Jim Nielsen’s Blog

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Tags (i.e. things I’ve written about more than once): arc90, bookNotes, bookNotesBeethoven, bookNotesCoders, bookNotesLeonardo, bookNotesSoftwareCrisis, bookNotesStevenKing, bookNotesThinkAgain, browsers, css, darkMode, data, deno, design, designEngineer, designProcess, domainHandle, engineering, generalNotes, html, iconGalleries, iconGalleriesBook, javascript, jsTemplating, kindling, localFirst, myBlog, netlify, notesRichHickey, openWeb, podcastAppearance, podcastNotes, postlight, progressiveEnhancement, prototyping, quadratic, quickChartIo, readingNotes, readlists, remix, rss, rssClub, sagesure, stories, theMoreYouKnow, timshel, tips, typography, webComponents, webPlatform

Years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012

2024

You Are What You Read, Even If You Don’t Always Remember It 04-09
Implementing Netlify’s Image CDN 04-08
Expose Platform APIs Over Wrapping Them 04-01
The Case for Design Engineers, Pt. III 03-27
The Allure of Local-First Sync Engines 03-25
Making Films and Making Websites 03-19
Following Links 03-12
Is Making Websites Hard, Or Do We Make It Hard? Or Is It Some of Both? 03-07
My Guest Appearance on ShopTalk Show #605 03-05
AI Is Like a Lossy JPEG 03-04
Notes from “Why Can’t We Make Simple Software?” By Peter van Hardenberg 02-29
More Files Please 02-27
The Subversive Hyperlink 02-26
Two Quick Tips When Building With React Router 02-21
UI=f(org): UI is a Function of Your Organization 02-19
Zero to Unmaintainable in 1.2 Commands 02-15
The Case For Design Engineers, Pt. II 02-12
A Golden Era of Blogging 02-07
Using Quadratic to Discover Newsletter Links 02-05
Treating the Symptoms 02-01
An Inbox Full O’ Receipts 01-30
Online Handles: A Round-Up 01-28
The Origin of Online Handles 01-23
Immeasurable Impact 01-21
RSS in HTML: A Follow-Up 01-19
RSS in HTML 01-17
“The macOS App Icon Book” IRL 01-12
Idioms as Code 01-10
It’s Humans All the Way Down 01-09
Notes from “An approach to computing and sustainability inspired from permaculture” by Devine LuLinvega 01-07
Cold-blooded Software 01-04
A Subtle Nicety of Fault Tolerance in HTML & CSS 01-02

