When smooth animations make a fast site feel slow
A site can be technically fast and still feel slow if your animations sit between intent and feedback. These are the ones I shortened, simplified, or removed after watching real users.
Frontend
Frontend notes from 11+ years of shipping web stuff. JavaScript, performance, web APIs, and the craft behind interfaces that feel right. 55 posts
Where Cursor Stops and My Judgment Begins
Cursor is very good at filling in the boring middle. Recent client work showed exactly where that stops, and where experience still has to say no.
The First Ten Minutes of Testing a Design on Mobile
I spend the first ten minutes of mobile testing without DevTools: thumb reach, dead hover states, 100vh traps, sunlight, forms, scrolling, and quiet frustration.
What a 90ms Font Swap Taught Me About Performance Budgets
A tiny 90ms font swap burned a full day of my attention and completely rewired how I think about performance budgets and where to spend effort.
Lazy Loading Images Almost Tanked My Core Web Vitals
I broke my own Core Web Vitals by being clever with lazy loading. Here is the ugly LCP data, what actually fixed it, and the image loading rules I use now.
The Accessibility Audit That Slapped Me Awake
An external accessibility audit tore apart a client site I was proud of. Here is what they caught that I completely missed, and how it changed my workflow.
Why I Still Test In Safari First (And The Bugs It Catches Early)
I test new frontend work in Safari first. It hurts early, but it saves me from bugs Chrome happily hides until production.
View Transitions API: Useful, But Only For This One Thing (So Far)
After one real project with the View Transitions API, I stopped believing the conference demos. It is not magic, but it is surprisingly good for one very specific use case.
The Schema.org Markup Every Client Site Should Ship With
The structured data I ship on almost every client project fits on a single page. This is the JSON-LD I actually deploy, not theory.
The Git hygiene workflow keeping ideebv-2026 lean
How I keep the ideebv-2026 repo lean using git filter-repo, strict ignores, and backup pruning. Real commands, no theory.
Why I Still Hand‑Code Every Hover State
I still hand-code every hover state instead of trusting component libraries. Not because I like pain, but because that tiny interaction layer decides how the site actually feels.
The Tower Workflow That Keeps My Mac Studio And MacBook Air Perfectly In Sync
How I keep a Mac Studio and a MacBook Air in sync using Tower, Git and a few strict rules, so I can jump between desk and couch without merge hell.