...]
Uncontainable Container Query Excitement ๐
CSS Container Queries are now available in all major browsers. ๐ฅณ With the release of Firefox 110 yesterday, the stable versions of Chrome, Safari, Ed [...]
Time To Fresh Blogpost ๐
I want to start a little experiment: I want to see if I can reduce my TTFB, which is, of course, short for โtime to fresh blogpostโ. Why? Because I th [...]
Streams of Consciousness ๐
Jeremy wrote a little something about streams, in particular about streams on personal websites. His home page actually is like a stream: links, notes [...]
Reflections ๐
A lot of us are still working from home these days. Many are in meetings every day, more and more people are holding important customer presentations [...]
Analytics Analysis ๐
When it comes to tracking and analyzing a websiteโs traffic, Google Analytics (GA) seems to be the obvious choice: everyone knows it, itโs powerful, i [...]
Tapetenwechsel, or: Breaking the Sameness ๐
We all want to do our best work. We all want to create something of value. But what if youโre stuck? What if the solution just doesnโt show up, the id [...]
Spirits That Iโve Cited ๐
I have a tip for everyone whoโs now โ or very soon โ trying to find out whether a text was written by a human or an AI. Sure, you could train another [...]
A Birthday Audio Gear Upgrade ๐
Today, I turned 41. It was a wonderful, relaxed day with my family โ and my parentsโ dog who is a bit of a maniacโฆ ๐ I also got to try out my two โof [...]
Updating My Site in 2023 ๐
Alright. Enough talk. Letโs get to it. One of my plans for 2023 is to redesign this website. Here is the thing: it is easy to promise things to yours [...]
The Year of the Personal Website ๐
We all know that it is going to happen. Itโs not a question of if, but when Twitter will collapse. By the way: one day, Medium will follow. So will In [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 24: NaN ๐
For the last day of this yearโs Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar, weโre back in Berlin. NaN is a foundry and type design practice โbalancing w [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 23: Typotheque ๐
Typotheque is a type design studio based in The Hague, Netherlands. Founded in 1999 by Peter Biฤพak, who also teaches typeface design at the renowned p [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 22: 205TF ๐
205TF is a type foundry based in Lyon, France. It was founded in 2017 by Damien Gautier and Florence Roller who run the foundry together with foundry [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 21: HvD Fonts ๐
For day 21, weโre back in Berlin, where a young graphic designer with a love for type decided in 2008 to make his passion his full-time job. Today, Ha [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 20: Frere-Jones Type ๐
Tobias Frere-Jones is one of the most accomplished type designers in the world. He worked at Font Bureau in Boston where he designed modern classics l [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 19: Fontwerk ๐
Fontwerk was founded in 2019 by Ivo Gabrowitsch in Berlin. Building on his excellent network and years of experience as marketing director at FontShop [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 18: Vectro ๐
Vectro is a type design studio based in Portland founded in 2021 by Lizy Gershenzon and Travis Kochel. The two have been running the design studio Scr [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 17: Studio Renรฉ Bieder ๐
You probably have seen several of his typefaces on MyFonts before. Maybe you even purchased one or more of them. For almost 10 years, he was selling h [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 16: R-Typography ๐
R-Typography is a type foundry based in Lisbon Portugal, founded by Rui Abreu in 2008 and now run together with Catarina Vaz. Rui drew his first type [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 15: David Jonathan Ross ๐
David Jonathan Ross (DJR) had been working with The Font Bureau for nearly a decade, when he decided to start his own type foundry in 2016, now locate [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 14: Interval Type ๐
Bonjour Paris! The type design community in Paris is buzzing and today, weโre looking at one of the younger foundries that has already received a lot [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 13: Newglyph ๐
Newglyph is a type design studio based in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded by Ian Party and his team in 2019. If that name rings a bell, itโs because ju [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 12: Swiss Typefaces ๐
Many type foundries claim to be offering innovative designs and flexible type systems. But few deliver on this promise like Swiss Typefaces does. Foun [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 11: Sharp Type ๐
Sharp Type is a digital type foundry based in New York City and was founded in 2015 by Chantra Malee and Lucas Sharp. Chantra is in charge of strategy [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 10: Colophon Foundry ๐