2023

Blogging and Composting 12-28
Getting an Unread Badge Count For the Docked Gmail Web App in macOS 12-19
The Largest Money-Printing UI Element Ever Made 12-13
“That’s Another Podcast” 12-05
How I Take and Publish Notes 12-03
Examples of Great URL Design 11-28
Width and Height in CSS 11-20
HTML Web Components: An Example 11-15
HTML Web Components 11-13
As Good as HTML 11-05
Embeds and Quotations in Writing 11-02
Advice on Blogging 10-31
JavaScript Is Enabled by Default in Web Browsers 10-23
People and Blogs and Me 10-20
LLMs and Naming Things 10-18
The Cost of Avoiding Annoyance 10-15
Using Web Components on My Icon Galleries Websites 10-10
There’s TypeScript and Then There’s TypeScript 10-08
A Few Details About My Notes Website 10-04
Making a Website is for Everyone 10-01
Robots.txt 09-27
Software is What We Learned Along the Way 09-26
Build Great Software By Repeatedly Encountering It 09-24
Notes from “Weathering Software Winter” by Devine Lu Linvega 09-17
“The iOS App Icon Book” in Japanese 09-14
LLMs, Intuition, and Working With Computers 09-11
“Out of the Software Crisis”: Making Software 09-06
“Out of the Software Crisis”: Gardening 09-04
“Out of the Software Crisis”: Dependencies 09-01
Book Notes: “Out of the Software Crisis” by Baldur Bjarnason 08-31
Family Tree Wisdom 08-28
There’s Something You Need to Know About Web Design and Development 08-26
Counting to Ten 08-23
Reloading a Document (and Preserving Query String Parameters) Using Only HTML 08-21
“We’re All Just Temporarily Abled” 08-20
My Guest Appearance on JS Party #288 08-18
There’s Meaning in the Ordering of the Web’s Tech Stack 08-14
Stealth Airplanes & Best Practices 08-09
Knowledge Laundering 08-02
User Feedback 07-31
The Nuance of “Domain” 07-24
Domain Sins of My Youth 07-20
Things I Like Over Things I Don’t 07-14
Stop Being Fancy 07-11
Language-Level Toll Roads 07-05
Apollo and App Icons 06-28
Components and LEGOs 06-24
Thoughts from “Meet Safari for Spatial Computing” 06-20
An Ode to An Event Apart 06-19
JavaScript Imports Under The Hood 06-15
Minute Rice, Minute Text, Minute Websites 06-12
Watch Transitions in Slow Motion in Chrome’s DevTools 06-01
Browser Defaults We Throw Away 05-30
Link Preload as Image 05-26
Single Line Comments in CSS 05-24
A Well Known URL For Your Personal Avatar 05-22
Get You Some Practical Accessibility 05-19
Date and Time with a Static Site Generator 05-18
Building an Infinite Spreadsheet 05-16
The Power of Fast Feedback Cycles 05-14
Setting Your Social Handle as Your Domain Name on Bluesky 05-12
Cite Your Sources, AI 05-04
Gratitude For a Web That Tries Not to Break 05-03
Circles and Momentum 04-30
Notes and Reflections from Rich Harris’ Talk 04-24
Notes to Self on Mastodon 04-23
Offline Is Just Online With Extreme Latency 04-18
Site Search in Arc Browser — For Your Own Site 04-17
AI & The Science of Creativity 04-10
More Everything With AI 04-02
Types in JavaScript With Zod and JSDoc 03-27
AI Takes Over Because of Human Hype, Not Machine Intelligence 03-22
Logical Properties and Ease 03-20
The Alphabet as Technology 03-16
The Figma to Browser Chasm 03-13
Deadlines as Technology 03-09
An Oasis of Quiet 03-06
The Tension Between Logical Reasoning & Illogical Creativity 03-01
End Users Over All Else, Even In Our Tools 02-27
Faux Progress 02-22
Introducing: notes.jim-nielsen.com 02-21
My 2023 CSS Wishlist 02-16
Productive Procrastination 02-09
The Validity of Custom Element Tag Names 02-07
The Birth of “Disable JavaScript” 02-06
CORS, CORB, CORP, COOP, COEP, C… 02-03
Reading Notes, January 2023 01-31
Nothing’s Bulletproof 01-29
Digital Preservation and “The App Icon Book” 01-26
The Best Time to Own a Domain Was 20 Years Ago; The Second Best Time Is Today 01-24
A Short, Totally Unofficial, History of Port Numbers in Web Development 01-23
The Anti-Capitalist Web 01-18
The Art of Knowing When to Quit 01-17
Curating Artwork From Humans and AI 01-16
Subscribe Wherever You Get Your Content 01-10
OK LCH, I’m Convinced 01-08
Justify Space Between Individual Items in Flexbox 01-05
Thinking Systematically 01-04
Book Notes: “Pirate Hunters” by Robert Kurson 01-02

