Jeff Bridgforth https://jeffbridgforth.com/ Jeff Bridgforth :: webcraftsman Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:39:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 Weeknotes 26:23 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-june-7-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-june-7-2026/#respond Mon, 08 Jun 2026 11:53:39 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12375 I took a road trip this week with my wife and youngest to attend her orientation at ETSU. We had a couple of adventures on Friday, one planned and one that was not.

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]]> Road trip to ETSU

I took a road trip in the middle of the week with my wife and youngest. We traveled to Johnson City, Tennessee where my youngest will attend school in the fall. I had traveled through eastern Tennessee on my way to Asheville three years but this was my first trip where I got to explore this part of the state. We arrived in Johnson City just before 2 p.m. and went straight to the East Tennessee State campus. My daughter and wife met with the department head for an hour while I sat in the hall scrolling through Bluesky on my phone. I read Geoff Graham’s rant and posted a couple of pictures to Instagram.

After the meeting, we walked around campus. Our first stop was at Sherrod Library. In the midst of exploring, one of the staff asked if I needed help. I happened to see that the area we were near was called the Innovation Commons. I decided to ask him what it was and he proceeded to show us around for the next 30-45 minutes.

The Innovation Commons is a maker space at ETSU with 3D printers, button makers, VR, vinyl cutters, and many tools for creating all types of media. They are in the process of renovating some of the space. Mark, the operations manager, showed us around and explained all the changes they were making and how they had reclaimed space for things they no longer needed physical copies of at the library.

The exterior of Sherrod Library. The Innovation Commons is on the second floor behind those big windows.

After the library, we shopped at the bookstore at the student union to buy some ETSU shirts and stickers and then we walked around campus. We found our daughter’s dorm just outside the student union. Her dorm is one of the original buildings on campus. They are building a fine arts center next door that will open in the fall. Due to the construction, they have redone the space in front of her hall with new pavers and several porch swings. It looks like a really nice area.

After campus, we visited a Walmart to look for shirts and then we ate dinner at Freddy’s. It was our first time to try it. We did like the seasoned fries. We still think Culver’s is better.

On Thursday, my daughter went through orientation for transfer students. I went to the library and worked (or at least tried to work). It was not the most productive day but I did get some things done. I took time off around lunch to tour my daughter’s room with my wife. We took pictures, video, and measurements so we know how much space she has and what might fit in her room. We are so grateful that Austin took some time out of his busy schedule to give us access to the room.

Before heading home to Chattanooga on Friday, we took a side trip to Elizabethton. My wife and daughter wanted to visit Thoughtful Vintage. My wife had seen it on Instagram. My youngest enjoyed looking through fabric and buying secondhand clothing. We grabbed lunch at Zaxby’s and then hit the road to go home.

We enjoyed views of the Appalachian Mountains on our side trip to Elizabethton.

Houston, we have a problem

As we drove home, the road felt very rough and I felt a lot of vibration and could hear it through the front of the vehicle. I noticed it more at higher speeds. I began to suspect that it was the vehicle and not the road, especially when we got off the road to visit Buc-ee’s near Sevierville, Tennessee. I had also noticed that the car was pulling toward the left. I inspected the tires while at Buc-ee’s and did not notice anything visible. But I was feeling uneasy. As we started out again, I continued to notice a lot of vibration, even when we were on smoother parts of the road. When we had to slow down going through Knoxville due to a traffic accident, I could feel something was wrong with the wheel. It felt like it had something on it that you can feel with every rotation. I started to form a plan to stop after we made it past Knoxville.

We pulled over at a Pilot just south of Knoxville. I had my wife drive the vehicle around the parking lot. I could not really tell what was happening by observing. I called my mechanic. I was trying to get some advice on whether it was safe to try to continue home. I suspected it was not and he confirmed that. He thought it might be a wheel bearing. He suggested finding a Tire Discounter to have them take a look. I found one 10 minutes away and we made our way there.

One of my concerns was that it was just after 4 on a Friday afternoon. This store was open until 6. They got it in right away and diagnosed the problem as a broken belt on the tire. This misshapes the tire which is what I felt on the highway. We thought about having him put on the spare but then realized that the spare was 15 years old. We then discovered the tires on the vehicle were 13 years old and the others were also at risk.

The vehicle (GMC Envoy) was my mother-in-law’s and it has very little mileage on it and we have not driven it as much. We had decided to take this vehicle on the trip because our van had a noise a couple of weeks ago but the mechanic could not discover a problem. I just felt better about taking the GMC because I was feeling nervous about the van.

We decided to replace the front tires to get home and then look into replacing the back tires and the spare once we were back in Chattanooga.

It was a very stressful afternoon as I began to suspect a problem with the GMC and then wonder what that was going to mean late on a Friday afternoon when we just wanted to get home. I am very mindful of God’s protection and provision for us. I am not sure how long the tire was broken and know that it could have failed at any point on Friday.

But it did not. I attribute that to God’s protection. And then he provided being able to talk to my mechanic, provided a store just 10 minutes away, provided a store that was open till 6, and then provided in that the store could take us in right away and get us back on the road. I shudder to think what would have happened if that tire had failed when I was driving 70 along the interstate. I was very grateful to get home at the end of the day and see how God took care of us.

Notes from the work week

My work week was broken up quite a bit. I worked normal hours on Monday and Tuesday. I worked from the library on Thursday. And then I worked from home on Saturday. My daughter really wanted me to see ETSU. My wife and her visited back in March. But as I was looking at the PTO I have already taken and calculated the time I would need to take off later this year to help her move in, I came up with the plan to work from campus on Thursday and then make up for being off on Friday by working on Saturday. So I only had to take one PTO day for the trip.

I felt like Saturday was the most productive day of work I had this week. I was glad to have some space to think and catch up on some things that I have not been able to give attention to. I was able to address some feedback on a couple of projects that need to get out the door soon.

Articles I read

What I watched

  • The West Wing (Netflix)
  • Spider-Man 2 (Netflix)
  • Spurs vs. Thunder (Game 7) (NBC) – We were all very excited to see the Spurs win and advance the Finals.
  • Spurs vs. Knicks (NBC) – I watched game 1 into the third quarter and watched all of game 2 on Friday night.
  • Finding Your Roots (PBS App)

Books I am reading

I didn’t pick up any of these books this week. I am feeling a bit stuck with my reading right now.

Walking

  • Saturday – 1.22 miles in 24 minutes – I got out but was hurting in a lot of places so I cut my walk short.

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I won the only game I played this week against the Yankees.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-june-7-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:22 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-june-2-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-june-2-2026/#respond Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:42:55 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12368 Week of adjustment It was a week of adjustment at work as I took on some new responsibilities after the departure of our team leader. I had more meetings than usual as I needed to communicate with some different people regarding some different projects. We also have a lot of moving pieces with a lot […]

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]]> Week of adjustment

It was a week of adjustment at work as I took on some new responsibilities after the departure of our team leader. I had more meetings than usual as I needed to communicate with some different people regarding some different projects. We also have a lot of moving pieces with a lot of different events coming up in the next two months. I worked on a lot of different things and started building some pages for larger projects like the June digital newsletter and a donation opportunity to give prison Bibles to women around the country. I also spent a bit more time engaging with our junior developer and making sure he had plenty to work on throughout the week.

Weeding vinyl

My contribution to my son’s tote bag was to “weed” the vinyl from the X-Acto knife. I had already weeded a green one but he asked me if I would mind doing a blue one since he already had a green element.

I learned a new skill over the weekend. “Weeding” vinyl. It is the process of removing excess vinyl (negative space) from a design that has been cut from a machine. I used a weeding hook and a magnifying glass with a light (I had trouble seeing the cuts without my reading glasses). I was helping my son weed vinyl for heat transfer onto a free tote bag at the Chattanooga Zine Fest at the Chattanooga Public Library Maker Space on Saturday. I was interested in doing it after he told me that it was the same process he used for the lettering for his senior art show. His show was like a museum exhibit so he had to weed the vinyl lettering that went on the walls. He told me that the vinyl at the library was much easier to weed than his lettering had been.