Colophon Foundry is a foundry based on London founded by Anthony Sheret and Edd Harrington. The two designers started working together in 2009 in a sh [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 9: Commercial Type ๐
Commercial Type is a custom type design studio founded in 2007 by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz, based in New York City and London. They have wor [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 8: Letters from Sweden ๐
Hej! Time to look at the next type foundry and this time, we travel to Scandinavia. Letters from Sweden, founded by self taught type designer Gรถran Sรถ [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 7: Lineto ๐
Founded in 1993 by Cornel Windlin and Stephan Mรผller, Lineto is Switzerlandโs first digital type foundry. Over the last three decades, Lineto has coll [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 6: Ohno Type Company ๐
Sometimes, it can take quite a while for a foundry to finally become sustainable. Sometimes, like in the case of James Edmondson, it can take 17 type [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 5: Milieu Grotesque ๐
Milieu Grotesque was founded in 2010 by graphic and type designers Timo Gaessner and Alexander Colby in Zurich. Today, the foundry is based in Lisbon, [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 4: TypeMates ๐
TypeMates is a comparatively young foundry from Germany, founded in 2015 by Lisa Fischbach, Jakob Runge, and Nils Thomsen. Despite its young age, the [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 3: Klim Type Foundry ๐
For day three, we travel to New Zealand, where Klim Type Foundry was founded in 2005 by type designer Kris Sowersby. After having worked a while as a [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 2: Dinamo ๐
Dinamo is another type foundry from Switzerland, founded by Fabian Harb and Johannes Breyer in Basel. After moving to Berlin for a few years, they now [...]
Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar โ Day 1: Grilli Type ๐
Weโll start the advent calendar with one of the most successful foundries of the last decade. Grilli Type is a Swiss type foundry that was founded in [...]
The Independent Type Foundry Advent Calendar 2022 ๐
The independent type design community has grown tremendously over the last couple of years and the quality and variety of fonts is truly breathtaking. [...]
A Conversation With ChatGPT ๐
I just had a casual chat with ChatGPT that I wanted to share with you. Many of the things I asked and the answers I received are related to a talk I g [...]
ChatGPT, please explain websites in the words of William Shakespeare ๐
Websites, oh websites! Thou art a vast and wondrous realm, filled with knowledge and information to be explored. Thou art a tool for communication a [...]
Transient Frameworks ๐
Since the first days of the Web, people have been thinking and debating hard about the best ways forward. The network, the protocols, the browsers, th [...]
Leaving Twitter Behind ๐
Twitter is not well. Many of us were worried that Elon Musk might rapidly change the face of the platform. But only very few expected things to go dow [...]
Converting Your Twitter Archive to Markdown ๐
The bird is not well. So it is time to request and download an archive of your Twitter data now, if you havenโt done this recently. After you have req [...]
The Wrong Question ๐
When author Jim Collins first met his hero Peter Drucker, whom many regard as the greatest management thinker of all time, the two men where at very d [...]
It Wasnโt Written ๐
It takes years to become good at it. So we read books, take classes, and visit workshops to become better. And still, it may take a lifetime to master [...]
Syndicating Posts from Your Personal Website to Twitter and Mastodon ๐
The hellsite has a new king. And so, many are moving from Twitter to other social networks like micro.blog or Mastodon or are at least trying out thos [...]
Suspension ๐
It could happen out of the blue, without any warning. It could happen without you knowing what you did wrong. It could happen today. Twitter could jus [...]
None of Your Business ๐
I bet you know this: Youโve created something โ a drawing, a layout, a video, a piece of code, or a blog post โ and after youโre more or less done, yo [...]
Shitty Code Prototypes ๐
I love building prototypes. They allow me to explore and sketch ideas, test my assumptions, and try out things at an early stage to make better design [...]
Better Bridges ๐
I couldnโt agree more to what Dave wrote in his recent blog post about the increasing demands of the front-end web: the job of a front-end developer i [...]
Foundations ๐
Please use whatever tool gets the job done and makes sense for you. But then again, Iโve seen so many frameworks and tools come and go that it can be [...]
Detecting CSS Selector Support with JavaScript ๐
p code { font-size: 80%; } There are many ways to adjust your CSS code to a browserโs support [...]
