Writerโs Notice: There are already great recaps of the Net Instructions Developer Summit I spoke at in November 2025. So, relatively than providing one other one, I made a decision to seize my expertise on the convention in a stream-of-consciousness model that particulars my battles with stage fright and imposter syndrome. I havenโt seen this model used on a tech weblog earlier than, however CSS-Tips has turn into my playground for experiments โ not simply with CSS, however with language itself โ so letโs see the place this experiment takes us.
Arrival
Once I was a child, there was once a Museum railway station in Melbourne, Australia. In 1995, it modified its identify to match the buying heart above it โ a microcosm of how the mentality of my dwelling metropolis has shifted โ however Sydney nonetheless has a Museum station. The aesthetics of Sydneyโs Museum Station evoke London Underground vibes as my practice from Sydney Airport stops below Hyde Park, the oldest public park in Australia and the primary to be named after its extra well-known London counterpart.
Britainโs on my mind as a result of I would like this journey to resemble the Harry Potter tales: the wish-fulfillment narrative of discovering you could have particular powers and are chosen. In fact, the way in which I used to be chosen to talk on the Net Instructions Dev Summit this 12 months wasnโt so spontaneous.
The organizer, John Allsopp, really helpful my article โTips on how to Uncover a CSS Trickโ on his studying checklist and related with me on LinkedIn. I took the chance to pitch through direct message for a discuss scrolling for the reason that proposal kind on the Net Instructions web site felt comparatively impersonal. However now, what feels impersonal and daunting is the parallel-universe model of a practice station that doesnโt exist again dwelling besides in my reminiscence. Stepping onto the platform like an eleventh-hour rehearsal for the stage, I really feel much less just like the Harry Potter of CSS and extra like Iโve signed as much as be a novelty museum exhibit. Step proper up and chuckle on the middle-aged dude who writes weird articles that includes a fictional vendor of haunted CSS tips who cursed him to overuse CSS for all the pieces.
The spooky CSS shopkeeper is a figment of my creativeness primarily based on watching too many Simpsons reruns โ however now Iโve manifested a real-life froghurt state of affairs: a free convention ticket and journey to Sydney in alternate for embarrassing myself in entrance of the biggest viewers Iโve ever spoken to.
I procrastinate preparation by sitting down for frozen yoghurt within the Sydney CBD. The froghurt is yummy, however cursed by the cloud of tension following me round on this sunny day. So Iโll procrastinate describing my very own discuss to you by first sharing a number of of my favorites from others.
Day One
Iโve arrived and the occasion kicks off.
Welcome: John Allsopp
The second John takes the stage, Iโm struck by his showmanship in subverting assumptions about his enthusiasm for tech. He opens by saying he feels ennui with net growth, but hopes the lineup over the subsequent two days would possibly snap him out of his pessimism concerning the netโs future.
Itโs the convention equal of the literary strategy of a body story: He positions himself as a weary sage who will reappear after every discuss for Q&A โ and but, as somebody who predates PCs, he has greyed like an unavailable possibility on a pc display screen. He fears he has seen an excessive amount of to really feel optimistic about the way forward for the net he helped to construct.
He says front-end growth has reached a โnative most,โ borrowing a time period from calculus to elucidate how the instruments that acquired us right here have flattened our fee of change. The productiveness increase is offset by the methods our instruments restrict creativeness. Our psychological fashions make it straightforward to construct the identical web sites time and again, maintaining us out of contact with what fashionable browsers can do.
He cites the View Transitions API โ out there as a progressive enhancement since 2023 โ for example of a local browser superpower that might subvert the SPA mannequin, but stays solely experimentally supported in React.
The dramatic context for the subsequent two days is now set. The net sucks, however show him mistaken, youngsters.
โThe Browser Strikes Again: Rethinking the Trendy Dev Stackโ by Jono Alderson
โYouโre gonna hate me,โ says the keynote speaker Jono Alderson on the high of his discuss on rethinking the fashionable dev stack.
He argues that frameworks like React are Rube Goldberg machines constructed round limitations that not exist. He compares them to Netflixโs DVD-by-mail period: Weโre nonetheless sending discs after we might be streaming.
He runs via browser capabilities in 2025 that we routinely overlook after we reflexively attain for frameworks โ and features a teaser slide for my later discuss on scroll timelines. I really feel a way of belonging and dread concurrently, like passing the hen exit on House Mountain.