I had fun hanging out with him at the Zine Fest. He and his sister had gone last year and he had been inspired but what he saw and learned that he created a zine for the art show he did last Fall. I enjoyed seeing the varied interest in the different vendors selling their zines. It is always inspiring to be around creative people.

One, two, three

I also enjoyed a rare time where all three kids were at home for the weekend. My oldest daughter came down from Nashville to attend the Chattanooga Ren Fair with our youngest. It was nice to have our oldest home and I enjoyed having all of us together to watch Game 7 with the Spurs and Thunder. We were all rooting for San Antonio. We have not all been together at home since Christmas. My son is staying with us for the summer before he moves up to Indiana in the Fall with his girlfriend, who will be attending grad school at Purdue.

Articles I read

Caught my eye

Art by Jenna Barth – I love this implementation of view transitions on the artwork that transitions into a horizontal scroll of projects.

What I watched

  • The West Wing (Netflix)
  • All Creatures Great & Small (PBS app)
  • Spurs vs. Thunder (NBC) – I watched 3 games this past week of the NBA playoffs. We were happy the Spurs won last night.

Books I am reading

Walking

  • Monday – 2 hours and 11 minutes

What I played

  • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 6-0 this week. I beat the Reds, swept the Mariners in three games, and took the first two games of a four-game series against the Yankees.
  • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I finished off the Kings to win the Western Conference semi-finals.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-june-2-2026/feed/ 0 WordPress 7.0 changed editor defaults https://jeffbridgforth.com/wordpress-7-0-changed-editor-defaults/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/wordpress-7-0-changed-editor-defaults/#comments Sun, 31 May 2026 22:01:15 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12363 Last weekend, I logged into the WordPress to add some posts to my memory keeper personal project. When the editor came up, I noticed that the button and link colors were a much brighter blue color. At that point, I remembered an email I received earlier in the day notifying me that my WordPress install […]

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]]> Last weekend, I logged into the WordPress to add some posts to my memory keeper personal project. When the editor came up, I noticed that the button and link colors were a much brighter blue color. At that point, I remembered an email I received earlier in the day notifying me that my WordPress install for had been updated to WordPress 7.0 by my hosting service.

I was not much of a fan of the brighter blue color. I also noticed other changes in the editor. The font was changed to a serif font (it had been sans serif) and the text size was much smaller. I was not happy with these changes either, especially the smaller type size. I was determined to find a way to restore the look of my editor and started searching for solutions.

Brighter blue button, serif font and smaller text greeted me when I was updating some posts in my memory keeper

Jeff Bridgforth

@jeffbridgforth.com

I am not a fan of the admin theme color (brighter blue) and the fonts and font sizes in the WP admin in 7.0. I have got to figure out how to override those with my own styles.

Restoring the color scheme

I was able to change the colors in my admin back choosing a different administration color scheme in my user profile. After comparing a WordPress install that had not yet updated to 7.0 to the changes in my site that had upgraded, I realized that WordPress had updated the default color scheme and renamed the pre-7.0 them to “Fresh.” I was glad to find that was a very simple fix.

The updated color schemes in 7.0 with a new default scheme. I figured out that the “Fresh” theme was the previous default that I preferred.

Restoring the typography

On a some past projects, I had customized the look of the WordPress editor by adding my own admin stylesheet. That process involves adding a custom function to the functions.php file and creating an admin stylesheet.

function jb_custom_admin_styles() {
    wp_enqueue_style(
        'jb-admin-css',
        get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/admin.css',
        array(),
        filemtime( get_stylesheet_directory() . '/admin.css' )
    );
}
add_action( 'admin_enqueue_scripts', 'jb_custom_admin_styles' );

Because my site theme is fairly simple, I just added my CSS file to the root of my theme. After a bit of trial and error, I figured out what I needed to target in order to restore the serif typeface. I also bumped the font size back up to 18px and added 1.5 line-height to make it look nice.

html :where(.editor-styles-wrapper) {
    font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;
}

.editor-styles-wrapper {
    font-size: 18px;
    line-height: 1.5;
}

But wait a minute

On Wednesday, I noticed that Chris Coyier had chimed in about the changes to the WordPress editor. I responded to his tweet that the changes had annoyed me and I had added an admin stylesheet to restore those alterations.

In the process of writing this post today to document the changes I made to restore my editor to the colors and typography, I made a discovery after rereading Chris’ article.

He mentions in the article that you could use the theme.json file or change a setting in the editor’s preferences. To do the latter, you have to have the editor open so that means editing an existing post or creating a new post. Click on the three dots, choose “Preferences” at the very bottom of the menu. In the modal window, choose “Appearance” tab and then make sure theme styles is unchecked. By default, theme styles is checked.

I played around this and realized that I did not need my solution of a custom stylesheet in order to restore the typography back to what I was use to. Both of things that annoyed me about the software update could be easily fixed if I knew the right places to go in order to make changes.

It took me awhile to understand this preference but then I came to the conclusion that WordPress had built in typography defaults that you can access by unchecking the “Use theme styles” setting. I think that this setting had been turned on by default (I checked my pre 6.9.4 install and it was turned on).

But I also came to the conclusion by changing my theme to Twenty Twenty-Five that it will only use theme styles defined in a theme.json file. This is part of the new way of building WordPress themes that emerged in the between 2022-2025 as the theme.json functionality continued to expand with subsequent releases of WordPress 6.x.

I have not adopted this new way of theme development and continue to use the legacy way of building themes. I have embraced Gutenburg blocks in the editor and even built my own custom block (see the social media block I used earlier in this post).

In my WordPress 6.9.4 install, unchecking or checking the “Use theme styles” has no difference. But in 7.0, the checked setting goes to a serif font at 12px size. I thought that was a WordPress decision. But I think that something changed in the way this setting affects sites without the theme.json.

What started out as a simple post to document how I restored the WordPress settings I was accustomed to became a larger learning experience as I dived a bit deeper into the problem and formed some theories as to why things changed. This information will be helpful to me as I update a bunch of client websites in the next few days.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/wordpress-7-0-changed-editor-defaults/feed/ 1 Weeknotes 26:21 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-27-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-27-2026/#respond Thu, 28 May 2026 00:11:09 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12361 Kevin Powell wrote about the lack of motivation and passion in the Web industry. I have felt that I read different people’s posts on social media over the past month. I have felt less excitement and enthusiasm about the work and less inclined to write recently. It is a challenging time. I confess it has […]

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]]> Kevin Powell wrote about the lack of motivation and passion in the Web industry. I have felt that I read different people’s posts on social media over the past month. I have felt less excitement and enthusiasm about the work and less inclined to write recently. It is a challenging time. I confess it has been a challenge to keep writing these weeknotes but I feel like this is my small act of resistance.

In the workshop (what I did at work)

  • I worked on a lot of smaller tasks this week. I did have a few medium-sized tasks that required more attention. One was to rework the podcast landing page on Revive Our Hearts. For SEO purposes, we want to bring content out out of modals and onto the page. I spent the afternoon working on a new layout and then consulting with a colleague on how to display podcasts from our other language sites without having to use JavaScript since the content is in Django CMS.
  • I also spent an afternoon building out a new homepage for our German site as we move it into Django CMS. The work was mostly taking pieces of content and pasting in the German translations for the content.
  • I put the finishing touches on some pages that will launch next month. The work including making some content edits and rethinking the layout of a couple of sections on the pages. I also reworked a page updating the layout and graphics to match changes that we made to The Wonder of Word page earlier in the year. The updated page is for content producers to sample the content we are creating in English as other languages consider participating in the project in the future.
  • On Wednesday, I delivered a zip file of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and asset files for a project that I worked on in March. Due to some different circumstances, the review process took a bit longer than planned. But the client has signed off on the site so I delivered the files to the agency I am contracting with. Their team is planning to integrate the files into the client’s CMS. I look forward to seeing the site come live in the near future.