Doing Our Part ๐
Iโm right with Dave on this one! ๐ Iโm tired of enviยญronยญmenยญtal responยญsiยญbilยญiยญty always falling on the conยญsumer. Iย know conยญsumer demand bubยญbles [...]
Patch That Package ๐
p code { font-size: 80%; } You probably know this situation. You are working on a project and [...]
Brain Dump ๐
You know what makes it so easy for many people to just dump their thoughts into a silo like Twitter instead of writing a post on their own site? You d [...]
Level Up Your Headings Game ๐
Providing a proper document outline is one of the most effective things you can do to improve the accessibility of your HTML. Like the headings of the [...]
Generating Accessibility Test Results for a Whole Website With Evaluatory ๐
Yesterday, I shared how to test a whole website for accessibility issues with Pa11y and how to output the results as HTML. I also shared the link on T [...]
Generating Accessibility Test Results for a Whole Website With Pa11y CI ๐
p code { font-size: 80%; } This week, Iโm doing an accessibility audit for a client. One of t [...]
The CSS Cascade, a Deep Dive ๐
The Cascade is legendary. Legendary because it is the C in CSS. Legendary in how well it works to determine which selector wins when browsers apply st [...]
Eleventy Plus Vite ๐
Whatโs the single best thing you can do if you want to learn a new tool or evaluate a new technology? Right, itโs getting your hands dirty. Only by bu [...]
You, a Million Times ๐
Who should you write for? Your friends and family? Your colleagues and peers? The people you look up to? Everyone in the community? Everyone on the In [...]
Updates About Updates ๐
I love reading posts in which people talk about recent updates to their personal sites. It does three things: It shows the person reading your post t [...]
In and Out of Style ๐
One of the most fascinating things about the Web is how it has evolved. By that, I donโt mean so much the mind-blowing speed of growth, but rather how [...]
Just Put Stuff Out There ๐
Even if you have been posting on your own site for quite some time, blogging regularly can still be challenging. Ask almost anyone who blogs and they [...]
How to Delete Your Commit History in Git ๐
Maybe you want to publish a project but donโt want everyone to see what mess you created before your initial release. Maybe you want to hand over a Gi [...]
Unblocking Your Writing Blocks, Part 3: I Canโt Write ๐
Maybe you are afraid to start writing because you think that you canโt write. I donโt believe thatโs true. Everyone can write. You have written letter [...]
Unblocking Your Writing Blocks, Part 2: Iโm Not an Expert nor a โThought Leaderโ ๐
One of the reasons youโre not blogging on your own personal website might be that youโre thinking: โWhy would people listen to what I have to say? Iโm [...]
Connections ๐
Iโm sitting in the ICE 205, one of the German high-speed trains, traveling back home after two days in Dรผsseldorf at Beyond Tellerrand, Marc Thieleโs [...]
CSS :has( ) A Parent Selector Now ๐
I donโt remember the exact moment anymore. But I remember that it was with a mix of disbelief and disappointment that I realized one day that there wa [...]
Donโt Play It Like the Flute ๐
Hans Zimmer just won an Academy Award for his musical score for โDune,โ and if you have seen the movie or listened to the soundtrack, you know why. Zi [...]
Unblocking Your Writing Blocks, Or: Debunking the Reasons That Keep You from Writing Your First Blog Post Today. ๐
Why is it that although we are now in the millions building and creating for the Web, only very few share their knowledge and experience on their own [...]
Changes โ 2021 โ 2022 ๐
Over the first couple of days of 2022, I read a lot of year-in-review posts, like Michelleโs, Daveโs, Hiddeโs, and Jeremyโs, to name a few. What a ple [...]
Turning 30 ๐
30 years ago, on August 6, 1991, a computer scientist working at CERN introduced a project to the public he had been working on for several months. Th [...]
Starting Again (Again) ๐
It was about the same time last year that I decided to change something. I hadnโt written and published as many posts on my site as I had wished to ge [...]
No Wrong Notes ๐
He played the piano like no other. Literally. When legendary jazz pianist Thelonious Monk sat down at the piano and started playing, he would hit the [...]
