First week holiday. Picking up on some drawing. 🙂 I wasn't able to draw anything a few years ago. Now slow and steady getting a bit better. Starting to find a preference for ink... Finding inner peace is good.

🌙 The Fronteers Dark Mode programme is live! Join us Oct 2nd in Dordrecht 🇳🇱 for an evening of talks on HTML, CSS, WebAudio, and APIs: 🎤 Barry Pollard 🎤 Anjana Vakil 🎤 Harry Roberts 🎤 Cyd Stumpel 🎤 Heydon Pickering Hosted by Jake Archibald 🎟️ €99 incl. a 2-course dinner 🥣🥩🐟🥬 👉 fronteersconf.org

Fronteers Dark Mode, Friday, October 2nd, Dordrecht

Join us at Cinema de Witt in Dordrecht for our after work conference.

fronteersconf.org

⏸️ I still have problems writing personal blog posts, but here it goes: This is why I need a holiday, and I'm taking a (huge) one! 🏝️ See ya'll in August (might be on bsky a bit from time to time, might not) utilitybend.com/blog/ai-brai...

AI Brains, CSS overload, writing. I need a break and I'm taking one! | utilitybend

Taking a month off this summer. A look back at the first half of 2026 — AI workflows, CSS overload, writing, golf frustrations, and why I just need a break.

utilitybend.com

Just a few more days and I'll be doing that European thing where we take weeks of out of officing...😆

“Without polyfills, fallbacks, and progressive enhancement, a single browser has undue power to hold back the Web — whether by choice or by circumstance.” “Developers being able to use web features before wide availability is a win for the Web as a whole.”

Lea Verou, PhD@lea.verou.me · 3w ago

🔥 New blog post: In defense of polyfills A highly influential spec editor expressed the opinion that polyfilling is harmful. I beg to differ. lea.verou.me/blog/2026/po...

🚀 Time for something else: a collection. I wrote about 3 web features that reached Baseline support but slipped under my radar: the CSS Custom Highlight API, advanced text indent, and native Math. Not the most flashy ones, but I just wanted to play with them. 📐👌 utilitybend.com/blog/under-m...

Under my radar: the highlight API, text-indent and font-family: math | utilitybend

Discover three baseline web features that went under the radar: the CSS Custom Highlight API, advanced text-indent keywords, and mathematical typesetting.

utilitybend.com

Fresh ink 😊 🙌

Wasn't going to put on a smirk face if Belgium won against the US in the world cup. But.... If it were the other way around the president of that country would do the same, so smirk away! 😏

🔗 Ketan Joshi analysed Google's latest sustainability report, and yes, energy consumption went up (a lot). Adding up the numbers, Joshi concludes it's not because of manual Gemini use, it's because Google's search engine shows AI results by default ketanjoshi.co/2026/07/01/g...

Google’s exponential path to climate-wrecking digital bloat

Google’s latest report reveals a completely unprecedented rise in energy consumption – more than any of us expected. Generative AI is a climate carbon bomb.

ketanjoshi.co

F*ck Golf and its mental brutality 😔 sometime I love how much I suck at it. But today was too much of that.

Had a bit of fun updating oklchroma.utilitybend.com recently. Especially since the talk by @lea.verou.me at CSS Day, I added warnings when out of gamut. Also updated the styles to reflect my blog. As a disclaimer: maybe don't use this on production websites; it's me tinkering and goofing around.

Oklchroma - OKLCH Color Pattern Generator

Create harmonious color patterns with Oklchroma, a powerful OKLCH-based color scale generator for designers and developers.

oklchroma.utilitybend.com

Better late than never, I've finished off my game for the month of June! Introducing "Wire Loop". A game where you drag a loop around a wire, and try not to touch the wire. It has a level editor for you to share new levels among friends! k9l.io/wire-loop

Wire Loop

Drag the loop along the wire without touching it.

k9l.io

If you ask me... one of the most frustrating things missing on popovers and anchoring (and I know there are a few) is the ability to use [at]container anchored... I could do it on Chrome and maybe just feature-detect an at-rule for those container queries, but the feature detection doesn't work...

Gelukkige zondag.

