Weeknotes vol. 10: Back in the CSSaddle

By Garrett, 09 May 2025

This week I got to jump into CSS again (not just prototype stuff but production stuff). Which for me is kind of like eating a cheeseburger.

My focus the last 6 months has been in Rails development, though my speciality is front-end (as in the original definition of front-end). So it’s been good to get back into it.

When I set out to build Braindrop, or anything I do under the Better than good umbrella for that matter, I’m building as simple and with as few dependencies as possible. As I dug into what’s changed in CSS since the last time I touched it (the stone age) I realized that, thanks to @import, native variables and nesting I can happily use raw CSS. Which feels like the good ol’ days. I may even FTP some changes with Cyberduck.

I also found quite a few other new-ish CSS things that should come in handy:

• :placeholder-shown
• interpolate-size
• line height units
• margin trim
• plaintext-only with contentEditable
• Popover API
• text wrap pretty

The internet is feeling like the old internet which is exactly how I like it. You just get in there and hack away without the need for layers and layers of internet onions.