Within the break, Jono admits to me that he was nervous about triggering anger by bashing frameworks. I hope the viewers is warming to favoring the platform, as a result of my discuss shares that very same underlying spirit, albeit via the precise instance of CSS Scroll-Pushed Animations. It helps that Jono served as frontline fodder, since analysis reveals that all the pieces sounds extra credible with a British accent, even when Jonoโs was barely slurred from jet lag.
Whether or not heโs proper about nuking frameworks or not, itโs wholesome to reassess whether or not we’d like a dependency checklist longer than our display screen port. I first questioned this in 2015 after watching Joe Gregorio argue we should always cease utilizing frameworks and depend on the platform โ a chat that, in hindsight, appeared suspiciously like guerrilla advertising for Google Polymer. I adopted Polymer for a serious mission. It was extra like a framework than a library, however with the โbonusโ of not being battle-tested like React: it had its personal bizarre construct course of, reliance on a browser characteristic that by no means grew to become a typical, and a promised future that by no means arrived. I ended up rewriting all the pieces. Ultimately, Polymer itself was quietly put out of its distress.
Even so, I really like the concept of net parts: reworking the browser into one thing constructed for the way in which we already power it to behave. A decade later, has the state of affairs improved sufficient to yarn take away React? The reply might transcend browser functionality in 2025.
Over espresso, Jono and I focus on how LLMs are educated on oceans of React, reinforcing the idea that each net app have to be an SPA. Escaping React is tougher than ever when the way forward for work is dragging us again into the previous, a lot the way in which suggestion algorithms on social media lure us in our personal echo chambers.
โItโs solely gonna worsen,โ says Jono.
And I assume it can, except we begin creating good examples of what browsers can do with out dependencies.
โSupercharged Scrolling With CSSโ by Me
Itโs debatable whether or not you must admit youโre nervous whereas giving a chat. Most say you shouldnโt. The stability I strike is to open with a self-deprecating joke as a option to get the scrolling dialogue rolling.
โI’ve a sense a few of you is likely to be scrolling in your units as we converse, so I urge you to search for โ and letโs scroll collectively for the subsequent half hour.โ
It will get fun. Itโs a second the place I translate my CSS-Tips article model โ self-referential, breaking the fourth wall โ into one thing that works on stage. That is my problem for the discuss: How do I adapt a 12 monthsโs price of articles about my autistic particular curiosity into thirty minutes?
It brings to thoughts the film Adaptation, the place Nicolas Cage performs a screenwriter with imposter syndrome attempting to adapt an unfilmable ebook into the film weโre watching. Not like my articles, I determine I shouldnโt launch abruptly into the loopy CSS experiments I in-built my basement.
First, I must reply why me, this random man, thinks scrollytelling warrants half an hour of the viewersโs time. I canโt assume a lot about this viewers. Kris Howard will later touch upon her weblog that โLee Meyerโs session launched me to a brand new time period โ scrollytelling.โ
I borrow credibility from The New York Occasions, name-checking its high-profile examples of scrollytelling, one in all which gained a Pulitzer Prize. John helpfully drops the hyperlink to the โSnow Fallโ article into the livestream chat, simply as Iโd add hyperlinks if this had been an article.
However thereโs one other aspect of my writing that doesnโt translate: lengthy code snippets. Theyโre too advanced to elucidate on stage. Doing so could be a suicide mission. Letโs do it anyway.
Iโve used reveal.js previously for an internet presentation at Video games For Change, and reveal.js helps automated animations between code blocks. I take advantage of that to display how newer CSS syntax can drastically shorten code. It doesnโt matter that no one can totally parse the previous syntax at a look; thatโs the purpose of the animation. I ask for a present of palms for who would relatively write the brand new syntax than the previous?
Adapting my articles for the stage is my alternative to rewrite historical past to seem logical. The order of discovery of the constructing blocks I’ll use for my last demo seems intentional relatively than the chaotic path I’ve been leaving throughout CSS-Tips since 2024. However now itโs time to deal with the ultimate demo just like the boss battle it’s.
I ask for a present of palms: Ought to I combat the dangerous man unarmed, or run away? The viewers is cut up evenly, which is the one end result I didnโt plan for.
