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Tag: web design

  • 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
  • After months of minor tweaks, on-and-off, I finally bit the bullet and hit "publish" on my new theme for DanQ.me. It's not perfect; it's got all kinds of bugs... but what's the point of having a personal webite if you can't trash it once in a while with an ill-advised "fun" rework, right?

    Full image of Screenshot of DanQ.me with comic avatars of Dan, pride colours, and a 'fun'-feeling theme (plus semi-retro 'under construction' banner!).
    Alt

    Screenshot of DanQ.me with comic avatars of Dan, pride colours, and a 'fun'-feeling theme (plus semi-retro 'under construction' banner!).

    • Note
    • 4 comments
    • posted 25 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
  • 88ร—31 animated button with text 'MAKE A BTN' over a glitchy holographic starfield.

    88x31 Button Creator

    Dan of ritual.sh has produced an absolutely epic 88ร—31 button generator; well worth playing with if you're into that kind of thing.

    Read more (102 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • 2 comments
    • posted 15 January, 2026
  • 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
  • This form dynamically changes the labels for the Surname and Forename field based on the value of the Gender field. Wut?

    Because a Male Surname is totally distinct and nothing like a Female Surname, I guess?!?

    Full image of A form asking for Surname, Forename and Gender (with options Male, Female, and Both) changes its labels to e.g. Male Surname/Male Forename or Female Surname/Female Forename when the Gender option is changed.
    Alt

    A form asking for Surname, Forename and Gender (with options Male, Female, and Both) changes its labels to e.g. Male Surname/Male Forename or Female Surname/Female Forename when the Gender option is changed.

    • Note
    • 3 comments
    • posted 24 November, 2025
  • Screenshot of a website that says it's best viewed at a resolution of 1382ร—958 pixels, which is a pretty weird resolution!

    Best Viewed at: Your Resolution!

    As the latest in a series of stupid things I've done on or for the Web, I've made a website that dynamically generates 'best viewed at' buttons... for exactly the Web visitor's current screen resolution...

    Read more (272 words)

    • Article
    • posted 18 October, 2025
  • The Mastodon user interface showing an "Alt" button in the bottom left corner that is toggled and shows the alt text for the image: "Pink daisy flower on a piece of driftwood"

    Developing an alt text button for images on my website

    James has come up with a fun way to do Mastodon-like alt-text-bubbles. I'm intrigued, and am looking forward to expanding on the idea when I get the chance to try implementing it on my own blog.

    Read more (256 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • posted 30 August, 2025
  • Composite screenshot showing an image gallery with thumbnails of a dog, a sandwich, and a man; the dog thumbnail has opened up into a larger photo, which is now overlaid with HTML and CSS code describing the mechanism by which the lightbox works.

    Details/summary lightboxes in pure HTML + CSS

    For years, I've been using a HTML+CSS-only technique for popover 'lightbox' images on my blog. Now I've come up with a more-semantic way to do the same, and its HTML code is tidier too!

    Read more - about 3 minutes (660 words)

    • Article
    • 2 comments
    • posted 15 August, 2025
  • Outdoors, under blue skies and trees, Dan tosses his blue ponytail as he talks about a code snippet superimposed beneath him, showing a HTML video element with the first source (landscape.mp4) selected.

    Variable-aspect adaptive-bitrate video... in vanilla HTML?

    Thanks to recent browser enhancements, it's possible to show videos of different aspect ratios based on CSS media queries with no JavaScript dependencies. You can even combine it with adaptive bitrate streaming, even on static hosting. Let me show you how.

    Read more - about 6 minutes (1191 words)

    • Article
    • 1 comment
    • posted 30 April, 2025
  • 90s-style-homepage version of DanQ.me, as generated by geocities.live. It features patterned backgrounds, Comic Sans, gaudy colours, and tables.

    Geocities Live

    Geocities.live transforms any web page into a 90s-Geocities-style variant of itself, and it does a surprisingly good (if slightly "samey") job of it. Its take on DanQ.me got me thinking, though: are there things I can learn from 1990s web design and apply to the next generation of my theme?

    Read more - about 3 minutes (477 words)

    • Article
    • posted 18 April, 2025
  • My love of the yesterweb forced me to teach myself just-enough Blender to make an animation for a stupid thing: an 88x31 button representing "me" (and, I suppose, my blog, whenever I next end up redesigning its theme).

    Full image of 88x31 animated GIF button in the Web 1.0 style, reading "DAN Q". The letter Q is spinning.
    Alt

    88x31 animated GIF button in the Web 1.0 style, reading "DAN Q". The letter Q is spinning.

    Full image of The same image, but expanded so it's larger.
    Alt

    The same image, but expanded so it's larger.

    • Note
    • posted 7 March, 2025
  • Possible future presentation concept: using a cafe/dining metaphor to help explain the proximity principle in user interface design (possibly with a "live waitstaffing" demo?).

    Great idea? Or stupid idea?

    Full image of Photo looking down on a square wooden table in a cafe environment. Far from the photographer, a plate containing a couple of crumbs is pushed far to the other side of the table. Closer to him is a cup of coffee, two folded napkins, and an open MacBook. Arrows and captions draw attention to the relative distances between the components of the scene, labelling them as follows - "I am finished with this plate..." (refering to its relative distance), "...but I'm keeping this napkin" (which is closer to the coffee than the discarded plate), "I'm keeping the napkin while I finish my drink" (the two are close together), and "I'm working" (based on the relative position of the photographer and his laptop).
    Alt

    Photo looking down on a square wooden table in a cafe environment. Far from the photographer, a plate containing a couple of crumbs is pushed far to the other side of the table. Closer to him is a cup of coffee, two folded napkins, and an open MacBook. Arrows and captions draw attention to the relative distances between the components of the scene, labelling them as follows - "I am finished with this plate..." (refering to its relative distance), "...but I'm keeping this napkin" (which is closer to the coffee than the discarded plate), "I'm keeping the napkin while I finish my drink" (the two are close together), and "I'm working" (based on the relative position of the photographer and his laptop).

    • Note
    • posted 1 February, 2025

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