Happy birthday! 🎂

Side-by-side meme of a black Labrador sitting against a white background. The left panel is titled “Reality” and says, “I chased a squirrel.” The right panel is titled “LinkedIn” and shows the same dog with a long, exaggerated corporate-style caption about “executing a rapid-response squirrel displacement strategy,” thanking family and stakeholders, and looking forward to “scaling this impact.”

About right.

Credit: #stellaandlarry via #Instagram

Looks fabulous, great work 👏

Got to justify the inflated salaries and egos somehow😆 I favour the ‘do it in the way future-me won’t be cranky about’ approach.

100% I know you mean. I think a lot of people are feeling deflated the post-covid inflationary pressure alone, and I'm sure there's more going on besides.

Course Introduction – Ollie WordPress Block Theme https://videopress.com/v/rl3BaL79?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&posterUrl=https%3A%2F%2Folliewp.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F05%2Follie-theme-ac

This looks like a great (and free!) Block Theme learning resource from @mikemcalister.com olliewp.com/lesson/cours...

Last year it was made very clear that key WordPress properties were the personal assets of its co-founder, to manage as they please. What structural changes are being introduced to ensure a community that values empathy, trust, safety and accountability can be reestablished?

I've had a busy couple of evenings.

I've ported my website to @astro.build with a Headless Wordpress back end (Sorry Umbraco Peeps - I will definitely give it a go in the future)

Oh, and I finally wrote a thing - davidbeesley.co.uk/posts/my-key...

Wise words and interesting stack Dave. After 13 years of forgetting to leave the house for days-on-end, I concur it’s not a great strategy for a healthy mind and body🫣

Generate Blocks have just added this as a feature. I think something similar is mooted for core, but who know when, given recent events.

When I first stated working in International Development, this is was one of the first things I remember being impacted by. In those days it was via a Gall–Peters projection map we had on the wall in the office.

a man in a suit and tie is dancing in the dirt at a music festival . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is dancing in the dirt at a music festival .

Are you sure it hasn't taken something?

Apparently, seagulls “dance” like this to mimic the rain and trick worms to come to the surface.

CSS Tip

If you want to hide an element that has no children, it's tempting to reach for :empty. However, :empty doesn't work how you'd expect if there's white space or text nodes inside the element.

Instead, use this:

.your-element:not(:has(:first-child)) {
display: none;
}

Awesome presentation @keithdevon.com and @markwilkinson.dev at last nights @wpldn.uk.. I love how you build the section nav and the scroll animations. So simple, yet so powerful!

Contrast Checker

Forgot to post the link: contrast-checker.indigotree.co.uk

Great talk by @louisetowler.com on #a11y last night at @wpldn.uk. Louise share Indigo Tree's home-grown contrast checker tool, which has just about the best UI of any of (many) ones I've used previously. Thanks for Sharing 😎

Pretty cool. Shame there's no support for animation-timelime in Safari though.

See you there!

"First Look: Can Loveable.dev build a complex portfolio website?" from @jamiemarsland.bsky.social

Interesting to make a cursory comparison of accessibility between the two... The AI version arguably slightly less bad than the original (but it's all React 😬).

www.pootlepress.com/2025/02/firs...

Screenshot of the tool, showing an area on the right, with numbered boxes (1 to 3), options to add, duplicate, remove them, and some flexbox properties on the left to control those on container and itmes (display flex, flex direction, etc).

Flexbox Labs is a visual tool that helps you create layouts using CSS Flexbox.
I like such sandbox tools where you can play around without writing code. I think it’s important for designers to at least understand what flexbox can do.
flexboxlabs.netlify.app/

This is cool, two of my favourite WordPress plugins have hooked up! Both have had major updates recently, making them a proper power-couple now. Move over Posh & Becks, Barak & Michelle, Elton and Kiki... S+F Pro & Generate Blocks are where it's at 😂

Another new client today totally unaware of the difference between WordPress OSS and wordpress.com. I wouldn't mind one jot if Open Source WordPress took on a new identity.

That's Food for Thought

Oof. You have my sympathies. £170 for a keyboard which is glued together is obscene. If I saturate it with isopropyl alcohol, it starts working correctly... but I fear this isn't a realistic long-term solution 🤣

For the record, I do not recommend tipping your flat white over your Apple 'Magic' keyboard. It's glued together and impossible to disassemble to clean 🤬

WCAG 2 and APCA contrast checker | Atmos Quickly check contrast between colors in HEX, RGB, HSL, and LCH. Simple and fast.

... and here is a nice tester for it, vs WCAG 2.1's 4.5:1 contrast approach atmos.style/contrast-che...

APCA: the new algorithm for accessible colour contrast Orange is the new whatever

An improved approach to calculating accessible contrast ratios is being considered for WCAG 3.0: ruitina.com/apca-accessi...

As someone with a permanently skewed ICC profile baked into his firmware, I welcome the change!

Lidl app notification reading: “Fancy a taste of the USA? Discover our McEnnedy range, in store now”

Push notification from Lidl… I wonder if sales of their ‘USA’ range are a little down? 🤔

I’ll check down the back of the sofa for you. Will they take Lego people and redundant remote controls?