Just code and Nothing Else

CSS Custom Properties (aka Cascading Variables) have gained broad browser support since 2015 – but what are they good for, and why do we need them?

New CSS proposals like Container Queries, Cascade Layers, Scoped Styles, and Nesting are all aimed at improving the way we write responsive components and design systems.

I’ve spent nearly two decades learning, teaching, and writing CSS – as a founder at OddBird, a member of the Sass core team, and an Invited Expert on the CSS Working Group.

New CSS proposals like Container Queries, Cascade Layers, Scoped Styles, and Nesting are all aimed at improving the way we write responsive components and design systems.

Don’t let the declarative syntax fool you – CSS is a powerful and dynamic programming language.

“What is one thing you learned about building websites this year?”

I join Ari, Ben, and Tessa to talk about getting into CSS from other languages, the absurdly massive problem CSS is designed to solve, and the mental model behind the language.

As I spend more of my time working on the CSS language, I wanted a place to take notes and explore new ideas in the open.

How do we write code that is modular & maintainable, in a language designed to be systematic & contextual?

The Cascade makes CSS unique – forcing us to revisit even the most common programming feature: the variable.

The web is designed to work across platforms, devices, languages, and interfaces – but how can we possibly design for that unknown and always-changing canvas?

Learn how design engineering brings together form and function.

CSS Custom Properties allow us to manage and control both cascade and inheritance in new ways.

From building beautiful sites to maintaining complex design systems across multiple applications, CSS is the web-language of design.

Jina and I answer questions about CSS, Sass, Design Systems, and more!

A spinoff of the Party Corgi Network discord. I chat with Chris Biscardi about The CSS Working Group, open-source projects, art, and music.

“What about building websites has you interested this year?”

Firefox 69 was the first to implement selector feature queries, but other browsers are following suit. I’ll show you how it works, and how to start using this new feature query right away.

Horizontal text overflow has always been difficult to manage on the web. The default visible overflow is designed to make sure content remains accessible no matter the size of a containing box, but it’s not our only option.

Why waste your time on half-measures? Make your site THE MOST NORMALEST with this ULTIMATE CSS RESET.

When we’re scrolling down a page, or through a gallery of images, snap-targets can help guide us from one section or image to the next. In the past, developers have used JavaScript to hijack scrolling, but now we can manage scroll alignment directly in CSS with only a few lines of code.

I drop by the show to talk about Sass in 2019, design tokens, Oddbird, unused CSS, new CSS properties, and Dave & Chris’ explanation of revert.

The display property has been in CSS from the beginning, handling everything from block and inline boxes to list-items and full layout systems like flexbox or grid. Now the display syntax is getting an upgrade to match it’s multiple uses.

There are a number of property & value combinations that can lead to CSS being inactive, and now Firefox will tell you why. Open the developer tools, and look for the greyed-out property with an info-box on hover.

It’s a common pattern to align form labels and inputs in grid-like layout. I’ll show you how to do it quickly using CSS subgrid, with several quick fallbacks.

Card layouts are popular on the web, rows and columns of boxes with similar content. CSS grids can help align those cards, but it’s still be hard to line-up content inside the cards – headers and footers that might need more or less room.

The web is designed to work across platforms, devices, languages, and interfaces – but how can we possibly design for that unknown and always-changing canvas?

For years, we’ve struggled to build resilient layouts on the web, but CSS Grid promises to change all that – and you can start using it now, with only a few properties and basic concepts.

I’ve often used initial and unset in my CSS – global keywords that can be applied to any property. The difference is small, but important: unset allows inheritance, while initial does not. But then Firefox implemented revert and I was confused – how is this one different from the others?!

Sass recently launched a new module system. The new syntax will replace @import with @use and @forward – a big step forward for making Sass partials more readable, performant, and safe.

Love it or hate it, CSS is weird: not quite markup, not quite programming in the imperative sense, and nothing like the design programs we use for print. How did we get here?

When you create lists in HTML, browsers add bullet-points or numbers we call list markers. Now CSS gives us the tools to style those list markers, and even create our own!

