Creator’s Word: There are already fantastic recaps of the Net Instructions Developer Summit I spoke at in November 2025. So, moderately 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 haven’t seen this model used on a tech weblog earlier than, however CSS-Tips has change into my playground for experiments — not simply with CSS, however with language itself — so let’s see the place this experiment takes us.

Arrival

After I was a child, there was a Museum railway station in Melbourne, Australia. In 1995, it modified its title to match the procuring heart above it — a microcosm of how the mentality of my residence metropolis has shifted — however Sydney nonetheless has a Museum station. The aesthetics of Sydney’s 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.

Britain’s 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’ve gotten particular powers and are chosen. In reality, the way in which I used to be chosen to talk on the Net Instructions Dev Summit this 12 months wasn’t so spontaneous.

The organizer, John Allsopp, beneficial my article “The best way to Uncover a CSS Trick” on his studying record and related with me on LinkedIn. I took the chance to pitch through direct message for a speak about scrolling because the proposal type 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 doesn’t exist again residence 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 I’ve signed as much as be a novelty museum exhibit. Step proper up and giggle on the middle-aged dude who writes weird articles that includes a fictional vendor of haunted CSS methods who cursed him to overuse CSS for every thing.

The spooky CSS shopkeeper is a figment of my creativeness based mostly on watching too many Simpsons reruns — however now I’ve manifested a real-life froghurt scenario: a free convention ticket and journey to Sydney in trade for embarrassing myself in entrance of the biggest viewers I’ve 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 I’ll procrastinate describing my very own discuss to you by first sharing just a few of my favorites from others.

Day One

I’ve arrived and the occasion kicks off.

Welcome: John Allsopp

The second John takes the stage, I’m 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 in regards to the net’s future.

It’s 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 — and but, as somebody who predates PCs, he has greyed like an unavailable possibility on a pc display. 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 “native most,” borrowing a time period from calculus to clarify how the instruments that acquired us right here have flattened our fee of change. The productiveness enhance is offset by the methods our instruments restrict creativeness. Our psychological fashions make it simple to construct the identical web sites repeatedly, retaining us out of contact with what trendy browsers can do.

He cites the View Transitions API — out there as a progressive enhancement since 2023 — 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 incorrect, youngsters.

“The Browser Strikes Again: Rethinking the Trendy Dev Stack” by Jono Alderson

“You’re gonna hate me,” says the keynote speaker Jono Alderson on the high of his discuss on rethinking the trendy dev stack.

He argues that frameworks like React are Rube Goldberg machines constructed round limitations that not exist. He compares them to Netflix’s DVD-by-mail period: We’re nonetheless sending discs once we might be streaming.

He runs via browser capabilities in 2025 that we routinely overlook once we reflexively attain for frameworks — 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 particular instance of CSS Scroll-Pushed Animations. It helps that Jono served as frontline fodder, since analysis reveals that every thing sounds extra credible with a British accent, even when Jono’s was barely slurred from jet lag.

Whether or not he’s proper about nuking frameworks or not, it’s wholesome to reassess whether or not we’d like a dependency record longer than our display port. I first questioned this in 2015 after watching Joe Gregorio argue we should always cease utilizing frameworks and depend on the platform — a chat that, in hindsight, seemed 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 “bonus” 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 an ordinary, and a promised future that by no means arrived. I ended up rewriting every thing. Ultimately, Polymer itself was quietly put out of its distress.

Even so, I like the concept of net parts: reworking the browser into one thing constructed for the way in which we already pressure it to behave. A decade later, has the scenario improved sufficient to yarn take away React? The reply could transcend browser functionality in 2025.

Over espresso, Jono and I talk about how LLMs are educated on oceans of React, reinforcing the belief that each net app should 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.

“It’s solely gonna worsen,” says Jono.

And I suppose it is going to, except we begin creating good examples of what browsers can do with out dependencies.

“Supercharged Scrolling With CSS” by Me

It’s debatable whether or not it’s best to admit you’re nervous whereas giving a chat. Most say you shouldn’t. The steadiness I strike is to open with a self-deprecating joke as a method to get the scrolling dialogue rolling.