Saying goodbye

My team leader Bryan, pictured above in the maroon shirt, is leaving Revive Our Hearts for a new opportunity. Bryan’s last day was on Friday. I am bummed to lose a close colleague that I was able to form a quick friendship with. I have a lot of respect for him as a leader and as a person. Just over a year was too short a time. I would have liked to have had a lot more time.

I am grateful for the three times I got to spend with him in person–when I first onboarded at the Revive Our Hearts office in Michigan, spending a weekend with him and two other guys on the team at Beer City Code, and spending several days working backstage with him at the True Woman ’25 conference.

I find that the older I get, it is more challenging to make new friends so it is hard to lose one after such a short time. I am grateful for his encouragement, times of lending an ear to talk through a solution, and just laughing and enjoying a joke or story together. I appreciated that he got my humor and familiarity with things that I like (The Lord of the Rings).

Bryan was gracious enough to make some time in his final week to give me an informal review. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity for some feedback knowing it might be awhile before I have someone who can give that perspective. For the interim, his absence means that me and many of my teammates will take on several of the responsibilities of his job until someone new is hired to take his former position. Goodbye Bryan and thank you.

Mohs surgery

On Thursday, I had Mohs surgery to remove a Basal cell carcinoma (the most common skin cancer) from the right side of my face. My dad has had several of these procedures so I was pretty informed going into it. The surgeon and his staff were very kind and made the experience as pleasant as it could be.

The procedure involves removing thin layers of tissue and then examining under the microscope. If cancer cells remain, another layer is removed and this process is repeated until no cancer cells remain. They were able to get it all cancer cells on the first pass so I was there a shorter time than I expected. And then the doctor stitched me up. The procedure is painless except for the initial shot that numbs the area they work on.

I was surprised to see this poster in the room I had my Mohs surgery in. The poster is from the book, Laws of UX, which I was familiar with. My doctor mentioned that he saw a lot of application of UX principles beyond products.

Articles I read

What I watched

Books I am reading

Walking

  • Monday – 3.57 miles in 1 hour 9 minutes
  • Tuesday – 3.09 miles in 58 minutes

What I played

  • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 3-2 this week. I swept the Mariners and lost two to the Reds.
  • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I played three games against the Kings this week and won all three of them in the Western Conference semi-finals.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-27-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:20 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-17-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-17-2026/#respond Sun, 17 May 2026 22:19:45 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12355 Virtual Retreat The ministry I work for, Revive Our Hearts, had a three-day virtual retreat this week. I had taken off Monday after a long graduation weekend and it was nice to be able to catch my breathe before the Staff Summit. We met each day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings on Zoom. Each […]

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]]> Virtual Retreat

The ministry I work for, Revive Our Hearts, had a three-day virtual retreat this week. I had taken off Monday after a long graduation weekend and it was nice to be able to catch my breathe before the Staff Summit.

We met each day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings on Zoom. Each morning, we heard three 15 minutes messages for two pastors and a staff member of Life Action Ministries, the former parent ministry of Revive Our Hearts. We had about 5 minutes of personal reflection after each message to think through questions related to each talk.

Each day, we heard a different life story from a member of the Revive Our Hearts team. We wrapped up Tuesday with an update from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth as she continues to take her first steps through the season of widowhood. On Wednesday, we heard from different people about the origin story of Revive Our Hearts, which is celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. On Thursday, we wrapped up with a time where staff members could share what they took away from this time.

Each afternoon, we had free time to spend with the Lord and continue to process what we were hearing God say to us through the virtual retreat. I spent the time taking walks and praying. I also spent time reading and journaling. I am glad that we had the space each afternoon to process and make personal and just take some time out to rest.

I came away feeling a little less uneasy about a season of change my team is about to experience as our current digital team director is leaving Revive Our Hearts for a new opportunity. It was good to get some perspective from several of the message that helped me to see how God might want to use this time of uncertainty to build faith and develop character in both my life and the lives of my teammates.

Back to work

I returned to work on Friday after taking two days off at the end of last week and taking Monday of this week off. Then with the virtual retreat, I had over a week away. My workload was much lighter than I expected and it was a nice transition back. I was able to jump back into some projects and start thinking ahead to this week.

Articles I read

Caught my eye

Handwritten Animation (Codepen) – I have not studied this enough to understand Ryan’s technique. I created a similar animations using SVG masks in the past.

See the Pen Handwritten animation by Ryan Mulligan (@hexagoncircle) on CodePen.

What I watched

What I listened to

Books I am reading

Walking – 18.2 miles

This was an unusual week because I was able to incorporate walks into my afternoon as part of my reflection time for our office virtual retreat. The temperatures were in the 70s so it felt great to be out. I would like to walk about 12-15 miles a week but am still struggling to make that happen during the work week.

  • Monday – 3.31 miles in 58 minutes
  • Tuesday – 3.02 miles in 54 minutes and 1.78 miles in 35 minutes (I took a walk with my son to help him clear his head between work and working on some personal projects to assist in the job search.)
  • Wednesday – 3.8 miles in 1 hour 13 minutes
  • Thursday – 2.61 miles in 50 minutes (I should have eaten lunch before going on a walk and needed to cut it short because I felt a bit weak.)
  • Saturday – 3.68 miles in 1 hour 9 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I played three games and went 2-1, losing the last one to the Rays, who scored the go ahead run in the 7th.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-17-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:19 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-12-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-12-2026/#respond Tue, 12 May 2026 22:57:50 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12347 Graduation, Part 2 My son and his fiancé graduated from Murray State University on Saturday. We traveled up on Thursday so that we could help him move out on Friday. After the hard work on Friday, we were able to enjoy the day on Saturday with the ceremony in the morning and a late lunch […]

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]]> Graduation, Part 2

My son and his fiancé graduated from Murray State University on Saturday. We traveled up on Thursday so that we could help him move out on Friday. After the hard work on Friday, we were able to enjoy the day on Saturday with the ceremony in the morning and a late lunch to celebrate.

Murray State had to split up their graduation into 3 ceremonies this year as they are renovating the basketball arena. The ceremony was held in the old Racer Arena, which was built in the 1950s. I think it was a more intimate setting and got us closer to the graduates. Plus a shorter ceremony.

Ryan was the banner bearer for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts for the academic and residential college processional. Then he joined his friends and fellow graduates as they walked in with Pomp and Circumstance.

I am very proud of my son and all the opportunities and achievements that his four years have provided. He got to spend a semester in Barcelona, participated in several student art shows, got to put on a solo art show last September, and knocked it out of the park for his senior show that we attended two weeks ago.

After the ceremony, we walked around campus taking some pictures and saying goodbye to Murray State. Later in the afternoon, we (wife, two daughters and I) joined my son, his fiancé, and her parents for lunch about forty-five minutes north of Murray at Patti’s 1880 Settlement. It was a nice time of celebrating our graduates, getting to know her family, and savoring the graduation experience. And the food was great too.

This trip concludes a very busy season as we had a Shakespeare show, senior art show, two trips to Murray, and two graduations all in four weeks.

Articles I read

What I watched

Books I am reading

Walking

  • Sunday – 3.08 miles in 56 minutes
  • Monday – 3.38 miles in 58 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I played three games and won all 3 (BlueJays and 2 against the Cubs).

