Latest Posts (20 found)
David Bushell 1 weeks ago

Ruminations on notifications

I’m on annual leave next week. Now would be the ideal time to drop premium rage-bait and walk away. “One browser tab is enough” was drafted but due to a tragic accident we are all spared. This sideways look at notifications should be more relatable. When I pay using NFC I’m annoyed twice. First by Apple Pay, then again when my banking app catches up. Can’t they decide between themselves? I don’t need two reminders about the groceries I bought a minute ago. Maybe I can disable notifications for either one, but then I might miss real fraud alerts. Notifications are a chore I could do without. Notifications are a core feature of needy programs . Every app wants to be the centre of attention. They can’t wait to tell you about their new features. Presumably in-app notifications are the new trend because OS level notifications are easily blocked. Vivaldi ruined my browsing experience for a long time. That annoying “toast” wasn’t dismissible. It crossed the line of death and looked suspicious. Eventually it was fixed by moving into the tab bar. I recently returned to Sublime Text to avoid modern apps that were too needy. In response to my post, developers were keen to laud their command line supremacy. I don’t disagree but the CLI isn’t immune to notification nonsense. Every time I open Neovim I get stopped. Guess what happens when I press enter? Nothing! How about telling me what the command is to update the damn plugin?! Dear devs, updates may be your life, they ain’t mine! The web platform demands that anything native apps can do, the web must copy. There are good arguments for this. The counterpoint is terrible implementation. Browser vendors have done a dismal job at designing the user experience around push notifications . “This website wants to send you notifications, allow?” Does this still pop up before a page has even loaded? I wouldn’t know. I blocked that years ago without thinking twice. My advice, look for this: — and block wholesale without exception. In all my years of building websites I’ve never had a single client request or even consider notifications. Not one project that scoped in such a requirement. Apple held out for declarative web push in Safari citing their usual privacy theatre ( lol ). Apple aren’t fans of silent push with no visible UI. I reckon their actual trepidation is their unreliable cloud syncing infrastructure. When I tested it was 50/50 on whether a notification ever arrived via Apple. Mozilla’s servers are rock solid. One rainy day I ran an experiment to send large data split across many hundred web push payloads. I was able to clock kilobytes per second. This is awful abuse of the API. Apple might be right about silent push… Proton Mail was one of the few mobile app that I allowed notifications. My inbox is usually rather chill, except when Proton spam me themselves . Alongside my public addresses I use [redacted]@ for important accounts. I configured a folder to send mobile notifications for this address only. It worked for years. Then one day the spam notifications began. Spam that had already been flagged and filtered into trash (sent to any address). I reported this bug to Proton Support in May and was told: If we have any relevant information to share with you, or if we have any questions, we will follow up on this support ticket. I never heard back. Notifications remain disabled. Today my phone is almost entirely notification free unless I get an SMS from family. Oh, and Apple pestering me about iOS 26 several times a week. My iPhone will remain on iOS 18, thanks. Apple sure love their dark arts and deceptive patterns. There is no option to stop this constant nagging. If other apps tried it I bet Apple would delist them. This ain’t about security, I get iOS 18 updates. UK Government got trigger happy with their alert system. As with all mobile alerts of this nature, we’re reminded that abuse victims are at risk . This one also led to fire departments across England and Wales having to remind people their neighbour’s barbecue is not an emergency. As Robb Knight noted: “there is nothing actionable in the alert” . Unless you count “Search gov.uk”, so I did. The more information provided was: Sent by the UK government at 7:01pm on Friday 14 August 2026 This alert was sent to England and Wales. Surrounding areas might also have received the alert. Emergency Alert - GOV.UK Thanks, Government. That could have been an email. Why don’t these alerts respect my volume setting? Scared me half to death! If they have to be all or nothing, reserve them for zombies or higher. And that’s the problem with notifications. There is rarely the granular control necessary to make them useful. Most senders cannot be trusted to used them responsibly. The temptation to abuse direct access to people is too much, especially for men with guns . If I ever allow notifications to begin with I disable them indefinitely the first time an app cries wolf. Every app cries wolf eventually. Life is so much better when I go seeking information at my own pace. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 2 weeks ago

Valley Fold Ltd

I’ve already announced my new company half a dozen times by now. I figured it was about time I gave real details, so here’s the name and logo! Valley Fold is my new home for professional services… once I’ve finished the website. I’m not one for big splashy launches, I’ll probably just hit deploy and let people discover it. The brand and logo were designed by my very patient friend at Axia Create . George and I worked on concepts for several names, all of which I pre-emptively bought domains for (…ouch). Following feedback from trusted peers a clear winner stood out. Valley Fold happened to be the only name we both independently scribbled down early. For those unfamiliar, “valley fold” comes from origami, an art form that has partially defined my aesthetic since college days . (The website may have some spiel to explain.) After the grueling task of my indecisiveness — we’ve been discussing this for a year — George is away on holiday. That leaves me guessing how he designed the logo. Probably like this: I’m joking, obviously. That’s nonsense. The logo fits on a square grid. It’s a custom logotype adapted from an existing font. We created a new “V” and “Y” and tightened the corners across all characters. The “L” were narrowed and kerning snaps neatly to the grid. More importantly, I love it! I’ve been secretly rocking the logo as a web button all month. I had fun pixel aligning the logo at such a small size. The tail of the “Y” is offset to the left to avoid anti-aliasing. The web button side quest has delayed the actual website. I’ll show more of the brand when version one of the website launches. I’m aiming for early September. I’d like to spend months designing the perfect site but client work takes precedence. Thankfully I’ve been busy. I have to get something online soon though. The nice thing about websites is that you can redesign them again and again. Valley Fold is a big change but also a little one because my services remain the same. I’ve been making websites for coming on two decades now. Websites for real people! I plan to keep doing that for many years to come. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 3 weeks ago