Play At Work ๐
I love to watch my children play. How they invent things and stories. How they jump into roles and, just as quickly, change roles again. How they inte [...]
Less but Better ๐
You know that feeling when you are leaving a movie theater after having watched a superhero movie and it almost feels as if you had superpowers yourse [...]
I Will, I Should, I Might ๐
It happened again. And I bet this has happened to you before, too. Iโm talking of New Yearโs resolutions. Every year we make them and tell ourselves t [...]
My Typical Day ๐
Colin Devroe kicked off a series of โMy Typical Dayโ posts. He tagged Dan Mall (and Chris Coyier, Jeremy Keith and others) and Dan tagged Sara Soueida [...]
Doomsday ๐
Hip-hop has lost one of its finest artists to ever touch the mic and an MPC. Daniel Dumile, better known by his stage name MF DOOM, passed away on Oct [...]
Bye, 2020! ๐
So, that was 2020. First of all, I hope that you and your loved-ones are well, that you had something to do this year that brought you fulfillment and [...]
Better Options ๐
We all want to make the right decisions. Not only because we want to be successful, but often simply because we want to avoid the negative consequence [...]
Painting With the Web ๐
Have you ever seen Gerhard Richter painting? It is phenomenal to watch. He might start one of his large, abstract paintings by carefully applying oil [...]
:focus-visible Is Here ๐
One of the most important features of a website that is built with accessibility in mind is that it can be navigated with a keyboard. Most blind users [...]
On the Design Systems Between Us ๐
Ethan Marcotte just gave a fabulous remote talk at SydCSS on the nature of design systems and the challenges of creating and maintaining them over tim [...]
Design and the 80/20 Principle ๐
Over 120 years ago, an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, and philosopher named Vilfredo Pareto made an astonishing discovery. He was looking a [...]
CSS Custom Properties With @property ๐
Una Kravets has written an excellent article about a feature that has been released with Chrome 85: The @property syntax of the Properties and Values [...]
AVIF: A New Image Format ๐
It doesnโt happen every day that a new image format comes along. So itโs not surprising that people are excited that Chrome 85 has been released with [...]
Your Brain Is Plastic ๐
Martha Curtis had a dream. She wanted to become a violinist. She had been playing the violin since she was nine and excelled at it. But there was a pr [...]
Aspect Ratio in CSS: Hacks and a New Property ๐
Layout on the Web is all about flexibility. That elements adjust their dimensions to the size of their content, be it texts of varying length or image [...]
The Thing With Leading in CSS ๐
The spacing between individual elements of a website and, in particular, the vertical spacing, has been a regular matter of debate between web designe [...]
Design Debt ๐
The dilemma with debt is that it is easily incurred but, inevitably, there comes a time when you will have to pay it back. The problem with design deb [...]
BICEPS: Six Core Needs for Humans at Work ๐
How do you feel about your work at the moment? Do you enjoy what you are doing? Do you feel excited about it? Does it give you a sense of accomplishme [...]
Fading Music in and Out in an Online Workshop (On a Mac) ๐
When it became increasingly clear that running in-person workshops would not be possible for the foreseeable future, the XDI team, which I am a part o [...]
How I Structure My CSS (for Now) ๐
When it comes to structuring CSS, there is no shortage of different naming conventions, methodologies, and architectures. Be it BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS, IT [...]
Halftime ๐
This is post number 50 of my 100-days-of-writing challenge. Itโs halftime! Time for me to look at how this little (?!?) experiment worked out so far a [...]
Gallโs Law ๐
In 1963, the people at NASA needed a building. And not just any building. It had to be large enough to be able to assemble the enormous space vehicles [...]
Finite and Infinite Games ๐
According to James P. Carse, there are at least two types of games: Finite games and infinite games. Finite games have a clear beginning and end, a di [...]
Range ๐
What is the right strategy to achieve greatness and succeed in a specific domain? If you believe the predominant narrative in many efficiency-oriented [...]
Lateral Thinking With Withered Technology ๐
One evening in the late 1970s, an engineer from Kyoto was riding home on the Shinkansen, when he recognized the man sitting next to him playing around [...]