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-12-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:18 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-3-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-3-2026/#respond Sun, 03 May 2026 22:56:35 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12331 Graduation, Part 1 My youngest graduated Summa Cum Laude from Chattanooga State Community College on Friday night. I am very proud of all she achieved in the past two years. She performed in four different shows, with the lead role in final one. She also was an assistant stage director for a show in the […]

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]]> Graduation, Part 1

My youngest graduated Summa Cum Laude from Chattanooga State Community College on Friday night. I am very proud of all she achieved in the past two years. She performed in four different shows, with the lead role in final one. She also was an assistant stage director for a show in the fall. All while maintained a 4.0 GPA.

She has received several scholarships and committed to attending East Tennessee State in the fall. One of the benefits of being unemployed in 2024 is that she qualified for a Pell Grant and with her other scholarships, her schooling is paid for next year. She plans to major in theater and minor in dance. I am looking forward to attending orientation with her in early June so I can see the campus she has fallen in love with.

Graduation, part two, will happen next week when we travel back to Murray State to see my son and his fiancé graduate on Saturday.

In the workshop

I worked on a lot of different things this week at work. I was also handed a multi-day project as I was asked to create a couple of different event pages surrounding Revive Our Hearts 25th Anniversary.

  • I reworked the layout for videos on our Fiscal End of the Year giving page
  • I created an app page for the Mujer Verdadera ‘26 conference happening in Miami later this year
  • I finished up work on refactoring several “confirmation” pages (store purchases, donations, event registration, giveaways) to bring consistency of style and structure to those pages. Those changes launched later in the week.
  • I spent all day Wednesday working on an event page for Revive Our Hearts 25th Anniversary. I finished up the page on Thursday and then created another page with similar styles for a second event.

I found out some disappointing news on Tuesday. My team leader called a meeting and informed us that he is going to be leaving Revive Our Hearts for a new opportunity at the end of May. While I am glad for him, I am bummed because I have enjoyed having Bryan as my team leader. He is my closest point of connection with the ministry. I have enjoyed working with him and appreciated his constant encouragement and compliments for the work I have been doing. I enjoyed getting to room with him last August when our team attended the Beer City Code conference in Grand Rapids. I will miss the relationship I was just beginning to form with Bryan.

Of course with his departure, there are a lot of uncertainty about the future. I know that he is working with the leadership as they try to determine the future of the position and how responsibilities will be shared by other team members in the transition.

This comes on the heels of finding out my friend, small group leader, and assistant pastor will be relocating to DC for a new opportunity in June. Lots of changes at work. And lots of changes at home as my son graduates and moves out and my youngest will be going away to school next fall.

Articles I read

Caught my eye

Cursor Camp – A website to hang out with other cursors. I had fun hanging out there for a bit on Wednesday.

delphitools – A fun little Indie toolkit. I used the background remover tool last week.

comiCSS #248: Beware of CSS!

Break The Glass (Codepen) – This is nice for some stress relief.

See the Pen Break the Glass ?? by mike-at-redspace (@mike-at-redspace) on CodePen.

Fraude Design (Scott Riley) – This would have been a good April Fool’s joke.

Artemis Photo Timeline (Hank Green)

What I watched

Ben Sasse: 60 Minutes Interview – I have always admired Ben Sasse. I wish there were more politicians like him today. I enjoyed this interview with him on 60 Minutes. I wish the government were wrestling with important issues like how to deal with the fallout of AI and the disruption to the lives of American workers.

  • The West Wing (Netflix)
  • All Creatures Great & Small (PBS app) – I have been rewatching season 1.
  • Mission Impossible: Fallout (Paramount Plus) – I had only seen this once. I realized that I have access to it on Paramount Plus so I decided to watch it at the end of the week.
  • Independence Day (Netflix) – I had seen a clip of the movie on Facebook recently and decided to watch it.
  • Full Swing, Season Four (Netflix) – I found it interesting that they decided to make the focus of this season all on the Ryder’s Cup. It did make a compelling story.

Books I am reading

I don’t think I touched any of these books this week. I want to get back in the habit of reading books regularly.

Walking

I have been taking some shorter walks in the middle of the work day to refocus or to think.

  • Monday – 1.29 miles in 25 minutes
  • Friday – 1.39 miles in 26 minutes
  • Saturday – 3.32 miles in 1 hour

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 3-1 in games that I played this week.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-may-3-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:17 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-27-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-27-2026/#respond Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:25:27 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12319 It was a short work week as I took off Thursday and Friday to travel up to Kentucky. I continued to work on a lot of smaller tasks. One of the bigger tasks I worked on was to bring consistency in both structure and style to several “confirmation” pages (store purchases, donations, event registration, giveaways). […]

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]]> It was a short work week as I took off Thursday and Friday to travel up to Kentucky. I continued to work on a lot of smaller tasks. One of the bigger tasks I worked on was to bring consistency in both structure and style to several “confirmation” pages (store purchases, donations, event registration, giveaways). I also continued refining two landing pages for our fiscal end of the year giving on Revive Our Hearts and Aviva Nuestros Corazones. Other teams gave input on edits and layout changes.

Art Show

The highlight of the week was attending the reception for my son’s senior art show at Murray State University on Friday night. He has been working hard all semester to make this a reality. He had a very ambitious vision but was able to pull it off. He was able to show the breadth of his skills through graphic design, digital fabrication, printmaking, video, and sculpture. His show was inspired the philosophy of speculative design which bridges the disciplines of research, future thinking, and creativity.

He explored the potential future of neuromodulation, which uses stimulation to alter nerve activity. He explored where this might lead with the potential to control our emotions and state of being in the future. He challenges the viewer to consider the ethics of human inhibition, enhancement, and our reliance on technology. His exhibit felt like a museum of the future with artifacts of the progress of neuromodulation and the ethical debates and protests that follow. He also had an interactive component where viewers could get a closer look at the packaging of the neuromodulation products.

We are so proud of what he was able to accomplish. He had shown me several of the pieces in process when I visited him in February. It was a joy to see how it all came together and to see the finished product of the different ideas he has shared with us.

This is one of my last trips to Murray, Kentucky. We ate dinner at The Keg Restaurant, which I have been wanting to try since my son’s freshman year. I wish I had gone sooner because I would have made return trips. Their brisket sandwich was very good. We ate at Culver’s on Friday night. As I have mentioned before, Culver’s is my favorite fast-food place and the one in Murray is where I first discovered it. We also got donuts at Murray Donuts, another favorite, before leaving town on Saturday. We will return to Murray in a couple of weeks to see my son and his fiancé graduate.

Articles I read

What I watched

Books I am reading

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I won both games I played this week.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-27-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:16 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-21-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-21-2026/#respond Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:09:43 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12316 The Layout Maestro endorsement Ahmad Shadeed had reached out to see if I would be willing to write a testimonial for The Layout Maestro course. He had seen that I had posted about it last week in my weeknote. I was glad to recommend the course. The Layout Maestro is unique among the current courses […]

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]]>
  • It was a shorter work week as I took off on Friday. My dad came into town to see my youngest perform in As You Like It at Chattanooga State.
  • I visited the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center with my dad on Friday. My dad served in the Navy during Vietnam. We enjoyed the exhibits and it led to some conversations about his service. I enjoyed getting to spend some time with my dad.
  • We saw our daughter perform twice, Friday and Saturday night. She was the lead role of Rosalind, which was a dream role for her. She commanded the stage and I am really proud of her. This was her ninth Shakespeare play.
  • I continued to have more smaller tasks this week. I built out a new landing page on Tuesday and then came back to certain portions of the page to edit or rework on Wednesday and Thursday.
  • I worked on a freelance project on Tuesday night as we received client feedback.

The Layout Maestro endorsement

Ahmad Shadeed had reached out to see if I would be willing to write a testimonial for The Layout Maestro course. He had seen that I had posted about it last week in my weeknote. I was glad to recommend the course.