They don’t make ’em like Sublime Text anymore

After a multi-year detour wading through the quagmire of bloatware that is modern software I’m back to coding in Sublime Text . I am finally at peace! Do you know how relaxing it is without the daily “update available” and “view release notes” ritual? There is nothing I dread more than release notes. Between VS Code and Zed, I must have glanced at a million lines of sloppy commit summaries. Can I remember seeing anything of value? Nothing comes to mind… Modern software sucks. It’s built by self-proclaimed “engineers” who make their chat box addiction your problem and still use Twitter. When I mentioned Sublime Text on the socials people went all nostalgic on me. Sublime Text is still around. The last stable build was released May 2025. There are dev builds as recent as July this year. I don’t know who develops it and I don’t care. All I know is that I can place my text cursor and read the surrounding code without a bombardment of popovers, pop-unders, pop-left-and-rights, pop-inlines, pop-in-and-out-too-fast-to-sees. It’s been a few weeks since I returned to Sublime Text. It does everything I need. There is not a single “feature” I’ve missed from VS Code or Zed. Many I’m glad to see the back of. The perfect dev stack is a collection of software that each does one job and doesn’t suffer main character syndrome. I want to code, I’m not looking to make lifestyle choices. I don’t want a bloated everything app. Don’t get me started on the “unified toolchain” plague! Show me the latest VC-backed build tool and I’ll show you ten lines of PHP that does a better job. If you’re fed up of the absolute state of things, Sublime Text still works. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 1 months ago

End of the contact form saga

I can’t take it anymore! If you wan’t to speak to me, send an email. My contact form is out of service indefinitely. This is actually in lieu of moving my professional services to a yet to be announce limited company. But I can’t let opportunity for a dramatic blog post go to waste. Also, I’ll probably skip the contact form on my company website. Is that a bad idea? I always got more spam via the form than the publicly visible address. My contact form has been through a lot. Previous entries in the saga: I quite enjoyed the week in September when I opened a port to a self-hosted SMTP server I coded in 100 lines of TypeScript. The final iteration of my form included true end-to-end encryption. Through trial and error heuristics, I successfully eliminated all spam. (How many false positives I rejected remains unknown…) My privacy policy which was already simple is now entirely pointless. Are contact forms just outdated in general? Everyone seems to embed a Calendly widget these days. That’s not my style. I like the tiny bit of additional friction required to send an email. If someone can’t be bothered their message probably wasn’t serious. I’m not looking to maximise meaningless engagement. I look forward to moving business email to a separate domain. Biggest mistake I ever made was using for personal and business. Nothing worse than seeing an “urgent” request only to find out on Monday it didn’t matter. So long old contact form, it was fun! Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. SMTP on the edge Email: the final form I shut the emails out I let the emails in Progressive dehancement PGP encrypted contact form

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David Bushell 1 months ago

Businessing 101

Back when I began freelancing I figured I’d set up a limited company eventually. I guess thirteen years later is eventually. I’ve finally got a local accountant working on company registration. Exciting times! The final push was this Making Tax Digital thing from GOV.UK. It’s probably not complicated if I cared to look but I’m crawling back to FreeAgent anyway. My home-cooked accounting app served one whole tax year! I will have an accountant do everything now. Another big reason to become Ltd is to face challenge and opportunity head on. A loud contingent of the web industry are giving themselves up to the borg. Mandated token servitude and knee-bending to grifters like Google is sending web dev back to the stone age. I still care about making meaningful websites for real people. I have no desire to dump dead websites on the dead internet . I want to champion and preserve the knowledge and expertise being discarded at astonishing rates. This is not an “anti-AI” movement per se; I simply don’t compete with chat-box-driven development. Trading under a limited company allows more opportunity to collaborate with other creative professionals. As a freelancer I’m hired personally. As a company I can offer the same services and assurances whilst expanding the team if specialists are needed. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be in a position to hire full-time. This does not mean I’m going back to LinkedIn. I deleted that account like ten years ago. Please don’t make me go back! My income is modest. My freelance years have ranged from ~£20–60,000 annually. I work a four-day week with sensible hours and avoid overlapping projects. Working hard and working long hours are not the same thing. I expect my new business will remain shy of the VAT threshold but I’ll see what my accountant advises. I’m not sure my rates have kept up with “inflation” and cost of living. According to the Bank of England inflation calculator : What cost £1.00 in 2013 would cost £1.44 in June 2026. Hmm, feels like I’m paying a lot more… probably the shrinkflation . One things for sure, the quality of my services will not shrink. I’ve got a lovely new brand and website ready. That’s been in the works all year. Once the red tape is completed I can go live. August or September, maybe? Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 1 months ago

Choose your own dark mode

Hello RSS reader! This post contains an interactive feature. Please visit the canonical web page for an optimal viewing experience :) When I redesigned my website earlier this year I removed dark mode . I never liked the colours, and the light switch toggle was so 2010’s . Personally I prefer reading with a dark theme for long-form content. Dark is not my brand though and I don’t believe every website needs to support colour scheme preference automatically. A good browser has reader mode, I use that all the time. But what if I let my readers decide on a dark colour scheme? Below is a colour picker doohickey that should let you experience dark mode (on this page only). I’m testing in production (for reasons) so if it’s broken come back in an hour, or update your browser. It uses the native colour input which sucks in every browser. ⚠️ Warning: expect a sudden and dramatic colour shift. Try not to flashbang yourself. This is just an experiment so your colour choice will not persist. If you want to keep it, like and subscribe and @ me on the socials. Use your preferred hex code as a hashtag. Here’s how my homepage looks with a dark blue scheme. I reckon the duotone effect works much better than trying to invert my brand colours. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 1 months ago