The Idea Machine ๐
I used to dream of a magical machine. It was about as big as a microwave, all silver metal (with rivets, of course), and it had little knobs, lamps, a [...]
Hell Yeah or No ๐
Derek Sivers just published a new book. It is called โHELL YEAH OR NOโ and you can get it on Derekโs website. Having enjoyed Derekโs blog articles and [...]
Progressive ๐
Ethan Marcotte wrote this on Twitter on Monday: Nosยญtalยญgia for the heyยญday of web design has to be balยญanced with the knowlยญedge that much of what we [...]
Their Fault ๐
It is clearly their fault. The clients just donโt get design. It is clearly their fault. Is it, though? Whenever we struggle or fail, our first inst [...]
Always at Your Service ๐
Jeremy Keith and the team at Clearleft have started a new podcast. In each episode, they are looking at a different theme related to design, developme [...]
Wicked Design ๐
Problems come in two flavors. There are the problems we know how to solve, or at least know that there is a solution to them. Like mathematical equati [...]
Scrolling Elements Into View ๐
Although you should not mess with scrolling unless it is really necessary, scrolling an element into view is something that is needed from time to tim [...]
Useless Is Useful ๐
Much like every other weekend, I spent several hours cleaning the apartment this Sunday. Although I enjoyed the result of it, I had always looked at c [...]
Fear ๐
I knew it would happen again. The fear. The tunnel vision. The blackout. Only a few seconds left. I donโt want to be here. โNext is Matthias, who will [...]
The New Urgency of Climate Change ๐
The COVID-19 crisis has temporarily shifted our attention away from the most pressing and life-threatening of all challenges: Climate change. But whil [...]
Donโt Assume, Validate. ๐
As we gain more and more experience in building digital products, we tend to think ever so often that we already know what a good solution looks like [...]
Necessity Is the Ultimate Teacher ๐
Remember that thing you wanted to learn? You know what I mean. That thing that keeps on nagging in the back of your head. That thing that comes to min [...]
TeamOps ๐
Ethan Marcotte just wrote a great piece about design systems and how the promise that design systems would hugely improve collaboration between design [...]
One Egg ๐
The kids wanted pancakes. But there was only one egg left. Usually, I use four eggs to make pancakes. But the kids wanted pancakes. So I made pancakes [...]
Thoughts on Writing: Read It Out Loud ๐
For me, 2020 started with a few posts about writing. I had read and listened to a lot of material on writing and wanted to share some of the things I [...]
85 Percent ๐
As a child, teenager, and student, I used to play a lot of football (or soccer, for my American friends). I only played in a club for about two years [...]
Fussy Web, True Meaning. ๐
Sarah Drasner just published a fabulous article, In Defense of a Fussy Website, in which she makes the case that we should all design and build websit [...]
Milton Glaser โ Ten Things I Have Learned ๐
Milton Glaser, one of the greatest graphic designers of our time, passed away this Friday on his 91st birthday in New York City. Well known for his 19 [...]
The Web in the Age of Ubiquity ๐
If you have kids, you think a lot about how the world might look like when they grow up. At the moment, the world is being transformed on so many leve [...]
Go Deep ๐
Do you know the feeling when you know an album so well that you always anticipate the next bar of a song and when the song ends, you can already hear [...]
What Would This Look Like If It Were Easy? ๐
Tim Ferriss just released the audiobook of his book โTribe of Mentorsโ. The book contains the answers to 11 questions he sent out to hundreds of the w [...]
Debugging HTML With Advanced CSS Selectors ๐
Writing HTML is hard. At least writing semantically sound, valid HTML is. This might come as a surprise to those who only scratch the surface of what [...]
Becoming a Tyrant ๐
It is one of the most emotional and finest moments in โThe Last Danceโ, Netflixโs documentary series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls of the [...]
Release ๐
One of the things Iโve been thinking a lot about is how to know when something is ready. A website, an article, a song, a painting โ whatever it is, h [...]
Smooth Operations ๐
How many connections are there in a team of two? One, of course. In a team of three? Three, of course. A team of four? Six. A team of five? Ten, alrea [...]
Feck Perfuction ๐
There are books that you read once and never open again. There are even more books that you start to read and somehow never finish. I have a lot of th [...]