2022

Reading Notes, December 2022 12-31
Prototyping and Practicing 12-27
Notes from Ryan Dahl on Shop Talk Show 12-23
Good Design, Pt. II 12-19
Select The Right Tool For The Job 12-15
Music, Programming, and Practice 12-13
A Change of Employment 12-05
Reading Notes, November 2022 11-30
The Word “Value” in CSS 11-29
CSS For URLs and HTTP Headers 11-27
Natural Language Inputs 11-22
Artistic Prototypes 11-20
Remix and the Alternate Timeline of Web Development 11-16
Obscure Things Power the Imagination 11-14
Verified Personal Website 11-13
Browsers, JSON, and FormData 11-09
npm Dependency Queries and the Cross-Pollination of Ideas 11-06
Website Fidelity: Browser Perspective 10-31
Reading Notes, October 2022 10-29
Optimize For Nothing 10-27
Scroll to Text Fragments 10-26
What “Work” Looks Like 10-24
Seeing vs. Using 10-20
Labels, Spectrums, and The Web 10-19
Website Fidelity 10-17
Fiddling With iOS App Icons and AI Art Generation 10-11
Sketch Design Challenge: App Icons 10-06
Patching The Open Web 10-05
Remix, React, and State 10-03
Reading Notes, September 2022 09-30
Creating Custom RSS Feeds For Following Others 09-26
Moving With Prototypes 09-21
My Contribution to Launching React Router 6.4 09-19
Font Family and @supports 09-17
Building Software Together as a Type of Translation 09-14
Building Together 09-13
Good Design 09-12
Podcast Notes: Jen Simmons on ShopTalk Show 09-07
Generating an EPUB File in the Browser 09-05
Reading Notes, August 2022 09-03
Validating HTML 09-02
Trying 08-30
Stats Page 08-28
Re: “The web is a harsh manager” 08-19
Re: “The web is a harsh manager”, Pt. II 08-19
The Web’s Diversity 08-18
Old African Proverb on Web Design 08-16
A Well-Known Links Resource 08-15
Playing With My Blog’s Home Page 08-14
Things You Can And Can’t Do 08-12
Markdown Sans Front Matter 08-08
Saying Thank You 08-03
The OG Social Network: Other People’s Websites 08-03
Multiple Inline SVGs (From QuickChart) 08-02
Reading Notes, July 2022 07-30
HTML Emails: A Rant 07-26
Book Notes: “On Writing” by Steven King 07-24
There Is No Bar — But Having One is Good Too 07-21
Finding Stuff to Write About 07-19
Writing and Waiting 07-14
The Resiliency in the Web’s Layers 07-12
My Office Space 07-10
Visualizing SF Font Variations 07-06
The Unlocked Possibilities of the :has() Selector 07-04
Software Over Time 07-01
Reading Notes, June 2022 06-30
Notes From “In And Out Of Style” 06-28
A Previous Sibling Selector 06-26
Doing Well 06-23
Favorite Excerpts from the Postlight Podcast, Part II 06-20
The Message Behind the Medium of a Personal Blog 06-18
Form Data and Structured JSON 06-16
Visualizing My Blog’s Internal Links 06-12
A Short History of iOS App Icons 06-08
Reflections on Design Systems and Boundaries 06-04
Avoiding Flash of Inaccurate Theme Color [Edit: I Was Wrong] 05-28
Reading Notes, May 2022 05-27
The Case for Design Engineers 05-26
Loading, Parsing, and Executing JavaScript in 2022 05-23
Quick and Dirty Text Diffing 05-18
Netlify Public Folder, Part IV: Simplification with macOS Shortcuts 05-17
Principles of Color? Going Beyond sRGB 05-15
Rationale for a Browser-Level Color Scheme Preference 05-10
Podcast Notes: Michael Jackson on devMode.fm 05-09
The Web Beyond Browsers 05-09
Joining Remix 05-02
Reading Notes, April 2022 04-28
Trusting Browsers 04-27
Progressively Enhanced Builds 04-25
Podcast Notes: Fred Schott on the Shop Talk Show 04-23
Ordering CSS Declarations 04-19
Having Fun Writing APIs With Glitch 04-16
The Side Effects of Tailored Digital Experiences 04-14
Examples of the Permeating Principles of the Web 04-10
Automating My Netlify “Public Folder” Workflow With macOS Shortcuts 04-05
Thoughts on Exerting Control With Media Queries 04-04
Reading Notes, March 2022 03-30
There’s More to Design Than Data and Rationality 03-28
Implementation Details of My New Blog Theme 03-23
What is the Web? 03-20
Deno is Webby (pt. 2) 03-15
Design Happens in an Ecosystem 03-14
Inline All The Things 03-10
Family IT Support Turned Blog Post Turned Anecdote in The Wall Street Journal 03-07
Reading Notes, February 2022 03-02
My Guest Appearance on ShopTalkShow #504 03-01
Inspecting Web Views in macOS 02-28
Things the CSS Spec Folks Got Right 02-22
Book Notes: “Millions, Billions, Zillions” by Brian Kernighan 02-16
Building a Netlify Analytics Email Digest 02-14
The Cluttered Web: A Scrapbook of Sreenshots 02-02
Reading Notes, January 2022 01-31
The Web in 2036: Predictions on a Whim 01-26
How to Increase Reach Into Your Total Addressable Market With Zero Marketing 01-20
Exporting and Parsing Emails for “The iOS App Icon Book” 01-18
Talking App Icons on the Postlight Podcast 01-11
The Optional Chaining Operator, “Modern” Browsers, and My Mom 01-05