A project-manager’s reflections on human-centered problem-solving, client communication, and user feedback in agile web development.

In the CSS naming-convention arms race to lowest specificity, I’ve decided to only use universal * selectors. I call it F*CSS.

Style Guides & Pattern Libraries are great tools for documenting the relationships between code and design, but beautiful docs are only half the battle.

We start by talking about design systems and design tooling – how they differ, and the problems they solve.

Pushing past the “variable” metaphor, CSS Custom Properties can provide new ways to balance context and isolation in our patterns and components.

Steve Jenkins interviews me about the state of CSS, and what’s coming next for the language – from Intrinsic Design to Dynamic CSS.

From building beautiful sites to maintaining complex design systems across multiple applications, CSS is the web-language of design.

Thunder Nerds interview me before her talk at VueConf US 2019.

Explore the history of web layout with the creator of Susy – why grid systems exist, how they work, and practical tips to avoid using them.

The panel and the guest talk about grid systems, fonts, and more!

On Episode 18, the TalkScript team continues the live-ish at JSConfUS podcast series with guests Myles Borins, Tim Doherty, and Miriam Suzanne. Listen in!

A non-technical guide for taking your project from concept to launch, without ever losing sight of the goals.

Style Guides & Pattern Libraries are great tools for documenting the relationships between code and design, but beautiful docs are only half the battle.

Inspired by Robin Rendle, I demonstrate some of my early experiments combining CSS Grids and custom properties to create dynamic layouts and data-visualizations.

Viewport units have been around for several years now, with near-perfect support in the major browsers, but I keep finding new and exciting ways to use them. I thought it would be fun to review the basics, and then round-up some of my favorite use-cases.

It feels like CSS Grid has been coming for a long time now, but it just now seems to be reaching a point where folks are talking more and more about it and that it’s becoming something we should learning.

It’s been a month since our country pseudo-elected a bigoted blow-hard for president. I’m heading to DC to protest his inauguration in January, visit friends, and go on a mixed-media resistance tour…

It’s been a month since our country pseudo-elected a bigoted blow-hard for president. I’m heading to DC to protest his inauguration in January, visit friends, and go on a mixed-media resistance tour…

No matter what acronym drives your selectors (BEM, OOCSS, SMACSS, ETC), loops can help keep your patterns more readable and maintainable, baking them directly into your code. We’ll take a look at what loops can do, and how to use them in the major CSS preprocessors.

Miriam Suzanne creates experimental experiences with her band and her fellow developers.

Chris Coyier interviews Miriam when she joins the CSS Tricks team as a Staff Writer. We talk about gettting started in the industry, name confusion, fouding OddBird, building Susy, and more.

In this episode of the Versioning Show, Tim and David are joined by Miriam Suzanne, best known for Susy, a responsive layout toolkit for Sass. They discuss going from being a lurker to finding your voice, the importance of writing about what you’re learning, stumbling into fame, approaching new projects, and unit testing in Sass.

Maps are a powerful data type in Sass – perfect for managing color and scale palettes, framework configuration, data storage, and more.

Using Sass, you can write your stylesheets in a more concise, dynamic, and readable way, and cut down many of the repetitive tasks that come with writing vanilla CSS. This book provides a thorough introduction to Sass for the beginner. Co-writen with my friend Kitty Giraudel.

Design systems streamline development, communication, and consistency – but often rely on dedicated teams and extended budgets.

a case-study in building and sharing open-source Sass

Design systems must be meaningful to both humans and machines Accoutrement provides Sass design-token management that improves readability and consistency, while encouraging automation.

an introduction to the Susy layout toolkit

True is a full-featured unit-testing library for Sass. The core functionality is written in pure SassScript, so it can be used anywhere Sass is compiled. Advanced features are available with our JS test-runner integration.

A novel about new love, moving apart, and what comes next. A love story, and an after-love story – told wiith poetry and pictures.

Susy is a lightweight grid-layout engine for Sass, designed to simplify and clarify responsive grid layouts without ever getting in your way. Originally released in 2009, Susy has become one of the most popular layout frameworks on the web.