In Adaptation, when Cageโs character is working out of time to complete his script, he panics and seeks recommendation from screenwriting guru Robert McKee, who tells him: Your story might be flawed all through, however wow them in the long run, and also youโve acquired a success. As a lot as Iโm my very own worst critic, I do know I’ve one thing with this last demo, the sort that will make a pacesetter on the Google Chrome group tweet โWow!โ That tweet hasnโt occurred but whereas Iโm on stage, as Iโm questioning how this crowd will react.
I let the dangerous man kill the hero first. I make the antagonist appear unbeatable. Then I refresh, scroll in the wrong way, climb a ladder, accumulate a lightsaber, and kill the dangerous man.
McKee warned Cageโs author character to not cheat on the finish with a deus ex machina. A magic lightsaber to avoid wasting the day looks like one for positive, however by a stroke of synchronicity, Star Wars imagery has been showing in talks all day. John Allsopp even joked that itโs a theme he didnโt get the memo about. I reference this overarching theme, and the lightsaber feels earned. The pixel artwork man kills the dangerous man with one blow. The applause is loud sufficient to be heard on the livestream, regardless that the viewers isnโt miked.
Can we finish on that prime observe? Analysis reveals that point dilates for individuals onstage with excessive public-speaking anxiousness. Sarcastically, in a discuss controlling timelines, I notice Iโve misplaced management of the time, and Iโm about to expire of slides too early.
So, I replay the demo and focus on its subtext. The scrollytelling pixel man is usually a novelty toy or he might be ergodic literature, an autobiographical allegory. I refresh once more. โScroll left or proper to flee or combat,โ says the pixel artwork man. I clarify the deeper psychological reality behind the simplistic story and retro graphics.
โYou may inform them something should you simply make it humorous, make it rhyme, and in the event that they nonetheless donโt perceive you, then you definately run it another time.โ
โ Bo Burnham in โCanโt Deal with Thisโ
Completely satisfied Hour and Speaker Dinner
Each autistic particular person ought to obtain a voucher that grants them entry to 1 social state of affairs the place individuals come and discuss to them concerning the factor they’re obsessive about. One piece of suggestions particularly made me really feel seen: Somebody tells me a extra conventional tutorial would have been positive, however the path I took was playful, which felt refreshing in a world the place discussions of net growth can turn into depressingly utilitarian. He doesnโt know that the primary weblog I ever created was playfulprogramming.com, so Iโve all the time been about discovering pleasure in growth.
Another person advised me it was their favourite discuss within the convention, and that I used to be courageous for embracing my Jewishness publicly by mentioning the Torah as an illustration of the which means of scrolling to me. Given what occurred in Sydney a month after I left, it might not have been bravery a lot as my obliviousness to the present vibes in my nation, since I’m a extra frequent reader of CSS-Tips than the information.
Day Two
The Sydney climate cools, mirroring my extra chilled temper immediately. With my presentation behind me, I now stroll towards the venue like an nameless attendee who magically acquired a free ticket. I brace myself for a morning of AI-heavy talks. My 12 months at work was an AI overdose.
โWhatโs Past the Browser: The AI Platform Shiftโ by Rupert Manfredi
Strolling to the College of Expertise Sydney, the combo of venue and theme jogs my memory of John Barthโs Giles Goat-Boy, through which the world is represented as a college managed by an AI. Authorship itself is disputed within the fictional preface, with each Barth and the AI claiming solely to have edited the work โ eerily prescient in 1966 of the state of labor in 2026. AI is nice till thereโs a defect. Then people blame the AI, and the AI blames people for misunderstanding its limits.
The novel satirized the Chilly Struggle. A Marxist would possibly say mental property canโt exist as a result of artistic work is all the time a product of the zeitgeist. Though the tech that Rupert Manfrediโs demos blurs the traces of authorship by removing discrete apps and web sites and composing UIs to satisfy the consumerโs wants on the fly, he’s most likely not a commie. He means that creators would nonetheless receives a commission. Maybe this may lastly be the day within the solar for HTTP 402 Fee Required.
Rupertโs discuss, โWhatโs Past the Browser,โ is daring. He demos โTelepath,โ a prototype laptop with no browser and no apps. He envisages that future builders will switch their abilities to create solely fragments and providers that AI can synthesize right into a tailor-made consumer expertise. He argues net growth has by no means actually been about studying React hooks, however about fixing consumer issues: essential paths, data high quality, and creativity. These are extra elementary to a developerโs skillset than any instruments they occur to make use of.