Astro is fine I guess

When I’m not fighting WordPress I deliver static HTML or the occasional JavaScript framework integration. For personal projects I have ‘fun’ with my own static site generator . This week was a side quest (soon to be main quest) to build my new company website. We’re talking proper business here so I can’t be messing about. I figured an off the shelf SSG would be most suitable. I asked the socials, “ 11ty or Astro ?” Both are popular but Astro had the edge. I gave Astro an early spin back in 2022 and found it slow . Maybe it’s good now? I ran with minimum release age to avoid immediately getting pwned . I selected Astro’s “Use minimal (empty) template” option and it generated both an and file — are you f — deep breaths, don’t fall for the rage bait. I code in a modern editor so I installed the recommended Astro extension. At first I struggled with Zed recognising HTML. I discovered a restart temporarily fixed the issue, but I guess I restarted one time too many because now the Astro LSP is completely broken. No modern comforts for me then. At least I can look at HTML without the red squigglies. I know what you’re going to say, “Dave bro, you’re inflicting this pain upon yourself! Just write HTML!” And I should. I just want native no-framework HTML includes , you know? Can you imagine the civilisation we’d live in if that could happen? I persevered and got my templates built with minimal fuss. I added a markdown collection and got the blog part blogging. It’s obvious that people use Astro to build real websites because all my “how do I” questions had an answer in the documentation. I’ve been forced to deploy way too many “React spaces” in my templates because Astro’s whitespace treatment is a mystery. I don’t need many components so I haven’t gone deep on Astro vs JSX . My site has zero JavaScript on the front-end. I plan to keep it that way. Edit: Christian Niklas on Mastodon shared a link to a recent Astro update where they added a option that defaults to no longer “following HTML rules.” Umm… okay. Set this to or if you’re building a website? I set it to . Minifying whitespace is over-optimisation. Astro has got the job done, despite the developer experience being broken out of the box. I dread to think what graveyard of dotfiles is installed if I choose a non-minimal start. I can easily de-Astro my templates should I need to. Right now Astro is solving the right problems and the issues are but a nuisance. Final conclusion: Astro is fine I guess. I’m not convinced Cloudflare’s acquisition is a good thing, considering their record for performative slop. I’ve lost my enthusiasm for DX and tooling to be honest. Even my own SSG experiments are collecting dust. I’d call the ecosystem a lost cause if I was being dramatic. I just try to avoid the worst of it and care about the end product: shipping a damn fine website! Which I can’t do because I’ve got more businessing to business before this particular site sets sail. Maybe in a few months? It’s looking awesome on though. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 1 months ago

Select your starter class

Hello RSS reader! This post contains an interactive feature. Please visit the canonical web page for an optimal viewing experience :) At the risk of pissing on people’s chips I figured it’d be helpful to illustrate the three classes of AI user I’ve identified in the slopageddon. You might be thinking: “Hey, those personas are all negative!” — and you’re absolutely right! Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to shut up about “AI”. The thing is, not a week goes by without one of my peers crying out in abject despair. Until the grifters cease spitting in my face and threatening my career, please allow me to extend a middle finger their way. I’m working on more positive plans that I hope to announce soon(-ish). Makes sense to be more proactive and spend energy where it matters. Not that this post didn’t! I enjoyed a few technical challenges artworking the page. Images used with modifications: Chalk Outline by Simon Child from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0) Hand by Elisa Pintonello from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0) Zombie by Hamstring from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0) Previous Next Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. The Grifter Dabbles with free chatbots Chuckles at social media slop Forced to endure a work mandate Never consented to any of this Helpless to the human toll Bends the knee to Big Tech Lives by “AI is inevitable” mantra Anthropomorphises their chat box Ignores self-inflicted deskilling Gambles with house money Flogs AI and AI paraphernalia Will not take “no” for an answer Dehumanises the effect of AI Idolises the techno-fascists Revels in gaslighting

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David Bushell 1 months ago

Behold the perfect algorithm!

1984, Minority Report, Black Mirror — bedtime stories compared to the horrors the UK Government publish, am I right? I’m led to believe “Watch this space” is the latest propaganda piece from His Majesty’s Nanny State . I haven’t read past the title but according to gaming site Dexerto, YouTube lawyers read it and YouTube ain’t happy. Poor little YouTube. The government is consulting on options, considering whether to make public service news easier to discover on sites like YouTube and TikTok, with greater prominence and with more visibility during periods of major public importance. It also seeks to discuss misinformation and online viewing habits. YouTube urges creators to fight proposed UK algorithm changes - Matthew Benson, Dexerto I glossed over the Dexerto article too. This whole thing is something about kids being hooked on Skibidi and not paying their racketeering license fee . Minecraft Let’s Plays will be spliced with a BBC impartiality report on what some fascist gammon thinks. Should the proposal become law, of course. This is somewhat of a dilemma for a guy like me. If there’s one thing I hate more than a meddling GOV.UK, that might just be Big Tech . The thought of Google et al being ruffled warms my heart like a hot cup of tea on the summer solstice. That was too many words on something I never read so I’ll get to the lede. I’m about to reveal the secret sauce that Big Tech has tried to suppress. The one true algorithm, which ironically might be their saviour. Only one parameter is required in the perfect algorithm: who I choose to follow. I’m literally providing the exact data needed to curate my feed. I know what defenders of the deceptive arts are thinking: but algorithms are proven to increase engagement! — I know, Sherlock. Do you enjoy your doomscrolling misery? Not every metric needs to be min-maxed at the expense of human health. Modern apps sucks. Modern media sucks. Stick your “algorithm”. † It’s been decades since I studied SQL and database normalisation so please have mercy. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 1 months ago

