Two weeks ago, I spoke at FFConf. Yes! Me! Last year, I made a little shy appearance in one of Sophie's slides, but it was the big deal this year.

I mentioned in a toot a while back how special FFConf is for me. Years ago, my friend Paul told me about it, and it turned out to be a life-changing conference.

I was disheartened with the industry and tech community at the time (I think this was in 2016). The talks I saw and the people I met throughout the years were the inspiration and acceptance I desperately needed to find.

I even found my current job by chatting with people there. Someone told me about this agency, and I should say "hi". I did, and it turns out they were hiring!

As you can imagine, I was over the moon that I was invited to speak there after applying to their call for papers.

The topic was the same as The State of the Browser, but I changed the slides and demo based on feedback received and my own perception after watching the video. I also added a new demo at the end!

One of my last slides was a thank you to one of the talks from the previous years that really moved me at the time. In 2018, Tim Holman's talk showed us some enjoyable demos. Then he compiled what he learned from building some seemingly "useless things". He ends with "any idea you have has value". So there I was, on a stage, sharing what I learned from building a karaoke in the browser.

Unlike the previous years at FFConf, I was extremely nervous this year. My head was over the place during the day. I was the penultimate speaker, so I could relax and enjoy Salma's talk.

Now, I plan to watch all the videos of the other talks when they come out so that I can properly enjoy them.

Trys Mudford took photos of the day and wrote a lovely recap. So did Amy and Remy!

This has been one of the highlights of my (quite crappy) year. I hope I contributed to people feeling as happy at the end of the day as I felt all these years as an attendee. Thank you to everyone who came to say hi before and after the talk! My heart is full!

If you saw the talk and have any feedback/criticism/suggestions, please use the form below this post and share it with me. The form won't appear if you're part of the cool people who are reading this via RSS feed hehe.

Some weeks ago, I was so privileged to have been invited to chat about myself and my blog at Manu's new series, People and Blogs. I really enjoyed following someone else's prompts. I never rationalised some decisions about this blog out loud, so it was a fascinating exercise.

Since then, I've been thinking about how I need to bring my bookmarks back, how my voice and thoughts matter to me and how I need to branch off and read more from people who don't work in tech.

I've been trying hard for the last few months to find a balance between work, my mental health, quality family time and returning to the tech community after maternity leave, but I haven't made much space to write here.

On a related note, Matthias Ott has a new newsletter called Own Your Web, and recently, Matthias asked, "If you have a personal website: how did it change your life?". I replied with: "@matthiasott oh! Things I've been invited to do were because of my website, especially articles and interviews. Also writing, quoting and linking to other people's work on my website has led me to actually meeting them in person later on in conferences which is lovely."

This reflection and my interview with Manu make me want to hug my blog.

Check the whole series because reading everyone else's interviews has given me so much joy!

With Twitter imploding and people (myself included) trying to move to multiple similar apps, I was following everyone I knew numerous times. It may not look like it, but I can be a bit shy! If we're "Twitter/conference friends", you probably noticed me clicking the follow button on at least three new platforms. Then, some social anxiety creeps in!

"Oh, I liked my friend's post on Mastodon. Should I also like and share it on the other platform they also shared it?"

"Oh no, this person only follows me back on this platform, but not on the other. Do they hate me?"

"Am I being annoying?"

"Where do I post this mediocre attempt at a joke?" (actually, the answer for that is your personal website.)

While I am content with Mastodon (I've had an account since 2017), I did sign up for Threads and BlueSky. I will probably sign up for whatever else comes along because, you know… FOMO. Turns out I had forgotten about our old friend LinkedIn, which is also where everyone is!

I initially created an account in 2012 and kept it until 2016 or 2017. At that point, I had amassed hundreds of connections. I was also a young woman, so a few previous male co-workers constantly crept on me, from frequently visiting my profile to even drunk messaging me (yes, on LinkedIn). At that time, I wasn't using my last name online and was keen to protect my privacy and location, so having a profile where anyone could see where I was for 8 hours a day did not make sense. It was a time of my life when I was going through lots of anxiety, so I deleted my account.

I just remembered about LinkedIn in mid-pandemic. I created a new account, added my current co-workers and some close friends and realised I only had 11 connections. I felt… a bit concerned about how it would make me look. The pandemic and life gave me lots more to worry about, so I forgot about LinkedIn again until a couple of weeks ago.

A friend messaged me, telling me something happened to them on LinkedIn, and I decided to log in. Turns out more people I know are on it (obviously!). More people to follow and add! And my number of connections is still tiny. What does that say about me? In 2023! Social media anxiety is back!