2021

Reading Notes, December 2021 12-29
For the Love of the Web 12-28
App Icons: Don’t Gotta Catch ‘Em All 12-23
Templating in JavaScript, From Zero Dependencies on Up 12-13
Notes on Metadata 12-06
Book Notes: “An Essay on Typography” by Eric Gill 12-03
Reading Notes, November 2021 11-30
A Web Thanksgiving 11-22
Dynamic Color Manipulation with CSS Relative Colors 11-18
Podcast Notes: “Measuring Design” by Clearleft 11-15
Launching “The iOS App Icon Book” 11-09
Hairsplitting the Pseudo-Element Syntax 11-01
Reading Notes, October 2021 10-29
A Note to Self on Churn 10-25
Thoughts on Avoiding an Excessive DOM Size 10-19
Notes: Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey 10-14
A New Toilet 10-12
Hide My mailto: Email 10-10
Notes from Josh Comeau’s Article on Stacking Contexts 10-07
Things Learned Blogging 10-06
Reading Notes, September 2021 09-30
The Power of the Link 09-15
Job Titles: What You Do vs. Who You Are 09-13
Learning and Being Wrong 09-11
Book Notes: “Think Again” by Adam Grant 09-09
Defining Basic JavaScript Terms: map, filter, and reduce 09-07
An Analysis of Feed URLs 08-30
Reading Notes, August 2021 08-27
Thank You For Reading 08-19
canistilluse.com 08-16
I Want To Confirm a Prompt That We Stay Alert 08-10
Cool URIs and Image Hotlinking 08-09
Browsers and Representation 08-06
Reading Notes, July 2021 07-29
Quibbles With Social Share Imagery 07-28
Propagating Up in CSS 07-26
Things I Learned Reading Webkit’s UA Stylesheet 07-19
Conditional Style Loading? Not So Fast 07-14
Deno is Webby 07-12
CSS Gap 07-08
Theme Color in CSS 07-06
Recursive Citation 07-01
Reading Notes, June 2021 06-30
Courting WEBP 06-29
Font Size and Control 06-22
The Unseen Work of Design 06-17
Displaying Favicons For Any Domain 06-14
CSS System Colors 06-03
Reflections on HTML 06-01
Reading Notes, May 2021 05-28
Useful and Useless Code Comments 05-19
Designing Between the Lines 05-17
Making Your RSS Feeds Automatically Discoverable 05-12
(Re)Introducing Readlists 05-10
Shadow DOM and Its Effect on the Unofficial Styling API 05-02
Reading Notes, April 2021 04-28
Custom Elements Without JavaScript? 04-26
Fetch and 3xx Redirect Status Codes 04-20
This is the Internet Folks 04-15
SVG Stroke Positioning, iOS Masks, and the Browser 04-12
Reflecting on My Own Experience Using the Web to Get the Vaccine 04-09
Giving Style to Select Option Values 04-07
Web Languages as Compile Targets 04-05
Reading Notes, March 2021 03-29
A Collection of Reading Notes 03-25
CSS Is, In Fact, Awesome 03-22
A Simple Tactic For Progressively-Enhanced Search 03-17
Speculative Prefetching 03-15
Book Notes: “Let Your Life Speak” by Parker Palmer 03-02
Sites v. Apps: A Reverie 03-01
Reading Notes, February 2021 02-26
Wisdom From the Forums: “The Gap Between Expectations and Reality” 02-24
“Incomplete” Designs & Miscellaneous Thoughts 02-23
Reverse Domain Name Notation 02-18
Doing Web Design 02-16
Judo Throw the Hype 02-08
IKEA, JavaScript, and Assembling Things Yourself 02-06
Codebase Collaboration Between Humans and Robots 02-02
Graphing My Blog Post Goals 02-01
Reading Notes, January 2021 01-28
Favorite Excerpts from the Postlight Podcast 01-25
Feat: New Style 01-20
Custom Style Sheets in Safari 01-13
Writing in 2020 and 2021 01-11

