Web Weekly #184
Guten Tag! Guten Tag! 👋
Have you ever struggled with lazy loading videos? Or have you used CSS zoom before? And do you know what Map.getOrInsertComputed does?
Turn on the Web Weekly tune and find some answers below. Enjoy!
::: highlight quote André listens to "Ordinary" by Alex Warren and says:
This is genuinely one of the most beautiful songs I've ever listened to. It landed instantly on my short-list playlist of personal 'masterpieces' — the kind of songs that feel timeless to me, alongside classics like 'The Sound of Silence'. It's emotionally honest, restrained, and quietly powerful in a way that really stays with you. :::
Do you want to share your favorite song with the Web Weekly community? Hit reply; there are seven more songs left in the queue.
This Web Weekly turned out very beefy already, so I'll keep the intro short. I discovered modern.css and it's outstanding.
The site lists old practices next to their modern counterparts. I'm sure you'll learn some new tricks by simply browsing around. Highly recommended!
If you enjoy Web Weekly, share it with your friends and family.
A quick "repost" really helps this indie newsletter out. Thank you! ❤️
No code
On screwing up → "Managers will forgive mistakes, but they won't forgive being made to look like a fool".
14 More lessons from 14 years at Google → "Most meetings fail not because they're unnecessary, but because they're disguised journaling".
The Unbearable Joy of Sitting Alone in a Café → "When you let your thoughts wander, they take you on a journey you'll never think possible".
New on the blog
Web Weekly Housekeeping
Since I doxed my inbox two weeks ago asking for more replies, I've been having many nice email conversations. And because I enjoy this, let's keep the housekeeping going for a bit longer.
Question this week: many people told me that Web Weekly is a bit too long at times. I can totally relate to this. And frankly, writing Web Weekly is a ton of work.
So, what would you cut? I'm torn because I actually like it as is. Reply and let me know!
Oh and a quick reminder: Web Weekly is open for sponsorships. If you want to reach 6.5k developers, you know what to do!
An in-depth guide to customizing list styles
If you want to spice up your list styling going beyond some bullets or numbers, Richard dropped a massive article explaining ::marker, @counter-style and symbols(). My highlight: I had forgotten that list-style-position is a thing...
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://piccalil.li/blog/an-in-depth-guide-to-customising-lists-with-css/">List with style</a>
TIL — CSS zoom
I've seen the zoom property before but I didn't realize that it can actually be pretty dang useful. If you want to learn more about the difference between zoom and scale, check out this demo on the blog.
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://www.stefanjudis.com/today-i-learned/css-zoom-to-scale-elements/">Zoom!</a>
The web breaks free from rectangles
If you had told me that one day I'd be excited about a property called border-shape, I wouldn't have believed you. And yet, here we are. Una shared the new CSS property coming to Chrome that allows you to actually "shape" elements.
Unlike
clip-path, which simply masks an element,border-shapeactually redefines the "box" itself. When you apply a shape to a border, the background, the border-image, focus outline, and the box-shadow all follow that new geometry.
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://una.im/border-shape/">Shape the web</a>
Safer JS error checking
Short and sweet: Matt explains why Error.isError is the way to go for error checking.
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://allthingssmitty.com/2026/02/23/from-instanceof-to-error-iserror-safer-error-checking-in-javascript/">Check the error</a>
The wonderful weird web – Kaomoji Cool Club
Did you know that these "emojis" are called Kaomoji? "Kaomoji" is a mix of the Japanese words "kao" 顔 (face) and "moji" 文字(character). Today I learned. And if you want to snatch some of the funky faces to look cool, that's what the Kaomoji Cool Club is about!
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://kaomojicool.club/">Express yourself with Unicode</a>
Lazy loaded videos are coming to the web
Scott and his team at Squarespace are working on bringing loading="lazy" to video and audio elements, and it's wild that we didn't have this in 2026, isn't it?
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://scottjehl.com/posts/lazy-media/">Defer the heavy load</a>
Side note: Scott was also behind pushing browser vendors to add responsive video support, and I honestly think that his "little side projects" are very inspiring.
Are image sprites still a thing?
Josh got into the topic of image sprites which, I must admit, I haven't used in at least a decade. But because Josh's posts are always so much fun to read and he explains object-fit, object-position and the animation step() function, it's definitely worth a read!
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://www.joshwcomeau.com/animation/sprites/">Remember sprites</a>
Yet another list of web dev stuff
You probably know about caniuse.com. But do you know about caniemail.com? Or canidev.tools, whocanuse.com and cssdb.org?
I love a good list, and canwe.dev lists all these utility webdev sites.
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://canwe.dev/">Get some resources</a>
New in Chrome DevTools — Render blocking
If you care about web performance, you probably check for render-blocking resources. Chrome supports a handy JS API to discover all these offenders.
And there's now a new column in the network panel giving you this information.
Random MDN – text-box-trim
From the unlimited MDN knowledge archive...
Unfortunately, text-box-trim doesn't work in Firefox yet, but man, I can't wait for this to work everywhere because it will make vertical alignment so much easier!
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/text-box-trim">Align</a>
TIL recap – text-transform can affect screen readers
Did you know that text-transform: uppercase can affect how screen readers read out the content? Well, now you do!
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://www.stefanjudis.com/today-i-learned/text-transforms-affects-screen-readers-too/">Be aware</a>
::: highlight info Find more short web development learnings in my "Today I learned" section. :::
New on the baseline — new map methods
JavaScript maps got two new methods to access entries while providing fallback values: getOrInsert and getOrInsertComputed. The method names are a bit too wordy for my taste, but I dig that getOrInsertComputed allows you to evaluate the fallback lazily.
Three valuable projects to have a look at
auroris/logo-soup – A JS library to normalize and harmonize logo visuals.
seflless/slowmo – Slow down, pause, or speed up time of any web content.
Veirt/weathr – A terminal weather app with ASCII animation.
A new Tiny Helper
If you're looking for a quick way to update and tweak SVG files in code, svg.studio will help you out!
<a class="btn btn__small" href="https://www.svg.studio/">Tweak all the SVGs</a>
::: highlight info Find more single-purpose online tools on tiny-helpers.dev. :::
Thought of the week
Nolan shared his thoughts on how AI might be changing programming, and of course, I can relate. I love coding. I love the puzzling part and am excited about learning things. But will all these things still matter? We'll find out soon enough.
::: highlight quote
My immediate fear isn't that I'll be out of a job. My fear is that I'll lose the part of my job that I love the most. :::
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