Weeknotes 23:05

February 20, 2023

Week of February 12–18

Super Bowl Champions

I started the week (I believe the week starts on Sunday) by watching my Chiefs play in Super Bowl 57. It was an exciting and tense game as both teams played very well and either team could have come out on top. But the Chiefs pulled it out and I got to celebrate another Super Bowl championship. I shared some thoughts in a post I wrote on Monday.

Container queries land in Firefox

Container query support finally landed in Firefox 110. It is now supported in all evergreen browsers. Una Kravets has a really good article as an introduction with some great examples of container queries and container query units in action.

I am excited that all the major browsers now support this feature. It has been a long time coming. I wrote an article with my personal perspective last year. I also documented my experience of using new features and the strategies I use.

I was a bit disappointed that the :has() selector is not yet supported in Firefox. I had thought that both of these features would come to Firefox at the same time much like it did with the other major browsers. I am probably more excited about the :has() selector and the use cases it will help to solve.

For now, I rejoice that container queries are in all major browsers and can look for opportunities to use them in my solutions.

Washington’s Birthday

Thalia, an LGND teammate, share a little bit with our team about Washington’s birthday. She worked at Mount Vernon for several years accumulating a lot of knowledge about our nation’s first president.

One of the things that we learned is that the holiday is officially Washington’s Birthday. The term, ‘Presidents Day’, was a marketing term created in the 1980s for sales (most likely at a mattress store). I enjoyed Thalia’s brief history lesson.

Odd behavior in Firefox

I ran across an odd behavior this week in Firefox. As I was scrolling on the site I am currently building, I noticed a bizarre image artifact appear. It was a repeating line of pixels that looked like they were the first line of pixels from one of the images.

I was using a filter: drop-shadow() on the image instead of a box-shadow, because I was lazy and just copied the code from Figma. The image beneath the smaller image with the artifact had a mix-blend-mode. It seems the combination of the filter and mix-blend-mode we causing this bizarre issue.

I ended up fixing it by changing the filter to a box-shadow.

Articles I read

• Fiddling makes me happy (Jon Hicks) – I enjoyed reading Jon’s thoughts about fiddling with his website. Another good reminder is that your site is your playground and there are no necessary rules on how to do it. I especially like his idea of adding journal posts about events in the past. I was recently thinking about posting a tribute that I wrote in 2003, about two years before I started blogging.
• Noodling on WordPress in 2023 – Some interesting thoughts from Chris Coyier about the need for DX (developer experience) with all the changes in WordPress. I am still developing themes the way that I always have. But I have also observed through some of the videos I have watched that the WordPress team is pushing for a new workflow in building WordPress sites.
• Use the dialog element (reasonably) – I appreciate this article by Scott O’Hara. I have been hesitant to use the dialog element because of some concerns that he addressed. It is good to good the okay from someone I respect in the accessibility space. I did use dialog for a modal solution that I worked on this week.
• The (extremely) loud minority (Andy Bell) – This is a good reminder that there is an extremely loud minority voice in the developer community and we need to weigh that when we come across their opinions. It is also a sobering challenge to consider the influence we have and how we use it.
• Always aim high (Andy Bell)
• Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker ahead of Super Bowl: ‘I always pray for God’s will to be done’ – I enjoyed reading this article about the Chiefs’ kicker who won the Super Bowl with the field goal he kicked.
• Why I Don’t Say ‘Passed Away’ When Someone Dies – Interesting thoughts to consider as I continue to process my own mother’s death in January.
• Some Thoughts on the Asbury Revival – One of many articles I have read about the “revival” at Asbury. I think something is happening there but I am slow to apply labels.
• COMMENTARY: Asbury, revival, and Christian cynicism?
• Some thoughts about the Asbury Revival (Facebook post)
• Do You Carry More Than You Should?
• Holiness Is Transgressive
• There’s No Such Thing as a Good Divorce – I think these are some important thoughts as I see the culture becoming more and more casual about divorce. I know several friends who are divorced that would agree with the ideas in this article.

Books I am reading

• We Need to Talk – I finished this one on Thursday. It was recommended by Dave Rupert. Full of a lot of good advice. I think my main takeaway is that we need to focus less on ourselves and become much better listeners.
• Encouragement: Adrenaline for the Soul
• The Pine Tar Game: The Kansas City Royals, the New York Yankees, and Baseball’s Most Absurd and Entertaining Controversy – I saw this book at Barnes & Noble when I was in Kansas City. I watched the last part of this game and saw the “controversial” at bat. I also watched the final 4 outs that were played days later. I particularly enjoyed the background that the author provided on this rivalry and bad blood which helped set the stage for this historic event in baseball.

What I watched

• Super Bowl 57 (Fox) – This was an exciting game and I am glad the Chiefs came out on top.
• All Creature Great and Small S3:E6 (Prime)
• Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix) – I have enjoyed watching all these episodes for the first two seasons of the show.
• Madame Secretary (Netflix) – My wife and I are rewatching this show. I think the first seasons were better than the later ones.
• Bad Batch (Disney+)
• New Amsterdam (Netflix)
• The Franchise, Season 3 (YouTube) – A documentary that follows the Chiefs through the 2022 season. I can’t wait for the Super Bowl episode to drop.