⚡Featured posts this week: ✨ CSP Playground: @therealnooshu.bsky.social ✨ Cross-Origin Storage: @tomayac.com ✨ Is my website agent-ready?: @mhablich.bsky.social ✨ href='#' and the Focus Trap: @th3s4mur41.me 🙏 Special thanks to the authors! #webperf

That was a fun panel! Many interesting questions from AI to UI. Happy to be the community representative between a bunch of lovely people from Google. Here at #GoogleIOConnect

Joined a vibe coding session at #GoogleIOConnect. Probably was the only guy going nerdy on env() variables in CSS, but hey, I always wanted a quick reference for these. Might finish it later, might not, but always nice to create a little proof of concept. #BuildwithGemini

Having themed Ice cream at #GoogleIOConnect with @bram.us Temperature is getting ridiculous though. 😅 Also a lot of AI stuff. Looks like it's really growing up this year. I like modern web guidance. It's a good foundation for some of the harder js-polyfills #BuildwithGemini

So... The diet was going well. Until this heat... That just doesn't work. So we'll, pick it up in a few weeks I guess. 😅 Every year I doubt about installing am AC.. still haven't. I guess it's better for the environment... Still this heat 🌡️

We regret that our event on Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office. Our apologies to everyone who was planning to attend the event.

Some hot takes by @bram.us www.bram.us/2026/06/21/d... A must-read if you ask me, as it has questions I think we should ask ourselves these days. That being said... I am always a bit scared about not functioning the same on every platform, and I'll tell you why...

Do Websites Need to Function Exactly the Same on Every Platform?

While we’ve accepted that websites don't need to look the same everywhere, we seem to be stuck on a new hurdle: the idea that websites need to function the same everywhere.

bram.us

⚡Featured posts this week from Perf Links by WebPerformance Report: ✨ Declarative partial updates: @jadjoubran.io ✨ The death of Web UI?: @utilitybend.com ✨ HTML The Standard For SEO: @rustybrick.com ✨ We Cut Slow Responses by 80%: Francesca Milan 🙏 Special thanks to the authors! #webperf

Today Korean fusion BBQ. Always been on my mind to do a tech podcast/video series with food in summer. Like. Tech and food combined. 😂 My parents in law are vegetarian so. Either style of bbq I could handle. But yeah, funds and time and such. 😅

First up: Fronteers Dark Mode in Dordrecht 🇳🇱 on October 2nd. With @cydstumpel.nl, @heydonworks.com, @csswizardry.com, @tunetheweb.com and @anjana.dev. And @jakearchibald.com as our MC. An amazing location and tickets only cost €99, and include dinner. Don't miss this! 🎟️ fronteersconf.org

Fronteers Dark Mode, Friday, October 2nd, Dordrecht

Join us at Cinema de Witt in Dordrecht for our after work conference.

fronteersconf.org

🚀 🧑‍💻 My CSS Day ( @cssday.nl ) recap on the iO tech_hub. Thank you to the company for letting me go with my training budget. Fourteen talks, two days, one church in Amsterdam, Lea on gamut, Jake on the <select>, Lyra’s x86 CPU, Niels’s DOOM CSS, Una on modern UI, and many more. #CSSDay #CSS #WebUI

This was CSS Day 2026 - a dive in CSS geekism

Fourteen talks, two days, one city. Color spaces, a browser built from scratch, CSS that runs x86 machine code, a select that took 33 years, and a masonry layout that is finally real. This was CSS Day...

techhub.iodigital.com

In a world of AI-generated design systems, orchestrating the web still requires people who care. Knowing how to use smart layers, custom scrollbars, view transitions, and have accessibility on top of mind is what builds a joyful UX. 🧑‍💻 Systems should be scalable. utilitybend.com/blog/the-dea...

The death of Web UI? Bollocks! Geeking out on a better web and trying to make a difference. | utilitybend

CSS Day 2026 reminded me that Web UI isn't dead — just dormant. Why tinkering with CSS still matters in a world of AI-generated design systems.

utilitybend.com

What's this, a new HTML proposal? Built-in localized time formatting in HTML! github.com/whatwg/html/...

Quoting my own post is a bit weird. But really... I just wanna say I'm happy for the support. Just a dev trying to make a tiny difference in the future of html. I'm aware that the API will probably change a lot by the time we have this (10yrs or so😉) but really. Sharing is caring so thanks ya'll

Brecht De Ruyte@utilitybend.com · 2mo ago

Based on the feedback at @css.cafe I opened a few issues to discuss at open UI on the enhanced range inputs. I also tried to make some new examples with waves and circles. 😅 brechtdr.github.io/enhanced-ran...

Based on the feedback at @css.cafe I opened a few issues to discuss at open UI on the enhanced range inputs. I also tried to make some new examples with waves and circles. 😅 brechtdr.github.io/enhanced-ran...

🚀 I don't write many articles that don't have a technical angle or demo... but I had to get this off my chest. utilitybend.com/blog/the-dea... #web #css #ux

The death of Web UI? Bollocks! Geeking out on a better web and trying to make a difference. | utilitybend

CSS Day 2026 reminded me that Web UI isn't dead — just dormant. Why tinkering with CSS still matters in a world of AI-generated design systems.

utilitybend.com