Fixing full-bleed CSS

I’m a front-end developer not a medical practitioner. If you’re bleeding IRL visit the hospital and stop googling medical issues! The full-bleed layout — as described there by Josh Comeau — can be done with CSS grid ( and subgrid ). Sometimes you can’t grid the entire page. That’s where Andy Bell’s utility class is useful. But it ain’t perfect. The issue is that viewport units don’t solve the classic scrollbar problem . If you’re on macOS or a fancy OS that has fancy scrollbars, test on Windows! can be wider than the viewport. Because why would browsers do anything sensible? It’s hard to see in Andy’s CodePen but a few pixels can be cropped either side. Add something like a border or shadow and it’s easier to see. This is not always a problem but it can lead to subtle alignment issues. By the way, macOS has a scrollbar setting “Show scroll bars > Always” that’ll let you test the issue. Andy solves this partially by hiding horizontal overflow on the element. An alternative fix is to always reserve space for the classic scrollbar. That can look weird if there is no vertical scroll necessary. The “modern” approach is to use CSS containment . Turn the element (or any 100% width child) into a container. Then replace the viewport units with container units. Now hiding overflow is not strictly necessary. I prefer — see Overflow Clip guide by Ahmad Shadeed. I clip out of caution because I make dumb things. I also use logical properties and values to support right-to-left (RTL) text direction. Ahmad has an excellent RTL Styling 101 too. Using units assumes is the parent container of the element. What if we have nested containers? Check this out. I’ve forked Andy’s CodePen to add another container that is not the full viewport width. This alone would usually break the new class and ruin the fun. But we can fix that! What is that magic? To be honest I struggle to wrap my smooth brain around this! Let me try to explain it to myself. Without the at-rule the value of is calculated at the time of use, i.e. within and therefore relative to the container. By explicitly defining a the value is now calculated when it’s set within . There refers to the parent container and inherits that value. But what if you have more containers? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Gosh! Stop being so difficult! I would have a direct child of like set the value. † I’m multiplying by 0.5 because division is for chumps. What CSS needs is a way to reference a container when using container units. Ideas have been proposed for example: Cancel Interop 2026 and make this happen! Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 1 months ago

The modern app

Today I’m introducing the next generation of code editor. A modern app to satiate the needs of the discerning coder. We’re talkin’ blazing fast collaboration between man and machine . Try out the demo below (for best experience: desktop Chrome, obvs). If you’re reading this in RSS I have no clue what you’re about to see… maybe visit the demo it’s a fun one! Update ready (restart required) A modern app requires JavaScript, bro. Error loading documentation. Please disable your adblocker and try again. We and our 9172 partners value your personal data. You must accept the terms and conditions. Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information). Last edit: DELETED USER – 1 January 1970 – is this working? abandonment abbreviation aerodynamically antidisestablishmentarianism [Advertisement: 1% off subscription] an icon bar full of indecipherable icons with no label > Activate Windows Go to Settings to activate Windows. Fix the bug and make no mistake The user has asked me to fix his shitty code and to “make no mistake”… is he stupid? Thinking harder… On second review his code is garbage slop, should I search the internet and plagiarise ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚​N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ Would you like to play a game? Thinking… Family photos were deleted to resolve low disk space error. iOS 26.6.9 is available, update now? Amazon driver is lost in your neighbourhood. Alice’s personal access token expired, switching to Bob’s. Tailwind language server crashed. SAMSUNG SMART REFRIDGERATOR ® has detected low milk levels: five gallons ordered. 418 I’m a teapot. close AI, AI, AI! We’ve heard you. There are now 26 new sparkle buttons! Can you find them all? Release notes dialog now has an embedded WSL 1.0 terminal emulator. It’s broken (issue: #25293). Reduced RAM usage when typing on the home row. Keystrokes are now logged in the correct Slack channel (fixes #7 and #933 through #980). root@localhost system32 C:\ $ _ Yeah so um… have you noticed that all modern software is teetering on the enshitty cliff? Everything in my dock is an Electron-ified enshittybomb one update from disaster. There used to be alternatives. Now those suck too. I don’t want to collaborate. How about you leave me alone and I’ll email you the file when I’m finished? Here, take a hard copy and jog on. You want to comment? I don’t remember asking for an opinion. Oh fantastic, now the computer thinks it’s people! I’ve got dialogs and popovers all up in my face yammering about agentic bollocks. Mystery icons everywhere. Wait… did they move my cheese? Ahhhhh! It’s all your fault! I sure as heck didn’t ask for it. Remember when they made entire video games on a 32 KB floppy disk? Those were real developers. v1 Release Notes: done. Can you stop adding new “features”, please? You had one good idea. Finish it already? Now you’ve got ten thousand GitHub issues. Well done. I used to enjoy making things on a computer :( Icons used: Griddy Icons MIT License. “Clippy” © Microsoft (this is parody). Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. Today I’m introducing the next generation of code editor. A modern app to satiate the needs of the discerning coder. We’re talkin’ blazing fast collaboration between man and machine . Try out the demo below (for best experience: desktop Chrome, obvs). If you’re reading this in RSS I have no clue what you’re about to see… maybe visit the demo it’s a fun one! The Modern Editor Update ready (restart required) A modern app requires JavaScript, bro. Error loading documentation. Please disable your adblocker and try again. We and our 9172 partners value your personal data. You must accept the terms and conditions. Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information). Last edit: DELETED USER – 1 January 1970 – is this working? aardvark abandonment abbreviation aerodynamically antidisestablishmentarianism [Advertisement: 1% off subscription] Thinking… an icon bar full of indecipherable icons with no label > Activate Windows Go to Settings to activate Windows. Syntax errors: 3453 CI warnings: 6462 Merge conflicts: 1130 Tokens maxxed: 9512 Logged in as: ghp_nD7FQLmQlmaoRis27Lq2C69HWTFwsU420CvL Fix the bug and make no mistake The user has asked me to fix his shitty code and to “make no mistake”… is he stupid? Thinking… Thinking harder… On second review his code is garbage slop, should I search the internet and plagiarise ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚​N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ Thinking… Would you like to play a game? Running NPM post-install scripts. Claude is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported. Windows will restart in 5 minutes. Production database was dropped. GitHub connection timed out. Incoming phone call from your mother. CI/CD deployment failed again. Family photos were deleted to resolve low disk space error. iOS 26.6.9 is available, update now? Amazon driver is lost in your neighbourhood. Alice’s personal access token expired, switching to Bob’s. Tailwind language server crashed. SAMSUNG SMART REFRIDGERATOR ® has detected low milk levels: five gallons ordered. 418 I’m a teapot.