The Layout Maestro is unique among the current courses offered. First off, this is the only course that I am aware of that addresses CSS layout. Second, Ahmad doesn’t just dive into syntax but helps you to develop the mindset of a front-end developer.

This equips you to make layout decisions on your own projects. Everyone who takes this course will benefit from Ahmad’s clever solutions that combine several modern CSS techniques for more flexible and resilient products. Even an experienced CSS developer has plenty to learn and take away from this course.

I got some more good stuff out of the course and immediately applied what I learned to a layout I had been working on. I had an “aha” moment about flex-basis. I may have learned this before but forgotten. But I also made the connection with a similar Grid technique of using auto-fill. Combined with flex-wrap: wrap, I could make my layout more flexible. Normally I would use Grid in this instance but I wanted me second row to have the item centered if there was just one item and you cannot do that with Grid.

Articles I read

What I watched

Books I am reading

Walking

  • Sunday – 3.68 miles in 1 hour 8 minutes
  • Monday – 1.28 miles in 24 minutes
  • Tuesday – 1.28 miles in 24 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 3-2 this week. Both the games I lost were 1 run games against the Guardians and Giants.

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-21-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:15 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-15-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-15-2026/#respond Wed, 15 Apr 2026 12:38:46 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12311 Once again, I worked on a lot of smaller tasks this week in my day job. One of the tasks I addressed was font declarations in our stylesheet. I believe someone in the past had set up Sass variables for the serif and sans-serif fonts but that somewhere along the line. Those were no longer […]

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]]> Once again, I worked on a lot of smaller tasks this week in my day job. One of the tasks I addressed was font declarations in our stylesheet. I believe someone in the past had set up Sass variables for the serif and sans-serif fonts but that somewhere along the line. Those were no longer being used and the fonts were being declared without the variables. This has caused an issue recently as we needed to use just one font family on our Farsi site. I took time this week to define the fonts as CSS custom properties and then refactor the CSS to use those custom properties instead of the entire font-family declaration. This made it very easy to define the custom properties for our Farsi site to use just the one font.

One year

I celebrated my first year work anniversary with Revive Our Hearts on April 9. I am so grateful to have this job especially in this very challenging job market. This role has been the right fit for me. I am glad to be back in Christian ministry and to use my technical skills and abilities to help Revive Our Hearts as they help women to experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. I had hoped to write an article to celebrate the occasion but I have been very unmotivated to write recently (hence this weeknote being published on Wednesday). I might still try to make that happen in the next month.

Un-sassed my site

After many months thinking about it, I finally put in the work and un-sassed my site. I also created a new light and dark theme for the site. And at the last minute, I decided to keep the dark theme I had created a couple of years ago, now named “Classic.” I worked on refactoring my stylesheet the previous weekend and put in a little bit of work each day and was able to launch it on Wednesday (April 8). I really like the purple light theme. It was inspired by my oldest daughter (her favorite color and the color of her school) as well as rebeccapurple which has significance in the CSS community. I hope to write more about the project in the coming days.

The Layout Maestro

I have been able to take advantage of a slower pace at work to spend some time each day in The Layout Maestro course I bought a couple of weeks ago. I had a bit of an “aha” moment related to style container queries. I have struggled to understand the practical use of them, especially when you could easily just use a class. But Ahmad went through a specific use case and addressed my concern.

You might be thinking: why use style queries when we can add a class? The main benefit is that styles can respond to what is inside the layout. With :has(), we can detect patterns like a top section that contains a single card and apply a featured style for that case.

A class alone can’t do this unless we add it dynamically, which defeats the purpose of layout slots and style queries.

This is exactly the types of things that I was hoping to learn when I bought the course. I was intrigued by some of the clever ideas he shared in CSS Day last summer. I knew that he was just whetting our appetite through the talk and would expand upon it in the course. I highly recommend the course to anyone building CSS layouts. He has some very clever thoughts on creating conditional layouts with a combination of modern CSS techniques.

To the moon and back

I couldn’t help but be excited and get caught up in the wonder of the Artemis II mission to the Moon this past week. I was alive when humans last visited the moon but was too young to remember. I enjoyed watching the livestream on Monday as the astronauts approached the moon and began making observations. I was watching when they named one of the moon craters after the commander’s late wife. I also turned on the feed later in the day just as they were reestablishing contact with the crew after their silence on the far side of the moon. It is amazing how much of what I saw in the movie Apollo 13 made a lot of sense of what I was seeing in the live feeds or helped me understand milestones of their mission. I also watched the splashdown on Friday.

Articles I read

What I watched

Moon Joy, Courtesy of NASA’s Artemis II Astronauts (YouTube)

Books I am reading

Walking

  • Sunday – 3.81 miles in 1 hour 11 minutes

What I played

MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 6-1 this week. I won the finals game of the series against the series against the BlueJays (won series 2-1), swept three games from the Yankees, and won a series against the Rangers (2-1).

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]]> https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-15-2026/feed/ 0 Weeknotes 26:14 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-9-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-9-2026/#respond Thu, 09 Apr 2026 23:45:00 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12310 Articles I read What I watched Books I am reading Walking What I played

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]]>
  • I worked on a lot of small tasks at work. Some of those tasks included working with our South African and German sites as we move them from WordPress to Django CMS.
  • I started working through the Layout Maestro course from Ahmad Shadeed. I worked through the foundations module and then got into the core module looking at Flexbox and CSS Grid.
  • I enjoyed a three-day weekend as I had Good Friday off.
  • I started reworking the stylesheet for this site on Saturday. My goal was to create a new light and dark theme and to un-Sass my site. I got a good start as I started refactoring my code to accomplish the second goal. I used several of the techniques that I talked about in my CSS Tricks article.
  • I wrote some thoughts sparked by Brad Frost’s article, The Creative Infinite.

    • Articles I read

    What I watched

    Books I am reading

    Walking

    • Sunday – 3.80 miles in 1 hour 10 minutes
    • Monday – 1.29 miles in 25 minutes
    • Thursday – .83 miles in 17 minutes

    What I played

    • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 3-1 this week. I won the final 2 games against the Angels to get a split in the four game series. I split the first two games of a road series against the Blue Jays.
    • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I won two games against the Spurs to sweep the playoff series and move on to conference semi-finals.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-april-9-2026/feed/ 0     Wouldn’t it be cool if…? https://jeffbridgforth.com/wouldnt-it-be-cool-if/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/wouldnt-it-be-cool-if/#respond Sat, 04 Apr 2026 19:39:59 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12307 One of the greatest limitations as a creative is bringing an idea from your head into reality. And many times the things that are limiting us are our abilities to draw or represent our ideas well. I know that was the case for me when I was in college. I studied architecture. And one of […]

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    ]]>     One of the greatest limitations as a creative is bringing an idea from your head into reality. And many times the things that are limiting us are our abilities to draw or represent our ideas well. I know that was the case for me when I was in college.

    I studied architecture. And one of the things I struggled most with is how to communicate the ideas that I had in my head. My sketching skills were not that good. I envy people who can bring things to life with a pencil and paper. I remember one of my first classes, we had to go outside and sketch some of the buildings on campus. I was always frustrated. I had a poor sense of proportion when making a sketch. My drawings didn’t look very realistic.

    The same was true with trying to sketch out ideas for my projects. I was quick to try to move into using my t-square and draw things out because I was much better at that sort of drawing. But that didn’t always translate as well either.

    The friction in my process was my ability to draw.

    I started thinking about this after reading Brad Frost’s post, The Creative Infinite, last week. I had already been thinking about the word friction due to some other posts I had read earlier in the week. Brad’s post caused me to stop and think about the moment that we are living in now.

