CSS Day 2024
My stint as one of the hosts of CSS Day went very well indeed. I enjoyed myself and people seemed to like the cut of my jib.
During the event there was a real buzz on Mastodon, which was heartening to see. I was beginning to worry that hashtagging events was going to be collatoral damage from Elongate, but there was plenty of conference-induced FOMO to be experienced on the fediverse.
The event itself was, as always, excellent. Both in terms of content and organisation.
Some themes emerged during CSS Day, which I always love to see. These emergent properties are partly down to curation and partly down to serendipity.
The last few years of CSS Day have felt like getting a firehose of astonishing new features being added to the language. There was still plenty of cutting-edge stuff this year—masonry! anchor positioning!—but there was also a feeling of consolidation, asking how to get all this amazing new stuff into our workflows.
Matthias’s opening talk on day one and Stephen’s closing talk on the same day complemented one another perfectly. Both managed to inspire while looking into the nitty-gritty practicalities of the web design process.
It was, astoundingly, Matthias’s first ever conference talk. I have no doubt it won’t be the last—it was great!
I gave Stephen a good-natured roast in my introduction, partly because it was his birthday, partly because we’re old friends, but mostly because it was enjoyable for me to watch him squirm. Of course his talk was, as always, superb. Don’t tell him, but he might be one of my favourite speakers.
The topic of graphic design tools came up more than once. It’s interesting to see how the issues with them have changed. It used to be that design tools—Photoshop, Sketch, Figma—were frustrating because they were writing cheques that CSS couldn’t cash. Now the frustration is the exact opposite. Our graphic design tools aren’t capable of the kind of fluid declarative design we can now accomplish in web browsers.
But the biggest rift remains not with tools or technologies, but with people and mindsets. Our tools can reinforce mindsets but the real divide happens in how different people approach CSS.
Both Josh and Kevin get to the heart of this in their tremendous tutorials, and that was reflected in their talks. They showed the difference between having the bare minimum understanding of CSS in order to get something done as quickly as possible, and truly understanding how CSS works in order to open up a world of possibilities.
For people in the first category, Sarah Dayan was there to sing the praises of utility-first CSS AKA atomic CSS. I commend her bravery!
During the Q&A, I restrained myself from being too Paxmanish. But I did have l’esprit d’escalier afterwards when I realised that the entire talk—and all the answers afterwards—depended on two mutually-incompatiable claims:
- The great thing about atomic CSS is that it’s a constrained vocabulary so your team has to conform, and
- The other great thing about it is that it’s utility-first, not utility-only so you can break out of it and use regular CSS if you want.
Insert .gif of character from The Office looking to camera.
Most of the questions coming in during the Q&A reflected my own take: how about we use utility classes for some things, but not all things. Seems sensible.
Anyway, regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about the substance of what Sarah was saying, there was no denying that it was a great presentation. They were all great presentations. That’s unusual, and I say that as a conference organiser as well as an attendee. Everyone brings their A-game to CSS Day.
Mind you, it is exhausting. I say it every year, but it always feels like one talk too many. Not that any individual talk wasn’t good, but the sheer onslaught of deep dives into the innards of CSS has my brain exploding before the day is done.
A highlight for me was getting to introduce Fantasai’s talk on the design principles of CSS, which was right up my alley. I don’t think most people realise just how much we owe her for her years of work on standards. The web would be in a worse place without the Herculean work she’s done behind the scenes.
Another highlight was getting to see some of the students I met back in March. They were showing some of their excellent work during the breaks. I find what they’re doing just as inspiring as the speakers on stage.
In fact, when I was filling in the post-conference feedback form, there was a question: “Who would you like to see speak at CSS Day next year?” I was racking my brains because everyone I could immediately think of has already spoken at some point. So I wrote, “It would be great to see some of those students speaking about their work.”
I think it would be genuinely fascinating to get their perspective on what we consider modern CSS, which to them is just CSS.
Either way I’ll back next year for sure.
It’s funny, but usually when a conference is described as “inspiring” it’s because it’s tackling big galaxy-brain questions. But CSS Day is as nitty-gritty as it gets and I found it truly inspiring. Like, I couldn’t wait to open up my laptop and start writing some CSS. That kind of inspiring.