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David Bushell 2 months ago

ARIA, anti-patterns, and you

Please take a minute to understand what ARIA is and is not. ARIA and especially the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) are commonly misunderstood. I read an article the other day that had this facepalm moment: And with modern LLM agents, turning a spec into working code is surprisingly fast. Point the agent at the APG pattern, describe your component’s markup, and get a solid first draft you can refine and test. This is worrying, and the use of “LLM agents” isn’t the worst part! The APG is not a how-to guide of ‘best practices’ for building accessible websites. It exists to demonstrate how the ARIA specification should work in theory — regardless of support and regardless of whether more accessible, non-ARIA patterns exist (they do). As Eric Bailey notes — The guide was originally authored to help demonstrate ARIA’s capabilities. As a result, its code examples near-exclusively, overwhelmingly, and disproportionately favor ARIA. What I Wish Someone Told Me When I Was Getting Into ARIA - Eric Bailey — which makes sense, because: Browser and assistive technology developers can thus utilize code in this guide to help assess the quality of their support for ARIA 1.2. Read Me First - ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) Even if ARIA was fully supported ( it’s not ) the APG still wouldn’t be a ‘best practice’ guide. ‘Best practice’ is not using ARIA at all. If you can use a native HTML element or attribute with the semantics and behavior you require already built in , instead of re-purposing an element and adding an ARIA role, state or property to make it accessible, then do so . 2.1 First Rule of ARIA Use - Using ARIA, W3C APG exists in a vacuum to show off the ARIA spec. The button example includes this code, for crying out loud! I’m unaware of any circumstance where should ever be used over a . Before you tell me you can’t edit your React component library, do the web a favour and delete your codebase. In fairness, the button example has a “Read This First” disclosure — and guess what: they use a element and not the disclosure pattern because the APG isn’t best practice. It’s hard to blame developers for misusing ARIA and the APG. I’ve been confused myself. As W3C documentation goes, APG is rather sexy. It’s a useful resource if you understand why it exists. Misuse of ARIA has made the web less accessible. Increased ARIA usage on pages was associated with higher detected errors. The more ARIA attributes that were present, the more detected accessibility errors could be expected. The WebAIM Million - WebAIM Avoid ARIA where ever possible. Don’t point a freaking LLM at the APG! I can’t believe I’m saying this but use Google’s slop if you absolutely refuse to learn/code yourself. Apparently OpenAI is throwing ARIA at the web and seeing what sticks. Ahhh! I don’t know anymore, take some pride in your expertise? P.S. name an assistive technology that isn’t a screen reader. Ain’t easy, is it? So don’t be casually punctuating with the word “test” like it’s some get-out-of-jail-free card for your dubious practice and advice. “Overview of Digital Accessibility Technologies” by Declan Chidlow is a great help if you want to win this game at parties. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 2 months ago

Life is too short for lowercase ASCII

CSS is hard and it should be hard. For good reason: CSS isn’t just a complex language, it’s one of the most advanced graphics, layout, and typesetting languages available in computing. The deskilling of web dev is harming the product but, more importantly, it’s damaging our health – this is why burnout happens - Baldur Bjarnason Hard isn’t a negative label. You know what else is hard? Applying silicone sealant to waterproof bathroom fixtures. It’s hard enough that such expertise are worthy of a profession. Regardless, I decide it should be easy. I made a proper mess and my hands are now hydrophobic. Seriously, any tips applying this gunk? CSS is deceptively hard as a whole despite many of the constitute parts being simple. CSS syntax is simple (mostly). CSS properties and values are simple ( to lookup ). What is hard is deciding how to organise styles. What we like to call: CSS methodology. Every developer has their own preferred methodology. Over the years we’ve seen many notable examples published — SMACSS , OOCSS , BEM , ITCSS , CUBE — to name a few. These methodologies have several things in common: The CSS spec does not dictate methodology. You are left to bring order to chaos. The correct methodology is the one that you and your team can adhere to. Caveat: the only wrong CSS methodology is “CSS-in-JS” — fight me. Historically, I’ve used a basic BEM-like naming convention. I prefer flat specificity and a logical order to match the design hierarchy. I think component-first and avoid getting too DRY because I can’t control who is going try their hand at styling later. Modern CSS is moving too fast to settle on one methodology. Custom properties allow design tokens to be part of the system. and rules add a new depth to encapsulation. Cascade layers and the unassuming pseudo-class have all but nullified specificity wars. As CSS gets more complex, I dare say CSS is actually getting easier (for a professional). Strict methodological conventions become less important when the laws they impose can be safeguarded by the code itself. That frees us to explore more adventurous and less rigorous styles. Safe in the knowledge that any mess is more readily contained. CSS technical debt is a cheaper commodity. Some kind of CSS methodology is still necessary but breaking the rules is not the headache it used to be. Gnarly selectors are not the bane of my existence anymore. Now this is the point where you’re expecting me to announce my brand new CSS methodology with a trendy domain and a ten part TikTok series. Maybe a few practical code examples to backup my bold claims? You’re going to be very disappointed. That is not this post. I just think it’s neat to capitalise component class names like they’re proper nouns. Isn’t that fun? I find it adds clarity to a component’s scope. I even add an HTML comment after the closing tag so that source-spelunkers don’t get lost. I do plan to write a more groundbreaking thesis on CSS one day. The world is not ready for my radical ideas yet and I’ve got a bathroom to finish redecorating. Interesting tidbit from the original CSS level 1 specification (emphasis mine). CSS gives so much power to the CLASS attribute, that in many cases it doesn’t even matter what HTML element the class is set on -- you can make any element emulate almost any other. Relying on this power is not recommended, since it removes the level of structure that has a universal meaning (HTML elements). A structure based on CLASS is only useful within a restricted domain, where the meaning of a class has been mutually agreed upon. 1.4 Class as selector - Cascading Style Sheets, level 1 considered harmful! Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. Naming conventions Modular composition Cascade management Controlled specificity

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David Bushell 2 months ago

RSS Club #008: Duck duck, swan?

