Top picks — 2025 August
I’m experiencing a little writing crisis. I don’t publish much nowadays, other than keeping the “Top Picks” series on a prompt schedule and some occasional short-form articles to release some infrequent bursts of creativity. It is not the first time it’s happening to me, and I’m certain that I’ll get back to regular blogging soon.
Life has just become busy. Hectic times at work but also my focus has been redirected to learning a new programming language (Go lang) and upskilling in some other areas. The explosion of AI tools and the fact that no one needs to read my writing to solve their programming challenges can be discouraging, but surprisingly doesn’t bother me too much. I believe in the positive impact of the creation, putting in an effort and delivering value to readers, even if I am the sole human being reading it. I have emphasised the value of writing a million times before, and no AI trend is going to kill it.
On that note, have you noticed a recent backlash against AI tools not being as effective as previously claimed? Cal Newport recently noticed the same and published his thoughts in the “Ep. 367: What if AI Doesn’t Get Much Better Than This?” episode of his podcast. Just a food for thoughts.
Time for some links! August is my favourite month. Hot summer, good weather, fresh fruits and veggies and also my birthday. Yes, I’m officially a 38-year-old happy man. Looks like it is also a great time for web folks to make some great content, and I have some of it prepared for you here today. Music recommendation from my records shelf as a bonus 😘
Album of the month
Today is not about the single album but about the whole series of bootleg compilations created by Danny Dan The Beat Mann, called “Dusty Fingers”. These compilations of funk, jazz, soul and disco are full of raw breaks and open drum solos, which is what every hip hop producer is obsessed with. This series is a base used on hundreds if not thousands of incredible beats. Every single one of the seventeen releases is dope. I have only four of them, but I will do my best to have the whole set eventually.
Little chance you are going to start exploring this compilation on your own if I won’t give you a link to click and listen, so here you are. Some of the smashing songs picked just from the Volume One. You have sixteen more to explore.
- Billy Brooks - Fourty Days, sampled by Tribe Called Quest in “Luck of Lucien”, “Testify” by Talib Kweli, “Tonight” by Children of Zeus to name a few.
- David Axelrod - Whe Warnings Part I, used by “Duality” by DJ Krush
- Oliver Sain - On The Hill, also present on the outro of “Tell Me” by Pete Rock and CL Smooth
Top picks
“Creating a scroll-spy with 2 lines of CSS” by Una Kravets
Creating a scroll spying back in the days required an expensive callback on the window scroll event. Then the IntersectionObserver landed and things became a lot easier and a lot more efficient. I published an “The Intersection Observer API explained” almost a decade ago, so if you’re still spying on the window element, it is a good time to change. Now, we can do even better! The scroll-target-group is a pure CSS solution, and this thing literally feels like cheating. The modern web is just awesome!
“Curate your own newspaper with RSS” by Molly White
No way someone can write it better than Molly White. We live surrounded by media algorithmic surveillance, bombarded by ads, and we are being fed with stuff others want us to consume, leaving little choice for us. The only solution for this is good, old RSS. I cannot consume my content in any other way, and I’m surprised this technology doesn’t appeal to more folks. Also, while reading this, I was devastated to find out that Feedly, a service that I have been using for many years, made a turn and now does a lot of nasty stuff besides operating a feed reader. My personal choice nowadays is an OML file synced by iCloud across all my devices via Reeder Classic.
“Links, Resources, and Humans of Note” by Alex Russell
Kinda related to RSS, especially if you are new to it and you’re looking for resources to follow. Alex accumulated a huge list of great personal and company blogs, good articles about web essentials and browser mechanics. I got inspired and added a few more feeds to my OPML file. This is “the list” if you are into web.
“Using the Custom Highlight API” by Chris Coyier
Quick and easy to follow intro to the CustomHighlight API. Good to know that this API is now supported by all the vendors!
Address formats around the world
Internationalisation is super hard on the web, and address details are one of its aspects. There are so many formats, many nomenclatures that differ from country to country, but sometimes even within the same area, rules differ massively. This article is a list of recommendations to follow when you design an address details form. I found it super interesting how different these rules are, and this made me appreciate the complexity of some of the systems that need to handle all the possible permutations.
“Rolling the Dice with CSS random()” by Jon Davis, Jen Simmons, and Tim Nguyen
The random() function is coming to CSS. It is super experimental for now and only available in the Safari Technology Preview. I’m well excited about it as it is going to enable a lot of creative use cases without asking JavaScript for help. Nice!
“Testing Time (and other asyncronicities)” by Damien Neil
I recently started learning the Go language, and I’m fascinated by it. Its simplicity and pragmatism are very appealing for someone who works in the JavaScript environment day in, day out. Testing practices in Go are something that need practice, though, and I find idiomatic testing patterns pretty overwhelming, especially when it comes to testing asynchronous code. This article is an incredible explainer, admits that all the areas that I found difficult are difficult not only for me, and introduces a testing/synctest package that makes this a new standard for making it a breeze. I also learned a new word, “quiescence” which describes the state when all background tasks are settled. Love it!
“An Illustrated Guide to OAuth” by Aditya Bhargava
OAuth is hard and there are tons of variations of it and potential flows it can follow. This illustrated guide is a super handy explainer of the main concepts involved.
“gradient.style” by Adam Argyle
Tiny little tool for making gradients. As you would expect from Adam, this is a top-quality project. I would love to see gradient editors like this in graphical software. Bookmarked!
“The primitive tortureboard: Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY” by Marcin Wichary
This is the best story ever. How did we, the modern generation of users of technology of any kind, end up using the QWERTY keyboard? The layout was clearly designed without any consideration of the modern era of digital devices, optimised for the most efficient use of typewriters a century ago. Why is Dvorak clearly a better option and why has it never taken over? I cannot even imagine the research that Marcin did before writing this chapter of his book. After reading this one, I regret not buying his books when they were available even more. This is just an incredible read.