2020

Reading Notes, December 2020 12-26
Setup a CORS Proxy With Netlify 12-15
The Missing Hit and the Open Web 12-09
Reading Notes, November 2020 11-30
Leveraging System Fonts on the Web 11-23
The Organic Web 11-17
React Without Build Tools 11-11
Reading Notes, October 2020 10-28
Book Notes: “Demand Side Sales” by Bob Moesta 10-21
Ten Anti-Principles of Good Design 10-19
Exporting to HTML from JavaScript Using Blob URLs 10-15
Approaches to Using autosize.js to Automatically Resize a textarea on User Input 10-12
Cheating Entropy with Native Web Technologies 10-08
Reading Notes, September 2020 09-28
Indexing My Blog’s Links 09-22
The Economics of the Front-End 09-21
ES Modules: There is No Registry 08-31
Reading Notes, August 2020 08-31
Deploying a (Wannbe) Monorepo in Netlify 08-25
Make Me Think 08-24
The Predispositions of Inexperienced Talent 08-20
Growth, Creativity, and You 08-18
Web Technologies and Syntax 08-10
Remote Work is a Craft 08-07
The Resiliency of the Internet 08-04
Webster’s Dictionary Defines “View Source” As... 08-03
Reading Notes, July 2020 07-29
Book Notes: “Coders” by Clive Thompson 07-27
Comparing Data in Google and Netlify Analytics 07-23
Any Day Can Be CSS Naked Day 07-21
Email Replies in Feeds 07-20
Book Notes: “Martin Luther King, Jr.” by Marshall Frady 07-17
Letter Case on the Web 07-16
Git Info in Node for a Babel Config 07-15
Import ES Modules from Github 07-13
The Web as an Information System 07-06
Reading Notes, June 2020 06-30
Sass Color Functions in CSS 05-30
Don’t Forget the color-scheme Property 05-29
Reading Notes, May 2020 05-28
Notes on “The Ugly Truth about Design Systems” by Mark Boulton 05-27
Thoughts on Designing a UI Driven By User-Controlled, System-Level Preferences 05-18
Musings on the Documentary “For Everyone” 05-12
Downloading and Uploading Text Files Using the Dropbox JavaScript SDK 05-07
Reading Notes, April 2020 04-30
Perception and Balancing Idealism with Pragmatism 04-13
Visual Design Inspiration from Agency Websites–And Other Tangential Observations 04-02
Reading Notes, March 2020 03-30
Writing vs. Coding 03-23
Credentials in URLs 03-20
Empowering the Few 03-18
Using Netlify Analytics to Build a List of Popular Posts 03-16
Design Systems and Airplanes 03-11
Switching from CJS to ES Modules 03-09
Progressively Enhancing a Small Widget 03-05
50 Blog Posts in 2020 03-02
Software and Home Renovation 02-25
The Spirit of “View Source” 02-24
Reading Notes, February 2020 02-21
Programming Pairs Well With Other Disciplines 02-13
Texting is Cerebral 02-06
Static Site Templating: Switching from React & JSX to JavaScript & Template Literals 01-27
Using PropTypes Outside of React in Template Literal Components 01-27
Reading Notes, January 2020 01-24
Follow Your Values, Not Your Passions 01-14

2019

2018

Personal Observations on “CSS and Network Performance” by Harry Roberts 12-29
Bringing “Dark Mode” to My Icon Galleries Sites 12-28
Reading Notes, December 2018 12-27
Supporting CSS Variables in Sass 12-18
Book Notes: “The Pun Also Rises” by John Pollack 12-08
Reading Notes, November 2018 11-26
Triggering a Deploy in Netlify With Bookmarklets 11-21
Migrating from Pathnames to Subdomains for jim-nielsen.com 11-14
Reading Notes, October 2018 10-29
Dark Mode on the Web via OS-Level Preferences 10-25
Netlibox: My Guest Post on Netlify’s Blog 10-16
Reading Notes, September 2018 09-30
Reading Notes, August 2018 08-24
My Little Cabin in the Woods of Logo Integrity 08-09
Choosing a Static Site Generator 08-02
Reading Notes, July 2018 07-28
Reading Notes, June 2018 06-25
Detective Work for “The App Icon Book” 06-19
Blog Redesign: Out with the Old, in with the Old 05-22
Reading Notes, May 2018 05-04
A Short Perspective on Hiring 04-13
Installing and Building an NPM Package from Github 04-10
Writing as a Process for Iterative Problem Solving (and Thoughts on Structuring a Small Redux Project) 03-23
Reading Notes, March 2018 03-13
URL Design and Automated Redirects in Jekyll 02-23
Reading Notes, January 2018 01-05