    We now have the technology that removes a lot of the barriers or friction from being able to pursue a creative idea. That is an amazing thing to think about. Brad used the example of creating a video game with his 8 year old daughter. In less than a half hour, they had a working game based on her ideas. That is incredible. As Brad ponders in his post, there is probably no greater time in history to have the thought, “wouldn’t it be cool if..?”

    And just like Brad, I want to set aside all of the concerns I have about AI tools for a moment. And there are many of them. But just for a moment, I want to exercise my capacity for wonder and acknowledge what an incredible time this is. I appreciated Nolan Lawson challenging me to this idea a month ago. Because I will admit, I have felt frustrated, irritated, mad, powerless, and threatened as I think about AI tools. There are so many things I have a problem with. And yet, the child in me can still be awed and be in wonder at the possibilities that these tools bring with them.

    These tools can reduce the friction for a lot of people who have a creative idea but lack the skills, knowledge, or resources to make their idea a reality. That is a pretty cool thing. It could also be a scary thing depending on intentions but I don’t want to go there in this musing.

    I wonder what kind of things my younger self could have created if I had the tools that would have helped give shape to a lot of the ideas I had in my head but struggled to bring into reality due to my limitation of skills?

    I want to make a small disclaimer. I am still in process thinking about this. One thing I wished my younger self had done was to try and to practiced more on developing those sketching skills. I gave up too quickly. I also wish I had understood that not all sketches had to be a work of art. Some very basic sketches can still communicate an idea and can give the basis to try a lot of different ideas in the early stages of a design. I learned that later in life through Mike Rohde and sketchnotes.

    One of my fears with some of these new tools is that people will give up or not even try to develop new skills because the technology can do it for them. I struggle with that myself in certain areas of my own craft.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/wouldnt-it-be-cool-if/feed/ 0     Weeknotes 26:13 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-31-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-31-2026/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:43:44 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12290 I worked on a wide variety of things this week in my day job. A lot of small tasks to improve small pieces of UI on the Revive Our Hearts website. Here are some of the things I did this week. Front End Study Hall #49 I participated in Front End Study Hall on Thursday. […]

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    ]]>     I worked on a wide variety of things this week in my day job. A lot of small tasks to improve small pieces of UI on the Revive Our Hearts website. Here are some of the things I did this week.

    • Setup up homepage features and pop-up ads for April
    • Made some refinements on a new daily email template (MJML)
    • Created a new page for radio stations to sample the programs Revive Our Hearts have to offer
    • Continued to explore a CSS only parallax solution to replace a JavaScript solution
    • Replaced Glide.js carousels with Splide on a our store page
    • Created a new page for the South African site we are moving from WordPress to Django
    • Launched a Spanish version of Wonder of the Word (new layout and content)
    • Added hero graphics to donation pages or book promotions

    Front End Study Hall #49

    I participated in Front End Study Hall on Thursday. I enjoyed meeting with this group of front-end folks and discussing some different topics. We discussed:

    • Have we solved the WYSIWYG problem? – Our consensus was that we have not solved this problem. There are still a lot of shortcomings in these tools and you don’t also get what you expect. I mentioned that I remember FrontPage deleting code that I added by hand that caused rendering issues in IE’s competitor at the time, Netscape.
    • James asked, “Why did we end up with React?” – Several of us weighed in on the history of React. It emerged from Facebook’s team as a way to solve problems related to the complexity of their app. I was aware of the history after watching this documentary (ReactJS: The Documentary) a couple of years ago and I shared the link with the group.
    • We discussed the evolving nature of projects and when they go from page to an application and the decision to use a framework to solve the problem versus a bespoke solution. We weighed the pros and cons of the approaches. Frameworks bring the problems of dependencies. What costs an I willing to pay as part of developing?
    • What other areas of human endeavor can are similar? – Several members discussed the parallels of gardening to software development. We also discussed the parallels with construction. That led to a short discussion about the Indie Book Club’s book this month, The Timeless Way of Building. It was written by an architect in the late 70’s.
    • We finished up by sharing what we would take away from the conversation. I shared that my takeaway was to take responsibility for what you build, applying what you think is best and ethical and in line with your values. We cannot control what others choose to do but we can make personal choices.

    I left the conversation energized and with a feeling of connection to a bunch of like-minded people who care about what they build and hold very similar values. It is nice to have that connection.

    Layout Maestro

    Ahmad Shadeed’s new course, The Layout Maestro, launched last week. My work approved spending some development budget for me to buy it. I am excited about diving into it. I enjoyed Ahmad’s talk at CSS Day last year and have been looking forward to the launch of this course. I am looking forward to reading his ideas about making interfaces more flexible with modern CSS.

    You can still take advantage of launch pricing ($199) through April 1 at 6:00 PM UTC.

    Articles I read

    Caught my eye

    Begoña Pereda (site by Andy Clarke) – I love the typography and animated SVGs.

    Scroll-driven corner shape animation – I like the use of contrast here to create the white/black text. I need to read the CSS Tricks article about what Daniel did.

    San Rita Creative Studio – You can read more about the project on Codrops.

    What I watched

    Books I am reading

    Walking – 5.95 miles

    • Wednesday – 1.37 miles in 25 minutes (a short walk to cool down after a frustrating phone call)
    • Friday – 1.43 miles in 27 minutes (a short walk to reset after wrangling with a code solution)
    • Saturday – 3.15 miles in 59 minutes

    What I played

    MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 6-2 this week. I finished a series with the Braves (sweep), played the Rays (2-1), the Pirates (swept 3 games), and started a series with the Angels (lost game 1).

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-31-2026/feed/ 1     Weeknotes 26:12 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-25-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-25-2026/#respond Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:11:09 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12285 Freelance project I spent the previous weekend (March 14–15), several weeknights this week, and this weekend (21-22) to work on a freelance project for Echo Delta. It is the first project of this sort that I have worked on with them. The designer set me up for success by defining many variables in Figma and […]

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    ]]>     Freelance project

    I spent the previous weekend (March 14–15), several weeknights this week, and this weekend (21-22) to work on a freelance project for Echo Delta. It is the first project of this sort that I have worked on with them. The designer set me up for success by defining many variables in Figma and I translated all of those into custom properties which included the color scheme, font sizes, and font spacing. I had to get use to Figma as it has changed quite a bit in the two years since I used it last.

    This particular project is a one-page landing page for prospective students for a school in the Southeast. The page includes several interactive cards, audio elements (sounds from campus and testimonials), quiz cards, and several different types of videos. It uses a grid layout which translated well from 1 column to 4 columns. I used grid-auto-flow: dense to sort the cards to fill any gaps in the two and three column layouts.

    I enjoyed the challenge of building custom audio players and custom video players with HTML. I used Stephanie Eckels 12 Days of Web (Audio API) tutorial and MDN’s Create a cross-browser video player to help me to build the custom players I needed for the site. I also got some help from Codepen to build the custom circular progress bar for the audio component.

    It is a challenge to work on a freelance project on nights and weekends while still putting in a full day at my full-time job. There were moments during the week when I felt motivated to work, either during the day or at night. But I am grateful for the opportunity to earn a little bit more for my family and to work a build from scratch project. It was also fun to work with another team of people. And have the chance to learn some new things.