There Is No Secret Code ๐
Back in design school, I spent days โ weeks even โ trying to crack the secret code of a given topic. Typography? Once I know all the rules and all the [...]
Resilient Systems vs Humans ๐
There was this strange sound. Clack, clack, clack! Was it coming from the tires? Clack, clack, clack! Just a few minutes after we hit the Autobahn to [...]
The Web of Privilege ๐
My father likes to say: โMan gewรถhnt sich an jeden Scheiร,โ which translates to something along the lines of โeventually, any shit grows on you.โ He o [...]
CSS Custom Properties Fail Without Fallback ๐
Today I learned! Jeremy Keith wrote about an interesting detail about CSS custom properties, also known as CSS variables, that he learned from Lea Ver [...]
Building the Inclusive Web Together ๐
Itโs been over a year now that, after reading an article by Ethan Marcotte, I wrote about why we all need to do better to make the Web truly inclusive [...]
The Importance of Being Inauthentic ๐
โJust be authentic!โ Iโm sure youโve heard that advice before. Maybe you also know some people, who proudly proclaim that they always like to be authe [...]
Welcome to the 21st Century ๐
My late grandmother was born in 1913. When she was my age, she had already lived through the Great Depression, the Spanish flu pandemic, hyperinflatio [...]
Balancing Risk ๐
Life is full of risks. The risk to make a wrong decision. The risk to lose. The risk to fail. The risk to mention too many risks in the first paragrap [...]
Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes ๐
Joschi Kuphal shared an amazing video on Twitter this morning. It is a documentary about an exercise that the school teacher, lecturer, and diversity [...]
Designing and Making ๐
One of the reasons for Appleโs success in the years when they invented breakthrough products like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, was the way they [...]
The Shortcut Boomerang ๐
I love shortcuts. Not only keyboard shortcuts but also those in real life: When there is the opportunity to solve a problem quicker and more easily by [...]
Fuck it, why wait? ๐
Run the Jewels released โRTJ4โ today, two days ahead of schedule because of recent events in the US. It is available on the streaming services, but al [...]
World Wide Gamut Web ๐
Color on the Web has seen many iterations. When I started to fall in love with the Web in the late nineties, every self-respecting web designer was us [...]
The Right Way to Use fonts.com Web Fonts ๐
Letโs talk about web fonts. More specifically, about a mistake I have seen developers make in several projects for different agencies: Embedding a web [...]
Change and the Status Quo ๐
Nature changes. Change is everywhere around us. All the time. Inevitably. Change is a constant. The only problem with this is that human beings gene [...]
The Beautiful ๐
It is 1995. A 13-year old boy in Germany is playing basketball in his room. The walls are plastered with posters. Michael Jordan (life-sized), Scottie [...]
The Details ๐
Ask any business owner or manager what could be improved about the operations of their company and they will very likely tell you that they are workin [...]
Digital Type Specimens ๐
Type specimens are as old as printed typography. They were originally designed by printers and type foundries as documents that would show typefaces i [...]
The Curse of Knowledge ๐
A few weeks ago, my son came up to me and asked if I wanted to guess which song he was about to clap. I agreed, sure that it couldnโt be so hard to gu [...]
100 Days of Writing ๐
So, I havenโt written in a while. Or, to be more precise: I havenโt finished a written piece in a while. That is not because I didnโt write at all, bu [...]
My Visual Studio Code Setup: Extensions and Themes ๐
And then, the display of my MacBook Pro broke. So after five years, it was time to get a new machine, after all. Every time this had happened in the p [...]
Thoughts on Writing: Diamond Polishers and Vomit Drafters ๐
They say that writers come in two flavors: Diamond polishers and vomit drafters. Let me explain. Have you ever been sitting at your desk, trying to wr [...]
Thoughts on Writing: What They Say ๐
You might have heard of this quote from Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap: A brand is not what you say it is. Itโs what they say itย is. What he [...]
My RSS Feed Collection of Personal Websites ๐
Yesterday, Chris Coyier asked a question on Twitter: โWhoโs gonna read your personal blog because it has an RSS feed? Iโm gonna read your personal bl [...]