"Okay, so LinkedIn is, in theory, the professional side of social media. Am I being too much for adding this person I have only interacted with on Twitter?"

"This recommended person, I know them and have worked with them, but.. We haven't spoken in years. What should I do?!"

"I follow this person on four other social media platforms. Will I come across as overly keen if I click "follow here too??"

Anyway - I did click in a few! I even saw some posts from the State of the Browser that I was mentioned in.

But this got me thinking. Dang, what could have happened if creepy men weren't bothering me back in the day? Could I have kept connections with lovely people I have actually worked with in the past? Most aren't active on tech Twitter or these new platforms.

Because let's be realistic: before Twitter imploded, tech Twitter was/is very much only a Twitter thing. Most people I have ever worked with don't care about Twitter. And quite frankly, some of them were the best people I ever worked with. But they are all on LinkedIn. And I wasn't for years because I felt I had to get away to feel safe. How unfair. What opportunities could I have missed because of this?

There's a lot of crap on LinkedIn. It is its own meme, but something tells me that these new microblogging platforms will come and go, but LinkedIn will still be there with its own cursed vibe.

Anyway, if we have actually met, feel free to add me on LinkedIn!

Well, well, well. Who would have thought I would give this another go after pouring my heart a few years ago in a blog post? But I did! And nothing terrible happened!

I've had a silly idea of something I wanted to build for a long time, and I was daydreaming of turning it into a talk. While at Pixel Pioneers earlier in the summer, I asked Jeremy, Michelle and Andy for their opinion on my "elevator pitch", and they encouraged me to go for it. Later on, Hidde gave me excellent feedback on my written pitch. (Thank you!)

I applied around and was excited to have been invited to give it at the State of the Browser (which happened last month) and at FFConf (which is due to occur in less than a month). Another event is lined up for next year, but an official announcement still needs to be made.

My plan is to adapt the talk to each event. For the State of the Browser, I wanted to emphasize what you can do now with the browsers and their current ability. So, using vanilla javascript, HTML and CSS only. For future events, I'm hoping to expand on the tooling but also bring other aspects of fun and encouragement to build silly things for the sake of having fun.

I was incredibly nervous at the State of the Browser. It was my first talk in so many years, but the audience was incredible, and it was lovely to see so many familiar and friendly faces cheering me on. It went well. I even dared to watch the video! I now only hope that it gets even better each time.

I'm very nervous but looking forward to FFConf. It's literally the conference that started a journey of inspiration and acceptance in the tech community I chose to belong. I hope to contribute to people feeling as happy at the end of the day as I felt all these previous years as an attendee. And there are still tickets available!

I don't know where else I will give this talk - or if. But I will convert it to a blog post sometime next year. Regardless, I've updated my speaking page.

PS.: How cool is it that I could link a bunch of people here to their personal websites?

I need to preface this post by saying: bare with me. I was without doing much coding for over a year, so maybe I'm wrong, or everyone already knows this.

I recently had a situation where I needed to add a border between elements that sat in a 12 grid with a gap between them. To my knowledge (and again, possibly I am wrong), you can't add much on top of the grid-gap. I searched around but was in a rush, so I decided to do something that achieved the result visually. But it doesn't feel super nice and clean. In moments like this, I remind myself of what Rachel Andrew said at Pixel Pioneers some years ago: “Is this the right way to do it?... well, does it work?”.

It works. So here it is. You can fake a border effect by using two shadows, one on top of the other. The first declared shadow should match your background colour, while the second should be the desired border colour. The shadow with the same background colour will be on top of the shadow with the desired border colour. When this happens, there is a tiny difference in their offset. The shadow with the border colour will only be visible in that little offset gap.

The offset value should be half of the size of the gap, and the shadow that will act as the border should be a tiny bit bigger offset value.

See the Pen Experimenting with using box-shadow as a border on top of a grid gap by Ana Rodrigues (@ohhelloana) on CodePen.

In the codepen above I was somewhat successful at reproducing this visual effect with a few specific sizes. While the gap property accepts quite a few of them, the box-shadow property is more limited (I couldn't get this to work with percentages or calc() for example).

While the pixel option is the one that seems to work as expected in most browsers (desktop and mobile), it is also quite interesting how different lengths will generate visually different thicknesses of this fake border.

Update: Christopher Kirk-Nielsen very kindly forked my codepen and experimented with using custom properties and outlines.