Rowan Merewood

@rowan.fyi

It's rowan.fyi #DevRel with #Chrome at #Google We should improve the web somewhat. 🦣 mastodon.social/@rowan_m 🐙 github.com/rowan-m 👔 linkedin.com/in/rowanmerewood 🧵 threads.com/@rowan_m

Take a break from being depressed that everything you love is being destroyed by slop for a moment and let me tell you about the beautiful symbiotic relationship between graffiti writers, train yard workers, and model train enthusiasts.

A hand holding a model train with a replica of the same graffiti on the full scale train car behind it.A model train with two graffiti pieces on opposite sides.

I fear I've become too unnecessarily privacy-brained to do the age and background checks in "Movie from when you were 20” or "Your US accent" quizzes. Where's "What egg are you?" or "Which wife of Henry VIII do you post like?"

Normally we verify email addresses by sending users an email, making them open their inbox, find the email, and click a link to return. Friction at every step. What if it could be this easy?

Way back in 2005, I used a Flash PageFlip component to display a book on a website. Ever since, recreating a modern version has been on my backlog to investigate. With the arrival of HTML-in-Canvas (experimental), we can finally bring it back — this time using real HTML. → brm.us/hic-pageflip

@thisismissem.social @divy.zone and I recently went through an exploration of how the browser can help you login to websites with atproto accounts. We recently presented to the FedID CG and here is a sneak peek in case you couldn't join! This is early but we'd love your input before we go too far!

Email Verification just landed in Chrome Canary on Android! If you collect email addresses on your site and you haven't signed up for the origin trial, then this gives you a few million potential testers if that helps motivate. New blog post incoming with even more goodies, existing links below...

Pop up notification in Chrome asking "Verify this email automatically?"Email input field with a blue check indicating Chrome has verified the email address.A toast showing "rowan.fyi verified your email" on successful form submission.

Not vibing with your agent? Determined to embrace nondeterminism? Burn a candle for St Eval: patron saint of good prompts and loved language models.

Boxes of candles labelled St Eval. They actually melt properly too. Lots of modern candles have wax that just disappears into the ether as it burns. I've been searching for a while for a candle to stick in a Chianti bottle, and this is it!

Your feedback on the Email Verification origin trial has been so helpful! If you've implemented on your site, I've got some best practice you should check and there's a breaking change for email providers. Let me know if you're testing or thinking about it. 👂

Email verification updates, August 2026  |  Blog  |  Chrome for Developers

Improvements and fixes for the Email Verification origin trial, including progress indicators, token validation best practice, and a breaking change with HTTP Message Signatures for email providers.

developer.chrome.com

Web push notifications are the topic where I see, "Push notifications are universally awful, they shouldn't be part of the web, I disable them everywhere - except DMs, socials, deliveries, blogs..." Like arguing that email is dead because of spam. So, I really like the quality push (ho ho) here.

The multi-layered defenses that harden Chrome against abusive notifications

Bad actors have increasingly abused the push notification system, bombarding people with deceptive and unwanted notifications. To combat this, Chrome Security embarked o…

blog.google