This is an RSS-only post, thank you for subscribing :) If you’re only here for web and tech talk you can skip this one! I rescued an animal today! Probably… The UK has its fair share of canals. I like canals. They cut through urban life offering an escape back to nature and are teaming with wildlife. Canal towpaths are perfect for running. They’re easy underfoot — until late spring when the goslings hatch and then I’m doing a ballet to avoid trouble. Canada goose are the most visible bird living here all year round. They gather in groups and are rather docile around humans until the little yellow fluffballs arrive and then it’s mayhem. Mute swans are a less common sight on the routes I run. This year a pair chose to nest in a safe but visible spot which was wonderful to witness. Swan nests are huge mounds of dirt, twigs, and coke bottles, apparently. This morning I found dad-swan charging back and forth across the water. He stopped to peer into an overflow trench around 2–3 feet deep aside the canal. As I ran closer I saw a young bird has fallen in. It was older than a fluffball but still covered in muddied down. Larger than a duck, for scale. It was still too young to fly out of its predicament. At first I thought it was one of the cygnets. Mum-swan was in the nest with the others not far away. I don’t speak bird but dad-swan seemed more aggressive than concerned. As I got closer he paddled a short distance away to observe. I went down on my stomach and slowly reach under the guard rails wondering how painful a finger-pecking would be. I kept my ears open for a charge attack. The young bird didn’t flinch. It allowed me to reach under its belly and lift it up. Before I could place it safely on the ground it attempted a Loony Tunes escape by running in the air. This unbalanced and forced me to tip it sideways, thankfully onto the stones just below water level and not back into the trench. It then frantically hopped not into the water, but up onto the towpath and quickly waddled behind me into the grass. As I got back to my feet dad-swan returned to investigate and looked satisfied the young bird was gone before returning to his nest. It took me a minute to find the young bird now resting deep in the brambles. It was only then did I realise this might not be a swan but a goose. It was large enough to have outgrown the distinct yellow colouring. I left it where it was hiding. My presence would only cause further distress. It was not physically injured otherwise I might have called the RSPCA who can rescue wildlife ( RSPB don’t; common misconception). I don’t go running with my phone anyway so I returned later to check and take photos. The young bird had vanished from its hiding spot. I’m almost certain it was a goose now after seeing this family not far from the scene. It’s funny, despite being so common I’ve never once seen an actual goose nest. I’ve no idea where they hide them. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 2 months ago

Apple deepfakes

Apple’s WWDC 2026 keynote was a snoozefest but one section left me rather perplexed. Early in the show Apple gave a performance about “child safety” . Apple ended the show with their new AI photo mangler . That’s some serious cognitive dissonance! 404 Media recently reported on “How Deepfakes Tore a High School Apart” . Kids are using deepfake apps (from Apple’s App Store) to victimise their classmates. Adults are doing it too, of course. Deepfakes on demand are a cornerstone of new Twitter . Apple front-loaded the keynote with a “we care about children” narrative that the media and fanboys lapped up. Then they advertised features that are suspiciously at odds (if you stop to think). It was a shrewd marketing stunt they’ve pulled before. In past events Apple has greenwashed the opening spiel before flogging a new iPhone model with an annual upgrade plan. Don’t worry, it’s all recycled. Totally eco-friendly to ship mass-produced luxury goods around the world to meet a manufactured demand. I’m sure Apple-branded slop will be harmless too, I remember someone telling me they care about this stuff. I’ve written about AI’s consent problem in more trivial context before. The AI industry simply cannot take “no” for an answer. You will use it. You will suffer it. You will be a victim. Jared White makes a point on this topic: I don’t know about y’all, but I think it should be illegal to generate slop imagery of other people without their consent. Apple really fell down hard on this feature (and I’ve been hearing other podcasters saying the exact same thing). I hope they come to their senses and realize the “ick” isn’t worth a flashy keynote demo. @[email protected] - Mastodon At the very least I implore the ‘court of public opinion’ to vilify generative AI. It’s seriously creepy, and not just the uncanny valley aesthetic. Jared makes a stronger point on the Vibe Coded podcast . What happens when someone deepfakes a person with a disability that wasn’t visible in the original photo? Good chance it’ll erase their disability. That ain’t okay. That might be traumatic for some people. But sure, Photoshop exists. We must accept that new technology can be misused, right? Seriously, whole lotta money riding on this! It’s just a tool. AI apologists are quick to abandon all moral and common sense for the most mediocre slop. Whether or not Apple’s own app is capable of anything doesn’t matter. Its presence will only help to normalise the dehumanising efforts of the AI industry. This future sucks! They did fix those rounded corners on macOS though. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 2 months ago

Are you standard.site?

