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Hi! I'm Kevin

Every week I share what I've been up to over on YT (and elsewhere), and also my general musings.

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It's easy to get stuck in our ways

PRE-S: If you live in or around Wisconsin Dells, or will be around there this summer, I might host a semi-informal meetup during the upcoming THAT Conference if there’s enough interest. If you’ll be at the conference, or will be close enough that you could swing by, click this link, and I’ll be in touch later this week with more information. Hello Reader, One thing I’ve talked about a decent amount in the past is how to make the most out of online courses, specifically when you’re doing...

5 days ago • 4 min read

Hello Reader, At the end of last week’s newsletter, I mentioned that I had a special announcement coming this week, and I’m super excited to let you know that I will be co-hosting a special 2-day workshop about building CSS Games! While I know my way around CSS, this is pretty far out of my comfort zone, so I’m co- with my good friend, and CSS wizard, Amit Sheen. Whether you’re a seasoned developer looking to expand your skill set or a newcomer eager to explore the creative potential of CSS,...

12 days ago • 5 min read

Hello Reader, I feel like this newsletter has turned into my annoucing talks, which very much isn’t my intention, but the speakers for this summer’s THAT Conference were just announced, and I’m one of them! You can find more details for it on their page, including the full list of speakers, one of which is Kent Dodds, who’s one of the keynote speakers. If you plan on attending, make sure to use the coupon code kevinpowell at checkout for 25% off your ticket! Also, this is the last talk I’ll...

19 days ago • 3 min read

Hello Reader, Learning new things is hard, but there are a few different things that you can do to help yourself get to grips with things faster. One of the most effective things you can do is, when you learn something new, explain how that new thing works. If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve probably heard me say this before, but I repeat it from time to time because of its big impact and how few people actually do it. You can do this in a lot of ways: as a quick blog post as a...

26 days ago • 3 min read

Hello Reader, Ask any front-end developer what the easiest language is between HTML, CSS, and JS, and everyone is going to say HTML, right? It’s funny though, because most of the things I hem and haw over the longest are often related to how to mark something up in my HTML. Semantic HTML is great, but some times are, well, hard to define! As an example of that, I posted this question on Twitter and Mastodon about how to markup a “simple” card, and more specifically how to approach the small...

about 1 month ago • 3 min read

Hello Reader, First off, sorry this is late this week! I wrote it all up on Friday and then forgot to schedule it! For this week, I’m going to change things up because I have a lot of stuff going on, and I want to let y’all know about it all! Next week will be back to normal. HTML All The Things Podcast This week, I appeared on the HTML All The Things Podcast and had a great conversation with Matt Lawrence. We talked about the current status of CSS, tools like Tailwind and Sass, CSS naming...

about 1 month ago • 4 min read

Hello Reader, I guess it was bound to happen, as worries of AI taking over development jobs is once again a hot topic with the new AI assistant called Devin—they almost gave it a good name 😉—grabbing a lot of headlines right now. If you missed it, a company called Cognition released a video demo of what it calls the world’s first AI software engineer. Yes, they are saying their tool is a full-on engineer... The video shows it performing many tasks, including pulling up documentation in the...

about 2 months ago • 4 min read

As you might know, I had a podcast that I was doing for a little while. I paused it heading into the new year, and I’m looking at starting up again, but I want to make some changes to it. If you did listen to it, I’d really appreciate if you could answer this 3-question survey to help me decide on some of the changes I’m thinking about! Hello Reader, For as long as I can remember, CSS-Tricks was a site where I’d learn cool CSS stuff. I always looked forward to the new designs they’d often...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read

Are you on iOS? If no, skip on down. If yes, a quick question! I've had some people telling me they were having layout issues on iOS, with no padding on the left and right sides (text touching the edge of the screen). I've tried fixing it a few times now, and my tests seemed fine, but then more people mentioned it... so, if you are using iOS, does this email look good for you? Yes, looks fine! No, it's still touching the edges! Hello Reader, I get asked for Tailwind content quite often. My...

2 months ago • 6 min read

Hello Reader, Last week, I mentioned how, as developers, we don’t need to be designers, but as ghostmonkey mentioned in my Discord, if you learn some of the very basic fundamentals, you can make a pretty decent looking page. And I think this is a very valid point! It’s not hard to learn a few fundamental rules that will vastly improve the looks of your personal projects. I don't do nearly as much design work as I used to, so I asked my good friend Gary Simon if he had any advice. If you don’t...

2 months ago • 4 min read
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