2019 Year in Review ๐
Now that a lot of people are publishing their year in review posts, I decided to write my first one, too, this time. And if only to be able to look ba [...]
Thoughts on Writing: Shitty First Drafts ๐
I donโt know about you but many people seem to think that accomplished writers are able to sit down at their desks and immediately start writing in be [...]
Thoughts on Writing ๐
Since I started writing on this site about three years ago, I have been thinking a lot about writing as a craft. What are the qualities of good writin [...]
Sharpen the Contradictions ๐
In a recent conversation with Tim Ferriss, Ben Horowitz, a co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, shared a line he likes to use in man [...]
Construction vs. Growth ๐
For those of us who work on and with the Web, the idea that the Web has its very own inherent qualities is not new. Whether you read John Allsoppโs se [...]
Frequency ๐
How often should you publish work on your site? Once a month? Once a week? Daily even? When you ask other creators or look on the Web for advice, you [...]
The Illusion of Control ๐
What would happen if we really accepted the fact that control is an illusion? How would this change the way we approach projects? Making plans would a [...]
The Decisions Journey ๐
With every project we start and every problem we are trying to solve, we are embarking on a journey. And although we might have a goal, this journey i [...]
The Culture Code ๐
The best books are the ones that change your perspective, your view on the world, in such a profound way that you donโt look at it the same way ever a [...]
The Single Best Way to Take Notes ๐
Ernest Hemingway did it. Successful entrepreneurs like Richard Branson do it. And Iโm quite sure, even most of the former US presidents did it: Taking [...]
Write It Down ๐
Whenever you have an idea, write it down. Immediately. It doesnโt matter how big or small you think the idea is. Just write it down. It doesnโt matte [...]
Nownownow ๐
Lately, Iโve been listening to a lot of podcasts. I enjoy the new perspectives they provide, especially interviews. Debbie Millmanโs legendary design [...]
Into the Personal-Website-Verse ๐
Social media in 2019 is a garbage fire. What started out as the most promising development in the history of the Web โ the participation of users in t [...]
Repeat After Me ๐
Repยญeยญtiยญtio est mater studiorum. Repetition is the mother of learning. You might have heard this old Latin proverb before, and itโs true: Repetition [...]
Vulnerability, Creativity, and Prototyping ๐
Vulnerability is still highly stigmatized in our society, particularly in business. If you want to be successful in life you better be brave and donโt [...]
#SaveYourInternet ๐
Itโs hard to decide whatโs right and whatโs wrong these days. There are so many people and so many organizations with so many different interests that [...]
Building an Accessible Mega Menu โ Part 1: Background ๐
Although some designers dislike them, because, at a first glance, they seem to be too overwhelming and too densely packed with information: If you des [...]
Copy That. ๐
When I was in school our art teacher used to say: Kopieren heiรt kapieren. Which translates to something along the lines of โcopying something means u [...]
Clarity and Style ๐
A few days ago, John Maeda, Head of Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic, shared this tweet: Good design is about clarity over style, and [...]
Information Management, A Proposal ๐
Yesterday, the Web turned 30. Thirty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a document called โInformation Management, A Proposal,โ his formulation of [...]
Planning, Goals, and Uncertainty ๐
People like to stick to their habits. Why? Because it is safer where they are now. Following a routine, a trusted pattern, reduces uncertainty about t [...]
Convenient or Unique? ๐
If youโre riding through the suburbs in a train, you might recognize that houses usually come in two flavors. For one, there are the townhouses: Tight [...]
Considering the Opposite ๐
When you are developing a statement about something, this advice can be useful: If you can turn the statement into the opposite and it sounds like the [...]
Our New Design Overlords and a Remarkable Future ๐
I spent the last days of 2018 listening to an amazing podcast: Stephen Fryโs Great Leap Years brilliantly tells the story of the evolution of informat [...]
Drives safe! ๐
We all know that we should backup our data regularly and ideally with some sort of backup strategy but letโs be honest: Many of us donโt. Over the yea [...]
Crazy Work ๐
I have a confession to make. Iโve become utterly terrible at finishing books, especially non-fiction. I once even published a list of books I will def [...]
Infused Design Attitude ๐
I recently listened to an interesting episode of the podcast โThe Design of Business | The Business of Designโ, in which Jessica Helfand and Michael B [...]