Standard.site provides shared AT Protocol lexicons. Atproto is just spicy JSON and asymmetric cryptography. I’ve tried to explain atproto in more detail before. Bluesky has always supported a few open graph meta tags which I use to generate images for blog posts. That’s part of the social media game; get in people’s faces as loudly as possible. Now the game has changed! I return Monday ready to work and suddenly I start seeing a fancy new “View publication” button appear in my Bluesky feed. I’ve never wanted nor needed a button before but now that people are rocking buttons, what am I supposed to be, a buttonless pleb? I got my own button it looks like this: Mat Marquis, fellow button connoisseur, was quick with a guide to “Implementing Standard.Site” which I hastily copied. Mat used an atproto explorer to edit records which is akin to rawdoggin’ SQL in production. Given the weekly GitHub and NPM malware party this is probably a safer play than running yourself. I’m never going to remember to publish manually though. I have a janky build script and some experience with the @atcute libraries . How hard can it be? My script begins by generating a manifest of pages by parsing markdown before rendering the HTML template. I added a new step that fetches all atproto records in the collection. It cross-references the paths in my manifest. Any unknown path has the record deleted. It then iterates the manifest and either updates the atproto record (if title or description has changed), or creates a new record if none existed. Finally it adds the atproto URI to the manifest for the element. Now my blog is standard.site and I have a fancy button to prove it. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 3 months ago

Challenge and opportunity

I am back! Ten days “offline”. For me that just means online without talking to anyone. My break came at a time of high industry (and personal) stress. Seeing talented people lose motivation bums me the hell out. Reach out and say thanks - Kevin Powell Thank you to those who reached out whilst I was offline :) Catching up on RSS and reading educators question their worth makes me angry. Seeing more people cite “AI” as a primary reason to exit tech boils my blood! AI was the last straw. Have you heard of that island off India where the indigenous population kills any outsiders fool-hardy enough to land? They are doing the rest of us a favor by preserving a way of life we may need again someday, or at the very least should not want to see completely extinguished. I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline - Chad Whitacre The chatbox psychosis epidemic remains in full force. Despite countless studies suggesting AI isn’t paying off . Despite countless examples showing that AI is broken by design . Despite growing sentiment that AI isn’t welcome . Despite everything, the stochastic parrot feeders insist that our future is token servitude. I crashed out hard at Google’s deskilling . That incensed me. To see the word “skill” redefined and sold as a directory of markdown files is a grave insult. I’m still motivated . In the face of career-ending threats I see opportunity. I’ll be setting up shop as a limited company soon(-ish) after 15+ years of self-employment. Expect more news on that front later in the year. First I need to get a grip on unhealthy levels of stress. That means prioritising paid client work over my blog and social media antics! I work Mon–Thursday for exactly that reason. Friday is my personal day. Lately though I’ve found myself in keyboard warrior mode at 11am midweek. That must stop if I am to survive! The challenge is to continue enjoying my profession. I want to find a way to encourage and remotivate others too. At the same time, I can’t ignore the continued assault. The web must be fought for. That ain’t easy when it’s all so demoralising. I won’t be silenced in my fight against alternative thoughts . The gatekeepers cannot be allowed to turn one of humanity’s greatest creations into a tokendollar economy. I can’t believe this needs repeating but: do not replace real skills with a directory of markdown files. Stay hungry to learn. Fight for the web. Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 3 months ago

Google just spat in my face

It’s Google I/O week and this year’s theme is performative slop . Budding Googlers battle it out on stage vying for executive eyeballs. The prize? Exemption from the next culling . As you might know AI isn’t my cup of tea and my AI policy explains why. AI peddlers like Google have made one thing abundantly clear: their product will take your skills. It will take your profession. It will dehumanise you and you’ll pay for it. I figured Google’s Prompt API would be the most offensive attack on an open web I’d witness this month. Nope! Google’s new microsite has sent me apoplectic. Modern Web Guidance is a set of evergreen and expert-vetted skills that guide your AI coding agents across many common use cases to build modern web experiences that are accessible, performant, and secure. Build with Modern Web Guidance At first glance this is nothing more than an advertisement for the AI industrial complex. I made the mistake of engaging my brain for a closer look. Brain engagement is discouraged so I only have myself to blame for the ensuing rage. Google spits in the face of professional web development. Where do I even start? The repeated use of “modern web” implies that current development practices are out of date. Throw away all established knowledge because Google has changed the game . The entire chat-box-driven-development craze has been a long series of “you’re prompting it wrong” arguments. Are we to understand that Google’s new magic incantations have settled the debate once and for all? Which experts? Google, I assume. You are no longer an expert. You are token consumer number six. Expertise are not a privilege extended to consumers. Forgive my ignorance but I struggle to understand how AI addicts define “skills”. From what I can understand these “skills” are text prompts? “Skills” used to refer to the trained abilities required to do a professional job. I’m no prescriptivist but this is slopaganda. Google’s idea of “modern web” is a deskilling effort that should deeply offend developers to their core. It should also offend the AI apologists. Google thinks you’re too stupid to articulate your prayers coherently so just copy-paste the ten commandments. Defer to the almighty bullshitter in the cloud! What do you think a fair wage is for a professional developer who has less agency than Butter Bot? They’ll say this “democratises” web development alongside all and every profession in which AI has been violently forced . And what is the end goal? To deskill you so far down the ladder you’ll be forced into token servitude. To make a handful of billionaires even richer. Prompt boxes are not “just a tool” they are the end of your career. Implement a starter Content Security Policy (CSP) without breaking my app. Don’t break it bro! Pinky promise? Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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David Bushell 3 months ago