“I’ve a sense a few of you may be scrolling in your units as we communicate, so I urge you to lookup — and let’s scroll collectively for the subsequent half hour.”

It will get amusing. It’s a second the place I translate my CSS-Tips article model — self-referential, breaking the fourth wall — into one thing that works on stage. That is my problem for the discuss: How do I adapt a 12 months’s 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 we’re watching. In contrast to my articles, I determine I shouldn’t launch abruptly into the loopy CSS experiments I in-built my basement.

First, I have to reply why me, this random man, thinks scrollytelling warrants half an hour of the viewers’s time. I can’t assume a lot about this viewers. Kris Howard will later touch upon her weblog that “Lee Meyer’s session launched me to a brand new time period – scrollytelling.”

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 “Snow Fall” article into the livestream chat, simply as I’d add hyperlinks if this have been an article.

However there’s one other aspect of my writing that doesn’t translate: lengthy code snippets. They’re too complicated to clarify on stage. Doing so can be a suicide mission. Let’s do it anyway.

I’ve used reveal.js up to now for a web based 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 doesn’t matter that no person can totally parse the outdated syntax at a look; that’s the purpose of the animation. I ask for a present of fingers for who would moderately write the brand new syntax than the outdated?

Adapting my articles for the stage is my alternative to rewrite historical past to look logical. The order of discovery of the constructing blocks I’ll use for my last demo seems intentional moderately than the chaotic path I’ve been leaving throughout CSS-Tips since 2024. However now it’s time to sort out the ultimate demo just like the boss battle it’s.

I ask for a present of fingers: Ought to I combat the dangerous man unarmed, or run away? The viewers is break up evenly, which is the one final result I didn’t plan for.

In Adaptation, when Cage’s character is operating 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 ultimately, and also you’ve acquired a success. As a lot as I’m my very own worst critic, I do know I’ve one thing with this last demo, the sort that will make a frontrunner on the Google Chrome workforce tweet “Wow!” That tweet hasn’t occurred but whereas I’m on stage, as I’m 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, gather a lightsaber, and kill the dangerous man.

McKee warned Cage’s author character to not cheat on the finish with a deus ex machina. A magic lightsaber to avoid wasting the day appears like one for certain, however by a stroke of synchronicity, Star Wars imagery has been showing in talks all day. John Allsopp even joked that it’s a theme he didn’t 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, though the viewers isn’t miked.

Can we finish on that prime be aware? Analysis reveals that point dilates for individuals onstage with excessive public-speaking anxiousness. Sarcastically, in a speak about controlling timelines, I notice I’ve misplaced management of the time, and I’m about to expire of slides too early.

So, I replay the demo and talk about its subtext. The scrollytelling pixel man generally is a novelty toy or he might be ergodic literature, an autobiographical allegory. I refresh once more. “Scroll left or proper to flee or combat,” says the pixel artwork man. I clarify the deeper psychological reality behind the simplistic story and retro graphics.

“You’ll be able to inform them something in the event you simply make it humorous, make it rhyme, and in the event that they nonetheless don’t perceive you, you then run it yet one more time.”

— Bo Burnham in “Can’t Deal with This”

Glad Hour and Speaker Dinner

Each autistic individual ought to obtain a voucher that grants them entry to at least one social scenario the place individuals come and discuss to them in regards to 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 advantageous, however the course I took was playful, which felt refreshing in a world the place discussions of net growth can change into depressingly utilitarian. He doesn’t know that the primary weblog I ever created was playfulprogramming.com, so I’ve all the time been about discovering pleasure in growth.

Another person informed 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 right now. 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.

“What’s Past the Browser: The AI Platform Shift” by Rupert Manfredi

Strolling to the College of Know-how Sydney, the combo of venue and theme jogs my memory of John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, wherein 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 — eerily prescient in 1966 of the state of labor in 2026. AI is nice till there’s a defect. Then people blame the AI, and the AI blames people for misunderstanding its limits.

