Weeknotes 25:43

October 26, 2025

Week of October 19–25

• I got stumped by an issue on Monday. Our site uses Glide to power our carousels. The layout of a carousel on a specific page was off. It was worse when you resized the browser. It seemed like the issue was related to some inline styles that I saw in the code. But I could not figure out where it was coming from. It was not in the page template. It was not until I was talking to my team leader that I figured out out the code was coming from a “plugin” (Django CMS equivalent of a WordPress block). Plugin code will override the content in the template (because the template has a conditional that makes that happen). It looked like someone had copied code where Glide was applying those inline styles and pasted into the plugin. Once I cleaned up the code, it fixed the layout problem. I am still getting tripped up on where things come from in Django CMS.
• I was frustrated by the lack of text formatting tools in Thinkific. Thinkific is a course platform that we are using for an online ministry training course at the beginning of next year. I had been tasked to clean up the course introduction page. I also did not like that you could not make adjustments to the hero image. The height of the hero had a maximum set and the image would scale for larger screens. I had incorporated some text in the image and had to rethink it based on the limitations of the platform.
• It felt like a very unproductive week. My load has been a little lighter recently as I am waiting for some big things to come down the pike. I felt very tired this week and unmotivated. I believe some of it was tied to allergies and the weather. I had several low energy days where it was hard to get going. I had wanted to use my margin to watch videos in the Unleash the power of Scroll-Driven Animations course. But I had trouble staying awake. I am hoping I have more energy next week.
• I decided to play around more with scroll animations and to see if I could replicate something I had built using GSAP last year. It was a simple use case of making content scale up and back down on scroll. I was able to replicate the animations with CSS. But then I decided to apply what I had learned from Cyd Stumpel’s article, Two approaches to fallback CSS scroll driven animations. I decided to add the GSAP script back into the solution as a fallback for browsers that don’t yet support CSS scroll-driven animations (looking at you Firefox). You can see my work on Codepen.

Some people are so inexplicably triggered by any scroll animation, it feels like a knee jerk reaction tbh. I’m not talking about people who prefer reduced motion, I’m talking about people who reply to all new native css scroll animation news with; “I don’t know any reason why you should do that” ?

Another reason why it would be a good idea to put in controls that allow the user to turn off the scroll animations if they prefer. Motion is definitely something that we need to allow users to opt out of.

For sure, always add prefers reduced motion alternatives!

Caught my eye

Lando Norris site – I could tell that this site was using GSAP as soon as I started scrolling. It made me wonder if there is a way to do “pinning” similar to GSAP with CSS scroll-driven animations. I did a little bit of research and it does look like there are some ways to do it using position:sticky and view() timelines. I am hoping to prototype something next week.

What I wrote

Október 23 – My personal reflections on October 23, Republic Day celebrated in Hungary. Including some pictures from different trips I have taken to Budapest.

Articles I read

• 10 Ways To Keep Your Reading Fresh (Tim Challies)
• Copy the Leader: Dave Holtzman (KU Alumni)
• Resist the Machine (Darryl Dash)
• No Guarantee of Life and Vigor (Tim Challies)
• Plates (Chris Coyier)
• The Two Button Problem (Chris Coyier on Frontend Masters Blog)
• AI Browsers, ad nauseam (Tyler Sticka)
• Vibe Check Number 40 (Dave Rupert)
• View Transitions: The Smooth Parts (Matthias Ott)
• ChatGPT Atlas isn’t competing against other browsers (Stephanie Stimac)
• Yes, let’s teach LLMs accessibility, but also the companies using them (Hidde de Vries)
• Total Entertainment Forever (Geoff Graham)
• Challenge (Matthias Ott) – I enjoyed this perspective about being willing to challenge your own assumption by listening to and taking feedback.
• Trump Is Dragging Us Down to His Level (David French in the New York Times)
• Write Code That Runs in the Browser, or Write Code the Browser Runs (Jim Nielsen)
• Decreation (T. M. Suffield)
• Designing Amiable Web Spaces: Lessons from Vienna’s Café Culture (Mark Bernstein on A List Apart) – This article was a little too heady for me. Not as practical as I expected.
• Browsing with assistive technology videos (TetraLogical) – I watched through these videos on Friday. Really good content.
• The Benefit of Boring Television (Tim Challies)
• Quick October Update (Jonathan Snook)
• AI Browsers: Living on the Frontier of Security (Jim Nielsen)
• Junior Dev Tip: “Scroll Up” (Alex Party)
• Studio Notes #55 (Dan Cederholm) – I loved Dan’s story about the mailbox. I think you made the wise call Dan. I am tempted by the Maclock. I married into a Mac Classic computer.

What I watched

• Watson (Paramount+)
• Matlock (Paramout+)
• Strange New Worlds (Paramount+)
• The Voice (NBC)
• Over The Garden Wall (DVD)
• Add Scroll Shadows to a Scroll Container | Unleash the power of Scroll-Driven Animations Lesson 6 (YouTube)
• The Great British Baking Show Collection 13, Episodes 7 (Netflix)
• 2015 World Series Film Royals Documentary (YouTube) – I enjoyed reliving the Royals championsip from 10 years ago.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978) 15 Weird Facts You Didn’t Know (YouTube) – I was a fan of the original series and had the toys that shot missiles. I still have a Viper on my bookshelf.

What I listened to

• Making the web more whimsical with Sara Joy (General Musings with Kevin Powell) – I listened to about half of this episode.
• Living the Dream: Dan Cederholm’s Creative Journey (Part 1) (Podcast Awesome)
• Shop Talk Show #687 – Ben Frain on Responsive Design
• A Liturgy, A Legacy, & The Songs of Rich Mullins (Andrew Peterson and friends) – I was a fan of Rich’s music and enjoyed this tribute album that was released this week on Rich’s birthday.

Books I am reading

• Sunday Matters (Paul David Tripp) – I read one devotional a week.
• Everyday Gospel (Paul David Tripp) – Reading through the Bible this year with this devotional.
• All That Jesus Commanded (John Piper)
• Faithfully Present (Adam Ramsey)

Walking

• Sunday – 4.1 miles in 1 hour and 18 minutes
• Tuesday – 3.06 in 58 minutes
• Saturday – 4.24 miles in 1 hour and 18 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 20 (Twins) – I went 1-2 dropping a two game series to the WhiteSox.