Web whetstones

How do you stay sharp as a web developer and/or designer? I’ll share my advice below. I’m also looking for front-end folk to advise me too. What are your whetstones? That is to say: sources of news and knowledge to level up professionally. Does that metaphor work? We’re sharpening our minds, and I suppose the web too with our minds… are minds the whetstone here? Moving swiftly on, in rough order of preference: People love to declare “RSS is dead” because they’ve chosen the likes of Google to gate-keep their web access. Interesting choice, but RSS remains alive and well. When I discover a new blog and like what I read, I’ll subscribe. There’s a good chance that person will write something useful again one day! Funny how that works. I don’t flood my reader with big sites that exist to generate content. I collect personal blogs that may only post once a year. That’s still plenty of unique insights as the list grows. I won’t share my list because I feel for RSS to work you have to curate it yourself. Shop Talk Show has been number one forever. Syntax remains a decent source if you’re deft with the fast-forward button (it’s a little ‘sloppy’ these days.) Igalia Chats is packed with wisdom. For a Better Web is Bruce Lawson in your ears. Wonders of Web Weaving from James is new and hopefully a regular listen. I’ve unsubscribed from too many podcasts that pivoted to AI servitude which is disheartening. I’m not adverse to such discussion but the level of mindless platitudes and gigglefests about what their wacky chat boxes said ain’t my cup of tea. Mastodon and Bluesky is where I follow folk in the web industry. Socials can be a great whetstone if you manage your follow list carefully. Everyone uses these platforms for different reasons which can be difficult to balance. Personally I stick to shop talk and mute politics for example. I follow individuals and rarely organisations to avoid “brand engagement”. Email newsletters are useful to catch stuff I’ve missed. Many exist in RSS form too. My favourites are typically link dumps with a side of commentary. Current favourites: Sidebar still has the odd gem if I care to sift through the “AI” links. Newsletters are a declining category for me. Perhaps because I keep getting unsubscribed by those with failed tracking pixels. Email costs money to send so I’ll accept my loss. Lobste.rs , Hacker News , Reddit (e.g. web dev , experienced devs , frontend etc). Does dev.to have any humans left? These forums are a good source of links — if you can filter the bot spam and avoid the cesspit of comments. Toxicity spreads and it’s all too easy to get dragged in. Sometimes you just have to let people be wrong on the internet. I’ve heard these still happen! I only leave my house now to scavenge for essentials so I don’t have much to say. Clearleft events are guaranteed value if you’re in the UK. Some conferences have online tickets but I find the in-person socialising to be the main benefit. Everything listed above is (or has) a website. I’m poor at organising and utilising bookmarks. I’ll manually visit bigger blogs like CSS-Tricks and Smashing Magazine once a month to see if anything interests me. I bookmark a handful of YouTube channels like Kevin Powell because I have no Google account to “smash that subscribe button” . YouTube isn’t my thing though. I have an allergic reaction to algorithm driven content. I don’t use Discord but I hear it get promoted often. Are these communities lively or are they a ghost town? That’s my problem with Discord. It’s a blackhole for information; antithetical to an open web! Am I missing out? Not sure I care. For no particular reason I’ll end with this quote from Seth Rogen. “I don’t understand what it’s supposed to do. Every time I see a video on Instagram that’s like, ‘Hollywood is cooked,’ what follows is, like, the most stupid dog shit I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “And if your instinct is to use AI and not go through that process, you shouldn’t be a writer, because then you’re not writing.” Seth Rogen Says If “Your Instinct Is to Use AI” to Write Scripts, “You Shouldn’t Be a Writer” - The Hollywood Reporter P.S. no more blog posts until June. I’m due a holiday! Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds. Frontend Focus Design Systems News

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David Bushell 3 months ago

Surveys will continue until diversity improves

The web and tech industry is a veritable sausage party. We don’t need surveys to prove it but we have surveys to prove it . State of surveys have been running for a decade now. Let’s look at the 2025 survey demographics: Yes I think “sausage party” is accurate. Weißwurstfest even. And yes cock jokes are part of the problem. When I worked in London in the early 2010’s every tech meet-up was plaid shirts and IPA frosted moustaches. Larger tech conferences were better. They had a few women attending and occasionally allowed to speak and a better variety of beers. I worked and mingled with a good bunch of lads. Even good lads make cock jokes after a craft beer. Just a joke, innit? When you read accounts like Ana Rodrigues’ it’s easy to think “not my lads” but then you remember the boisterous punchlines, and that one guy… but he was more of a tagalong. Some of us grow up but the industry doesn’t. These days I work remotely and don’t get out much but I get the impression little has changed. Certainly the online bro-culture amplifies the worst traits. Now we have LLMs built by and trained on that culture. Ain’t that wonderful. The State of surveys continue to report alarming numbers. Are they a fair representation of the industry? Do they help or hinder diversity? Miriam Suzanne raised the concern in 2024. These correlations don’t tell us much without knowing how representative the data is. I’m just not sure what I’m looking at, or how it should be read. But it concerns me that browsers use surveys like this as a primary gauge of developer interest – seemingly without asking who’s represented, or who might be missing from the data. What do survey demographics tell us? - Miriam Suzanne As Miriam noted the State of surveys do influence browser vendors. The focus areas for 2026 include several areas identified as top interop issues in the State of HTML and State of CSS surveys. Interop 2026: Continuing to improve the web for developers - Rachel Andrew Yet survey after survey after survey the demographics remain the same. Maybe the web industry is actually dominated by white guys (and now their new chat box companions). Oh and 60–70% of those surveyed report “None” under “Disability Status” so there’s that too. This is all kind of a big problem, obviously. Other humans need to use the web. Their voices need to influence the web platform. Maybe if we actually listened we could support more diverse needs and spend less time fast-tracking bro-tech . So yeah I mock the State of surveys because what are we doing here? Why are we looking at these numbers and concluding: “Wow! I can’t believe Axios is still popular in [current year]!” Lack of diversity is the only relevant takeaway that means anything. I don’t know if these surveys are part of the problem. I know they’re not the solution. But who knows, if we keep asking six times a year maybe diversity will improve? Thanks for reading! Follow me on Mastodon and Bluesky . Subscribe to my Blog and Notes or Combined feeds.

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