Hello friends, it’s the 50th issue today!
The Index is very much on a mostly fortnightly cadence at the moment because I’ve been absolutely heads down working on my course, sorry about that! Let’s dig into some links together though.
This post by Richard Rutter demonstrates how much easier it is to do good typography on the web, focusing on those pesky <sup> and <sub> elements. I used to work in very traditional design agencies and let me tell you, we did some awful hacks to make those elements behave that are thankfully no longer relevant, thanks to modern CSS.
Let me preface this link with the fact I have very little faith in Mozilla, the organisation, after many missteps over the years, but that doesn’t take away from how nice this new brand is. The way they’ve kept the dinosaur is top class too.
This is a really cool usage of CSS gradients as a mask. It’s an often unknown and forgotten thing that CSS gradients are a type of image, so just like other images, they can be used to mask elements. Handy!
I read PySkyWiFi: completely free, unbelievably stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights and sure, it made my brain fall out of my ears, but it’s also really interesting. I don’t understand a lot of it but I love to read about such nerdy determination to get something working.
WordPress stuff has really been kicking off recently and as I see it, it’s become a professional liability thanks solely to Matt Mullenweg and his enabler’s behaviour. It’s probably not going to get better either, so if you want options to move, David Darnes has a fantastic run-down of your options.
Let me wrap up this issue by thanking everyone who has subscribed to The Index. A special thanks to those of you who recommend this newsletter to others too. I, and the rest of us at Piccalilli really appreciate that 💛
P.S. This is lovely and of course, this is a good demo.
Thanks for reading this issue of The Index. You can get future updates by subscribing.
Until the next issue, take it easy 👋
Andy