Overflow: unlimited ๐
This morning, I read a tweet by Dave Rupert that made me smile: Hey, Internet. My son loves drawing. This is great. My house is filled with 1000s of p [...]
What is it for? ๐
Yesterday, I shared some advice by Seth Godin from an interview with Chase Jarvis. Today, Iโll do the same again, but not because Iโm lazy (at least n [...]
Unlimited Bowling. ๐
Last weekend, I listened to a highly interesting episode of the Chase Jarvis Live Show, a podcast featuring interviews with creators, innovators, and [...]
Never done. ๐
I spent two weeks in August visiting my sister in New York. It was the first time for me in New York and one of the things that impressed me the most, [...]
Out there. ๐
Recently, I read two posts within a few days that both resonated a lot with me. The topic of both pieces was the same: Writing. Or more specifically, [...]
Starting Prototyping.news ๐
Prototyping has been captivating me for quite some time now. Since 2012, I teach Interface Prototyping at the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and De [...]
Saving Your Web Workflows with Prototyping ๐
Prototyping.news: For a monthly update on the latest articles, tools, and other resources about prototyping for the Web, sign up for my new newsletter [...]
Write Your Media Queries in Pixels, Not EMs ๐
Edit on 09-04-2022: This article is quite old and I have since realized that the conclusion I draw in the article was wrong. The upsides of using EMs [...]
Colorful Code: Adding Syntax Highlighting to My Site ๐
In all of the posts I published on my site so far, Iโve never shared a single line of code. But since this is going to change with the next article on [...]
Resolving CSS Gridlock ๐
CSS Grid is here and I bet you also heard that it's a game changer that could once more completely change the way we approach web layout. A New Kid on [...]
We Are Team Internet. We Need to Save #NetNeutrality. ๐
Once more, net neutrality is under attack. This founding principle of the open web guarantees that all data packages are treated equally โ regardless [...]
Off the Beaten Track ๐
When we design and build things for the web, itโs tempting to fall into the trap of doing things the We-have-always-done-it-that-wayโข. And this doesn' [...]
Adding JSON Feed to My Craft CMS Site ๐
Despite the proclaimed death of RSS I know a lot of people who still love to read their feeds on a daily basis. So feeds are definitely here to stay a [...]
Going Indie. Step 2: Reclaiming Content ๐
This is the second article of a two-part series on digital citizenship. Part one was all about online privacy and how to protect it, this second part [...]
Going Indie. Step 1: Securing Privacy ๐
This is the first article of a two-part series on digital citizenship. Part one is about online privacy and how to protect it, the second part focuses [...]
Patterns Beyond Context ๐
As we are moving from pages to patterns when creating and documenting websites and other digital design systems, pattern libraries are becoming increa [...]
Progressive Search ๐
Today, I added a basic weighted search to this site. You can find it here and in the footer below. Providing a search functionality is one of the pill [...]
Data loss (also) by JavaScript ๐
Tantek รelik wrote a post in 2015 called โjs;dr = JavaScript required; Didnโt Read.โ. It was about a fundamental problem regarding sites that depend o [...]
Books I Will Definitely Maybe Read in 2017 ๐
Itโs that time of year when most people publish their โbooks I have readโ articles. Tim for example, and also Jeremy. I for myself am what you could c [...]
Starting to Write Notes ๐
In May 2016, I flipped the switch for the redesign of this site. My last site was never updated once it was online, so I wanted to do things different [...]
Beyond Tellerrand Berlin 2016 ๐
Once again, beyond tellerrand, a great conference about design, development, and all things web, took place in the cold November air of Berlin. After [...]
Closing the Gaps ๐
Do you remember when you wrote your first line of HTML? Watching my students sweat blood while I introduce them to the basics of HTML and CSS always r [...]
Beyond Tellerrand 2016 ๐
Lately, I travelled to Dรผsseldorf and attended the IndieWebCamp and also beyond tellerrand, a conference about design, development, and all things web [...]
The Art of the Restart ๐
Far too long, we have thoughtย of web projects like rocket launches: You plan, design, and build the thing, maybe you train people how to steer it, and [...]