The novel satirized the Chilly Battle. A Marxist would possibly say mental property can’t exist as a result of inventive work is all the time a product of the zeitgeist. Though the tech that Rupert Manfredi’s demos blurs the strains of authorship by taking away discrete apps and web sites and composing UIs to fulfill the consumer’s wants on the fly, he’s in all probability 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.

Rupert’s discuss, “What’s Past the Browser,” is daring. He demos “Telepath,” a prototype laptop with no browser and no apps. He envisages that future builders will switch their expertise 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: vital paths, info high quality, and creativity. These are extra basic to a developer’s 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 study from them. If fundamental performance turns into trivial, builders can give attention to the issues no person has solved but.

“A False Sense of Accessibility: What Automated Testing Instruments Are Lacking” by Beau Vass

As I discussed earlier than, I’m autistic. So are my youngsters. It’s an invisible incapacity, and I’m cautious to let the youngsters know the world gained’t rearrange itself round our autism. Simply as you’ll be able to’t make one thing accessible to everybody, you’ll be able to’t make the accessible expertise the identical as everybody else’s any greater than you can also make it simple for my son to achieve a college system that was by no means designed with neurodiverse individuals in thoughts.

Accessibility is usually much less about common consolation than about making certain there’s a viable path for the individuals who actually want the content material. When you concentrate on it, the customers’ colleges are a part of the platform. Accessibility is, subsequently, as basic as browser compatibility.

In his discuss, “What Automated Instruments Are Lacking,” speaker Beau Vass demonstrates how automated audits flag non-issues whereas lacking vital failures, generally making accessibility worse when adopted blindly. An ornamental picture with out various textual content may be flagged, but including it might additionally actively hurt screen-reader customers. The issue isn’t automated instruments themselves; it’s when passing a Lighthouse audit turns into the purpose. Instruments solely acknowledge what they’re taught, and AI educated on a damaged net will faithfully reproduce its errors. As one in all my workmates likes to say: “Use your instruments, however don’t allow them to flip you right into a device.”

Accessibility isn’t a froghurt topping. It may possibly’t 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. Once we fail, it’s one other reminder that tooling alone gained’t save us.

AI gained’t remedy accessibility, however it might change into helpful as soon as we cease asking it to. There aren’t sufficient good examples on the internet for fashions to study from, which implies we will’t count on Claude Code to repair our websites. That stated, AI can already simulate how a display reader consumer would possibly try to finish a process and floor the place friction happens. BrowserStack does this already. Sarcastically, it might be simpler for a machine to place itself within the sneakers of a disabled human than for a non-disabled human to do the identical, and Beau believes it gained’t be AI that adjustments the sport, however legal guidelines and laws requiring individuals to care about accessibility. Beau believes it’s extra legal guidelines and laws that can 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 — and the top of this text. However again after I was younger and educating myself to write down, I learn a ebook about writing articles that stated the extra a bit appears to be about every thing, the extra it’s about nothing. Quickly, we should finish the article.

It ends with me ready to take flight, excited about how Chris Coyier as soon as stated his best pleasure wasn’t a single second of accomplishment, however the “combination moments” of sustained give attention to his skilled passions. The afterglow of this convention is the sum of a 12 months obsessing over animation timelines — and what you’ll 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. But when we might try this in actual life, then, in keeping with Zeno’s arrow paradox, my airplane might by no means land. At each bullet-time on the spot, the airplane would seem at relaxation, which might make all motion — together with my whole journey — an phantasm.

John Allsopp frightened that the net itself may be caught in that phantasm of progress. However Aristotle answered Zeno’s arrow paradox by saying discrete instants of time don’t exist, solely the move of time. Actuality is manufactured from the mixture moments that Chris Coyier stated have which means to him. As I look forward to a airplane that appears incapable of touchdown, my telephone buzzes with my favourite suggestions from the convention: a graduate developer amazed by “the scroll part within the Dev Summit.” I like that he calls it a part, not a chat, as if it blended seamlessly right into a two-day narrative move, foreshadowing a future net that unfurls like an infinite scroll.

“This story won’t ever finish. This story ends.”

— John Barth