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Tag: css

  • Colour wheel diagram showing the transformation from a light blue into a medium purple.

    Styling :visited links using hue-rotation

    My new site theme offers a :visited link style, but for convenience it's based on a CSS hsl-transformation. Here's how it works...

    Read more (223 words)

    • Article
    • 3 comments
    • posted 26 September, 2026
  • Here's a neat trick. I've got a web page with many HTML popovers, styled as modals to create a no-JS gallery/lightbox. But LCP suffers because the browser tries to reserve space for the images within (even though they're within not-yet-shown popovers).

    This CSS one-liner saved the day. It basically says "skip over not-yet open popovers on initial page render" -

    [popover]:not(:popover-open) {
      content-visibility: hidden;
    }

    I appreciate that Lighthouse isn't the last word in performance metrics, of course. But this change alone bumped an affected page's score from 76 to 100, so it's not nothing either!

    • Note
    • posted 25 September, 2026
  • An email in Outlook 365, showing 'DanQ.me' in gold-gradient WordArt with a drop shadow.

    WordArt is still supported... in Microsoft Outlook!

    25 years ago, WordArt was everywhere. Nowadays, it's been quietly expunged from Microsoft Office. Except... Outlook, via a series of complicated hacks, can still render WordArt to this day! And I'm pretty curious exactly how it does so...

    Read more - about 5 minutes (996 words)

    • Article
    • 2 comments
    • posted 16 September, 2026
  • Computer manual cover printed in blue, black, and white. The title 'GoScript Plus' is askew at one angle, and everything else is askew at a right angle to that.

    Recreating a 1990 Book Cover (in HTML + CSS)

    This weekend, I became briefly obsessed with the graphic design of the cover of a manual of a piece of software released in 1990. So I re-created it in HTML + CSS, as you do.

    Read more - about 3 minutes (567 words)

    • Article
    • 23 comments
    • posted 13 July, 2026
  • Setting the width of selects to the width of the selected option

    Sometimes a new CSS feature comes along and I immediately "get it". Like: that's a cool new feature, I can already see how it'll save me time, or make things simpler, or improve accessibility, or allow me to do something new. Other times...

    Read more (122 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • posted 22 June, 2026
  • Screenshot showing VSCode running in a web browser, being used to edit a static HTML website.

    A Selfhosted Static Site Editor

    Inspired by the way that Nekoweb's editor 'Nekode' works, I came up with a low-effort way to let my eldest get started with HTML and CSS editing, right from her browser, with the results selfhosted directly from the household NAS.

    Read more - about 3 minutes (535 words)

    • Article
    • 8 comments
    • posted 22 May, 2026
  • CSS or BS game in progress. The player is asked to declare whether 'view-timeline-name' is a real CSS property or made-up.

    CSS or BS

    Keith Cirkel's made a game where you have to identify if something is a CSS property or a convincing fake. How's your CSS knowledge?

    Read more (85 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • posted 14 May, 2026
  • Reply to: let's write a blog post about CSS

    Dave's struggling to finish his blog post out CSS. I get the feeling... let me tell you about my blog post about pedestrian crossings.

    Read more (98 words)

    • Reply
    • 1 comment
    • posted 29 April, 2026
  • Illustration showing 'slow content' going to FreshRSS, 'immediate content' going to email, Slack, and WhatsApp, and 'fast content' being eligible to be routed to either destination.

    Reducing Phantom Obligation in FreshRSS

    Terry Godier's fantastic article last week introduced us to the term 'phantom obligation' and reiterated something I've been saying for years: that 'RSS zero', unlike 'inbox zero', is not an admirable goal. And that reminded me to share with you how I personally make my FreshRSS installation feel more like a tool that serves me, not the other way around.

    Read more - about 5 minutes (1014 words)

    • Article
    • 14 comments
    • posted 6 February, 2026
  • Death to the shadow DOM!

    I usually agree with Chris Ferdinandi, but he and I aren't entirely in accord about the Shadow DOM. He thinks it's useless. But I think it's MOSTLY useless.

    Read more (321 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • posted 23 December, 2025
  • Screenshot from a future version of the DanQ.me homepage, showing a cartoon drawing of Dan waving, alongside a drop-down menu with options to customise his hair and t-shirt colour.

    For anyone who :has :not yet seen the magic of modern CSS

    CSS is all grown-up, and the combination of nested selectors, variables, :not, and :has unlocks a wealth of potential for interactivity and customisation without resorting to (the slower and brittler approach of) JavaScript. Let me show you two examples from my recent editor history.

    Read more - about 3 minutes (684 words)

    • Article
    • 1 comment
    • posted 17 December, 2025
  • Image of owls on a webpage, with a 'zoom in' cursor superimposed over the image, and a 'pointer' cursor over the 'alt' button in the corner.

    CSS Lightbox with Alt Text Viewer

    Off the back of my details/summary-based semantic HTML+CSS lightbox, I've come up with a way to add Mastodon-like 'show alt text' widgets in the same way, and I'll be applying both to images on my blog's new theme, in the New Year.

    Read more (418 words)

    • Article
    • 1 comment
    • posted 11 December, 2025
  • Dan sits at a cluttered desk reading a copy of DOCTYPE, a magazine with an aggressively 'cyberspace circa 1990' graphic design cover.

    DOCTYPE

    I received my copy of DOCTYPE magazine, a genuine 'type this program in and run it'-style programming magazine but for a modern world, and enjoyed writing, debugging, playing, and then considering refining Stuart Langridge's puzzle The Nine Pyramids.

    Read more (390 words)

    • Article
    • posted 25 November, 2025
  • Screenshot from Layoutit! Terra showing an isometric view of a gridded temperate landscape alongside controls to tweak the amount of land, terrain type, etc.

    Layitout! Terra is a CSS-only implementation of a customisable Transport Tycoon-like terrain generator, and it's left me impressed and confused!

    Read more (255 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • posted 27 October, 2025
  • Lowriders & websites

    Praise for a blog post by Adam Stoddard, defending the handcrafting of software even where it serves no direct purpose other than the satisfaction of its creator.

    Read more (188 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • posted 13 October, 2025

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