That resonates with how I take into consideration my work on CSS-Tips: They’re fragments of expression that acquire which means when woven into a bigger tapestry by the individuals or machines who be taught from them. If fundamental performance turns into trivial, builders can give attention to the issues no one has solved but.
โA False Sense of Accessibility: What Automated Testing Instruments Are Lackingโ by Beau Vass
As I discussed earlier than, I’m autistic. So are my youngsters. Itโs an invisible incapacity, and Iโm cautious to let the youngsters know the world gainedโt rearrange itself round our autism. Simply as you mayโt make one thing accessible to everybody, you mayโt make the accessible expertise the identical as everybody elseโs any greater than you may make it straightforward for my son to achieve a college system that was by no means designed with neurodiverse individuals in thoughts.
Accessibility is commonly much less about common consolation than about guaranteeing thereโs a viable path for the individuals who really want the content material. When you consider it, the customersโ colleges are a part of the platform. Accessibility is, subsequently, as elementary as browser compatibility.
In his discuss, โWhat Automated Instruments Are Lacking,โ speaker Beau Vass demonstrates how automated audits flag non-issues whereas lacking essential failures, generally making accessibility worse when adopted blindly. An ornamental picture with out various textual content is likely to be flagged, but including it might additionally actively hurt screen-reader customers. The issue isnโt automated instruments themselves; itโs when passing a Lighthouse audit turns into the purpose. Instruments solely acknowledge what theyโre taught, and AI educated on a damaged net will faithfully reproduce its errors. As one in all my workmates likes to say: โUse your instruments, however donโt allow them to flip you right into a instrument.โ
Accessibility isnโt a froghurt topping. It will probablyโt be added on the finish, not even in precept. The duty is shared throughout design, content material, engineering, and testing, and it requires direct enter from individuals with disabilities. Accessibility could also be subjective, however making the net accessible ought to nonetheless be simpler than making the bodily world accessible. After we fail, itโs one other reminder that tooling alone gainedโt save us.
AI gainedโt remedy accessibility, however it might turn into helpful as soon as we cease asking it to. There arenโt sufficient good examples on the net for fashions to be taught from, which suggests we willโt anticipate Claude Code to repair our websites. That mentioned, AI can already simulate how a display screen reader consumer would possibly try to finish a activity and floor the place friction happens. BrowserStack does this already. Sarcastically, it might be simpler for a machine to place itself within the footwear of a disabled human than for a non-disabled human to do the identical, and Beau believes it gainedโt be AI that modifications the sport, however legal guidelines and rules requiring individuals to care about accessibility. Beau believes itโs extra legal guidelines and rules that might be a game-changer for accessibility than AI.
Departure
All flights are delayed an hour, as if Sydney itself is resisting my return to Melbourne โ and the tip of this text. However again after I was younger and educating myself to write down, I learn a ebook about writing articles that mentioned the extra a chunk appears to be about all the pieces, the extra itโs about nothing. Quickly, we should finish the article.
It ends with me ready to take flight, fascinated by how Chris Coyier as soon as mentioned his best pleasure wasnโt a single second of accomplishment, however the โcombination momentsโ of sustained give attention to his skilled passions. The afterglow of this convention is the sum of a 12 months obsessing over animation timelines โ and what youโll do with the data if I finish this text on the proper second.
However does that magical second even exist? Animation timelines work as a result of we will pause movement on a display screen. But when we might do this in actual life, then, in keeping with Zenoโs arrow paradox, my aircraft might by no means land. At each bullet-time instantaneous, the aircraft would seem at relaxation, which might make all motion โ together with my whole journey โ an phantasm.
John Allsopp frightened that the net itself is likely to be caught in that phantasm of progress. However Aristotle answered Zenoโs arrow paradox by saying discrete instants of time donโt exist, solely the stream of time. Actuality is manufactured from the mixture moments that Chris Coyier mentioned have which means to him. As I look forward to a aircraft that appears incapable of touchdown, my cellphone buzzes with my favourite suggestions from the convention: a graduate developer amazed by โthe scroll part within the Dev Summit.โ I really like that he calls it a part, not a chat, as if it blended seamlessly right into a two-day narrative stream, foreshadowing a future net that unfurls like an infinite scroll.
โThis story won’t ever finish. This story ends.โ
โ John Barth
