Archive: February 2026

Today I learned about the CSS property text-underline-position. As Stuart mentions, the under value forces the underline to sit below all the descenders, giving you a consistent baseline.

a {
	text-underline-position: under;
}

• Good software depends on judgment, communication, and clear abstraction. AI has amplified this.
• AI coding is automation of implementation, so design and stewardship become more important.

I keep forgetting how each of the following CSS values rolls back a declaration to a different point in the cascade. It was about time I jotted it down for my future self before it slips my mind again for the 1000th time.

initial

Applies the initial value as defined in the CSS spec

unset

Inherits or falls back to the initial value

revert

Reverts to the user agent's default value

revert-layer

Rolls back to the value in a previous cascade layer

I’ll be attending State of the Browser for the first time, remotely! 💃🏻

Really looking forward to Bramus’ talk on CSS Anchor Positioning and Zach’s talk on reducing the JS footprint.

Zach Leatherman on frontend architecture and building for longevity amid framework churn:

1. 👏 Hire someone that’s good at HTML and CSS to build components independent of JS frameworks 👏
2. Plug components into a JS framework and layer on behavior later
3. Pay HTML/CSS devs what they deserve for giving part of your codebase longer shelf life than unpasteurized milk

Today I learned that setting type="reset" on a <button> element in HTML creates a reset button that, when activated, immediately clears all form data, resetting it to its initial state.

This could have been useful in the context of a search form. But <input type="search"> already provides a native clear button for that single field.

It’s never been a good idea to ship everything you think of. Every addition accretes complexity and comes with a cognitive cost.

Maybe we need to reframe the concept of scarcity from us, the makers of software, to them, the users of software. Their resources are what matter most:

• Attention (too many features and they can’t all be used, or even tried)
• Stability (too much frequent change is an impediment to learning a product)
• Clarity (too many options creates confusion and paralysis)
• Coherence (too many plots and subplots cannot tell a unified story)

Similarly we all love when the swifts visit (beautiful birds), so somebody started a group to get swift nest boxes made and installed collectively, then applied for subsidy funding, then got everyone to chip in such that people who couldn’t afford it could have their boxes paid for, and now suddenly we’re all writing to MPs and following the legislation to include swift nesting sites in new build houses. Etc.

It’s called collective efficacy, the belief that you can make a difference by acting together.