    Other highlights from the week:

    • My son was home for the week for Spring Break. He was pretty busy doing his own freelance work and then spending a lot of time working on his senior art show. Though I would have wanted to spend some more time together, it was great to have him home and just enjoy a lot of little interactions through the day. It was also fun to see what he was working on in real-time.
    • I worked on a lot of smaller projects in my day job. I put in work on both of the language sites that we are migrating from WordPress to Django (South Africa and German).
    • I built out a template for the Spanish version of the Wonder of the Word page that I had rebuilt in English a couple of weeks ago.
    • I wrestled with a SVG image more than I should. I was having problems getting it to work and inherit the correct fill colors by <use>. I ended up just including the svg file with Django templating. And then I spun my wheels for quite a while trying to figure out why it was faded (opacity). I finally figured out that it was a class coming from Illustrator that was in our codebase and adding less opacity. I just removed the class from the SVG and fixed the problem.
    • I had another challenging problem with a Glide carousel. I learned in the process that Glide does not handle carousels with less items than the perView and had to write some custom scripting to make it work.
    • I did some experimenting the latter part of the week. I checked out a couple of different solutions for parallax. I wanted to explore ways that we could replace a JavaScript solution with modern CSS. Both of the solutions I explored use the new Animations API animation-timeline. Both of the solutions I explored were dealing with multiple layers where I just needed a solution for a background image. The first solution was from Christian Adler (my Codepen based on his solution). The second solution I explored was a video from Kevin Powell from November 2023. I did not get a chance this week to take it for a test drive.
    • The other experiment I did was with replacing Glide with Splide. I had used Splide in the past and wanted to test drive it again because of some frustrations I was having with Glide. I replaced a current Glide instance on our site with Splide so that I take it for a test drive. I enjoyed getting to play around with some different things and consider different solutions to solve problems on our Revive Our Hearts sites.

    Project Hail Mary

    Our family went to see Project Hail Mary at the Tennessee Aquarium IMAX theater. This IMAX is only one of a few that use laser projectors. It was the perfect venue to see this movie and I think it added to the specific experience of this movie which was shot for IMAX. It was a great movie that I quickly got immersed into. The story and the characters were great. The sets (very little CGI) were awesome and felt very much like the types of things we have seen on the International Space Station. I loved the subtle references to classic sci-fi (Aliens and Close Encounters, maybe more that I missed). One of the best movies I have seen in recent years.

    Before the movie starts, the theater tells/shows you why this IMAX experience is different because of the size of their screen (six stories), the laser projectors, and they highlight their great sound system.

    Articles I read

    #CSS trick not enough folks know about: painting into the sub boxes of an element – border – padding – content you can paint into one, or all of them differently! here's a gradient border, a solid padding fill, and a gradient content (inner) box see fur yerself codepen.io/argyleink/pe…

    [image or embed]

    — Adam Argyle (@nerdy.dev) November 15, 2024 at 4:43 PM

    What I watched

    • KU-Cal Baptist (CBS) – I was feeling good with a 26 point lead in the second half only to have a scare as Cal Baptist came within 6 late in the game. I was glad the Jayhawks pulled it out but it did not bode well for their chances to go far in the tournament.
    • The West Wing (Netflix)
    • Formula 1: Drive to Survive Season 8 (Netflix) – I finished season 8 this week. I was glad that Lando Norris was able to hold on and win the driver championship.
    • Schumacher (Netflix)
    • Agathie Christie’s Seven Dials: Bundle of Love (Netflix) – We enjoyed the first episode in this three part series and look forward to seeing the rest of it.
    • Project Hail Mary (Theater)
    • Gönczy Grand Opening (YouTube) – I watched the livestream of the opening of a renovated ministry center space for Cru’s ministry in Budapest. My good friend is the country director and he has been sharing about this project for the past few years. I enjoyed getting to watch and celebrate this milestone with them. I was not expecting it to be translated and really appreciated that I could follow along as the presentation was in Hungarian.
    • Brian Regan – Eye Exam (YouTube) – Dan Cedarholm shared this in his Studio Notes on Friday and enjoyed this sketch from Brian. It was a nice way to end the work week.
    • True Parallax with CSS-Only is now possible (Kevin Powell, YouTube) – I watched this as I explored some different solutions for parallax backgrounds using modern CSS.
    • Spider-man: Brand New Day trailer (YouTube)
    • Dune: Part Three trailer (YouTube)
    • MLB The Show 26 Launch Trailer (YouTube) – I knew it was only a matter of time that they would stop making the game for PS4.

    Books I am reading

    Walking

    • Thursday – 3.07 miles in 59 minutes
    • Friday – 1.97 miles in 39 minutes

    What I played

    MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 6-0 this week. I played many nights after working on a freelance project to wind down before going to bed. Winding down is much more fun when you are winning. I finished the week in the midst of an 8-game winning streak.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-25-2026/feed/ 0     Weeknotes 26:11 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-16-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-16-2026/#respond Mon, 16 Mar 2026 04:57:43 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12279 Best in Show I traveled up to Murray, Kentucky on Tuesday so I could attend a reception for the OMAS (Organization of Murray Art Students) spring art show. This is my son’s third time participating (he missed one because he was studying abroad for a semester in Barcelona). One of his pieces won best in […]

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    ]]>
    • The conference site, Mujer Verdadera ’26, launched on Wednesday while I was on the road. There were a few hiccups but my team was able to cover it while I was traveling back home from Kentucky.
    • I refactored a few templates and stylesheet to make a more generic styled page for our courses on Revive Our Hearts. Our first course had very specific branding. We added enough to the templates that would allow me to apply specific branding in the future but has a default that we could quickly get up and running.
    • I worked on some navigation changes splitting a donate button (that revealed a submenu on hover) into two separate buttons (one going to online donation and the other triggers the submenu reveal). On Friday, I worked on a solution to add it to our Portuguese and Spanish sites. As part of the solution, I also moved the donation button from some navigation items in the center of the desktop screen to the right (along with some other global navigation and hamburger menu).
    • I updated a HTML email template on Thursday and Friday. I am so glad that it uses MJML. I had fun crafting it on Friday as I had to apply some different variations of background images.
    • I started work on building out a landing page for potential new students for a school in the Southeast. I enjoyed seeing that site come together and I have learned some new skills with custom audio and video players using the native HTML elements.

    Best in Show

    My son’s best in show piece. Over the summer, he scanned his face with plastic wrap between him and the scanner. He did this everyday after he got up and before he went to work in the morning. The piece consists of the different images printing on transparent film over acrylic. The panels are removable and you can try different combinations. It also looks different based on the angle you are viewing it.

    I traveled up to Murray, Kentucky on Tuesday so I could attend a reception for the OMAS (Organization of Murray Art Students) spring art show. This is my son’s third time participating (he missed one because he was studying abroad for a semester in Barcelona). One of his pieces won best in show. It was a piece that he created in the fall for his solo show at the Murray Art Guild, which he won last year at the OMAS show. He also won a graphic design award for a zine that he created called Always Working: A contemplation of the 9–5.

    It was so much fun to be there and be able to celebrate with him. I enjoyed seeing his friends and meeting some of his fellow art students. I also got to meet his advisor that he has worked closely with over the past four years for his honor’s thesis that he will finish soon. I enjoyed getting to go out to dinner with my son and his fiancé after the reception. I had wanted to attend this show in the past and decided over last weekend to take the last minute trip. I won’t have many opportunities like this in the future so I wanted to take advantage of it while I can.

    Writing

    I wrote a couple of articles this week:

    • Still here – was inspired by Geoff Graham’s post in January about his changing roles to reflect and celebrate the fact that I am “still here.” I am grateful that I found a place where my skills and experience are valued and needed.
    • Back in Murray – A follow-up to an article I wrote last month about visiting Murray, Kentucky.

    Articles I read

    What I watched

    What I listened to

    How God’s Love for Women is Displayed in the Old Testament, with Dr. Katie McCoy

    Books I am reading

    Walking – 13 miles

    • Sunday – 3.56 miles in 1 hour 5 minutes
    • Monday – 3.07 miles in 57 minutes
    • Thursday – 2.54 miles in 49 minutes
    • Friday – 3.84 miles in 1 hour 8 minutes

    What I played

    MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 2-2 this week. I started the week with a 3 game losing streak and turned it around over the weekend, winning two against the Tigers. The bottom of my order provided most of my offense on Friday with two bench players having outstanding games.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-16-2026/feed/ 0     Back in Murray https://jeffbridgforth.com/back-in-murray/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/back-in-murray/#respond Tue, 10 Mar 2026 21:23:44 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12274 A little over two weeks ago, I posted about being in Murray, Kentucky and reflected on the many trips I have made here in the past four years. I had come up to see a basketball game with my son and spend the afternoon with him. In the post, I mentioned that trip was probably […]

    The post Back in Murray appeared first on Jeff Bridgforth.