2017

Creating iOS Icon Masks in the Browser 11-27
The Value of Visual Design 11-04
Reading Notes, October 2017 10-28
The World Wide Web of People at My Disposal 10-02
Limitations in Software 08-26
I Liked this Podcast 08-16
Designing and Engineering Event Management for Timshel’s “Admin” Web Application 08-11
Notes on “Functional Lite Javascript” by Kyle Simpson 07-03
Notes from Fluent Conference 06-28
Reading Notes, June 2017 06-22
Reading Notes, May 2017 05-09
Designing Integrations for the Admin Application at Timshel 04-19
Stop Using the Term “Pixel Perfect”, Start Focusing on Experiences 04-17
Reading Notes, April 2017 04-07
The Analog Web 03-27
Designing Cross-Application Login Screens (and Business Relationships) 03-08
Reading Notes, January 2017 01-31
The Art of the Side Project 01-17
Migrating Away from Compass and Susy to Sass Exclusively 01-11
Designing and Engineering Color Usage in Agent Portal 01-06

2016

Redesigning and Engineering the UI/UX for Unauthenticated Users of Timshel’s “Admin” 12-09
Text as UI 11-24
Reading Notes, November 2016 11-18
Reading Notes, October 2016 10-01
SassMe v2.0 09-27
Reading Notes, September 2016 09-08
Reading Notes, July 2016 08-08
Paul Rand on Logos 07-11
Arc90 “Work” Page Design Updates 07-09
Designing and Developing the DCP Application 05-17
Going the Extra Mile with Tasks and Feature Requests 03-02
Designing and Building the Assignment Desk Application 01-28

2015

2014

Words Have Meaning: Creating the “Let’s Talk Innovation” Page 11-19
Designing a Successful Transaction Receipt 11-04
Creating Apple Touch Icons 10-28
Kindling Rubber Stamp 10-23
Logo Integrity Brought into Focus 09-02
Defining Beauty on the Web 03-11
A Logo Is an Image, The Image of a Company 03-03

2013

Benjamin Franklin, an Open Source Contributor? 12-18
The Evolution of Creativity 11-06
Wireframes and Gravity 10-21
Ostentatious Design & Profanity 10-14
Home Page Redesign of kindlingapp.com 09-26
The “Kinda-Sorta Looks Like the Internet” Internet 09-26
Automating Feelings 09-23
Once Again, It’s About Putting the User First 08-12
Workarounds to Variable Interpolation in Sass 07-29
Things to Be Informed About in Life 07-24
Preserving CSS Comments For Wordpress During Sass Compression 07-22
Thoughts from “On Writing Well” 07-15
Retrieving Recent Posts from Scriptogram in JSON Format Using PHP 07-08
When Advertising Became About the Buyer, Not the Product 06-27
Seemly Selectors 06-11
Changes to max_upload_filesize not working in php.ini? Restart Apache! 06-10
Scriptogram Logo in Vector Form (.svg) 05-29
Stop Direct Spam Comments in Wordpress 05-22
The Incredible (Frustrating) Potential of Google Glass 05-17
Why Do We Sketch? 05-15
An Analysis of Infinte Scrolling 05-05
Unintended Visual Relationships 03-26
Coming to Appreciate Art 03-08
Team Color Codes 02-19
Freebie Resources - Don’t Assume, Double Check 02-12
Modularize Your PSDs by Embedding Them Inside Each Other 01-31
Quick Change and the Web 01-29
Miscellaneous Unicode Symbols, Font Stacks, and You 01-21
Science Speaks: Good Typography = Good Mood 01-08

2012

Said No Normal User, Ever 12-12
Calculate the Border Radius for iOS-Style Icons Using a Simple Ratio 12-11
Reading Notes, November 2012 12-04
Safari 6 Tab Preview: Show Me More! (In Quantity, Not Size) 11-30
Understanding Comes in Stages 11-28