    ]]>     A little over two weeks ago, I posted about being in Murray, Kentucky and reflected on the many trips I have made here in the past four years. I had come up to see a basketball game with my son and spend the afternoon with him.

    In the post, I mentioned that trip was probably one of the last I would make here. At the time, I mentioned we had two more trips planned: one in April for my son’s senior art show and one in May for his graduation.

    I made an unexpected trip up here today for a student art show that he is part of. And he is receiving two different awards for a few of his entries. There are not many opportunities like this left for him so I wanted to be apart of it. I have actually wanted to come to this art show in the past but it had not worked out.

    I am so glad I decided to make the trip so I can be part of his special night. You need to grab these opportunities when you can. Kids grow up too fast and then they are off on their own. Soon he will graduate from college and make his way in the world. Our youngest will be off to a four year school after graduating with her associates degree from Chattanooga State in May.

    Carpe diem. Seize the day.

    Persnickety Pig in Cadiz, Kentucky. I usually stop here on the way to Murray or on the way back.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/back-in-murray/feed/ 0     Weeknotes 26:10 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-8-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-8-2026/#comments Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:53:22 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12266 Museum memories This month the topic for the IndieWeb Blog Carnival is “Museum Memories.” The topic was chosen by James at James’ Coffee Blog. I took a cue from Joe Crawford and decided to share two museum memories that came to mind while I was reading Joe’s entry. I shared about visiting the Design Musuem […]

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    ]]>
  • I started on a new project on Monday. I built and styled the page for the digital version of the March newsletter. This is my third time and went lot quicker because of the foundation I have built doing two last year.
  • I continued working on the Mujer Verdadera ’26 website. I added more subpages and edited some content on pages that I had already built. I also swapped out the promotional video with the placeholder video. I think we are looking to launch the conference pages this coming week (March 9–13).
  • At the end of last year, we had added the ability to customize the hero on the Revive Our Hearts site. And this month, we updated the hero image for spring. We got requests from our Spanish site and Portuguese site to use the same image. So I refactored several templates to add the same functionality to those sites plus our French site. I also made it more flexible so that you could just customize what you needed (hero image, heading, teaser, calls to action buttons) and then fall back to defaults if no content was provided in the CMS. Now our other teams can update any part of the hero they want and not have to rely on our team.
  • I updated the Wonder of the Word timeline on the 2025 Annual Praise report to reflect changes I had made in the timeline before we launched a new version of the Wonder of the Word page that contained the same timeline. The timeline is my first scroll-driven animation using CSS.

    • Museum memories

    This month the topic for the IndieWeb Blog Carnival is “Museum Memories.” The topic was chosen by James at James’ Coffee Blog. I took a cue from Joe Crawford and decided to share two museum memories that came to mind while I was reading Joe’s entry. I shared about visiting the Design Musuem of Barcelona with my son in May 2024. And my second memory was the Salvador Dalí Musuem in St. Petersburg, Florida that I visited after the Front-End Design Conference in 2011. At the end of the post, I listed out all the museums that remembered to have visited along with some that I would like to visit in the future, including several here in Chattanooga.

    Adventures in subgrid

    I wrote another post this week about my recent adventures in using subgrid to solve layout problems in my work. It is a great solution to lining up content on the same grid over two or more columns in a parent grid. I included several examples from recent work on Revive Our Hearts.

    I referenced Josh Comeau’s recent article, Brand New Layouts with CSS Subgrid. I also reference several videos by Kevin Powell and along with some other resources.

    Read Adventures in subgrid

    Enjoying The Show

    I have had a lot of fun over the past few weeks playing MLB The Show ’23 with the Baltimore Orioles. I had finished a season with the 2020 Twins earlier last month and decided to jump into the 2023 edition, which was the last one I bought. The Orioles had a pretty good year in 2023 and I wanted to play with their young team.

    I have gotten off to a good start. Gunnar Henderson looks like a shoe in for the Rookie of the Year. His defense at third has been superb and he getting a lot of key hits including homers to propel my team. I was very happy over the last week that Anthony Santander got hot. He had a slow start and I was considering promoting someone from the farm system or looking for a trade. But after sitting him for a couple of games, he went on a tear getting multiple hits per game and several homers. He raised his average from near .200 to the mid .300s.

    I have had a lot of fun playing with this team and finding ways to win in the late innings. My bullpen has been lights out with Felix Bautista anchoring the effort. I have had many blow out games recently so Bautista has not had as many save opportunities to lead the league. Things are starting to click with several of the players who got a slow start. Austin Hays has hit safely in 22 games out of the 23 I have played through Saturday. I had a 9 game win streak snapped on Saturday by the Red Sox.

    Article I read

    I read several articles this week about AI/LLM including three by Nolan Lawson. I appreciated that Nolan acknowledged our need to grieve and mourn our craft. But I also appreciated his challenge not to lose our sense of wonder and to take a moment to be amazed. He also captured a lot of what I have been thinking and feeling about the past few months in You had a story. I appreciated his honesty and willingness to see things from a different perspective.

    On AI/LLM

    Museum memories – other entries for this month’s Indie Web Blog Carnival

    Other articles

    Iranian church and current events

    What I watched

    Books I am reading

    What I listened to?

    Walking – 13.24 miles

    It has been two years since I started walking to get in shape for my trip to Europe with my son in April 2024. Little did I know that walking (and praying) would become so important to surviving a year of unemployment that started a few weeks later.

    Two years later, I am still walking regularly. Not as much as I would like, but I keep showing up. This was a good week, and I got out 4 times. I am shooting for around 5 and around 16 miles a week. So I didn’t hit my goal this week, but it was progress.

    • Sunday – 3.26 miles in 1 hour
    • Monday – 3.04 miles in 57 minutes
    • Tuesday – 3.23 in 59 minutes
    • Saturday – 3.71 miles in 1 hour 8 minutes

    What I played

    MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 6-1 this week with Boston breaking my 9 game winning streak on Saturday. The highlight was a walk off homer by Adley Rutschman. I also had two 9-4 blowouts against the Tigers where I hit lots of homers.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-8-2026/feed/ 1     Still here https://jeffbridgforth.com/still-here/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/still-here/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2026 22:46:25 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12265 In January, I read Geoff Graham’s article, Changing Roles. It dawned on him that somehow at sometime, he stopped being a web designer. It was not something he necessarily intended to happen. He took advantage of different opportunities and evolved into a new role. Web educator is the best way to describe his role these […]

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    ]]>     In January, I read Geoff Graham’s article, Changing Roles. It dawned on him that somehow at sometime, he stopped being a web designer. It was not something he necessarily intended to happen. He took advantage of different opportunities and evolved into a new role. Web educator is the best way to describe his role these days.

    As I read Geoff’s article, it gave me a moment to pause. I am still here. I am still a front-end developer (even though my title is UX Developer). I am still here. And I don’t say that like a grump older person who has been in the role for a long time with a sense that I am stuck or that I am not thrilled about it.

    No, when I say “I am still here” it is very much an enthusiastic and very grateful tone. I feel incredibly blessed that “I am still here.” Why?

    Two years ago, I lost my job unexpected. And I spent the next twelve months looking for a new job. There were a lot of days during that unemployment that I thought my time building and crafting websites were over. There were days that I had to fight hard against discouragement to keep going. It took me quite a while just to start getting some interviews. And then I would get my hopes up only to be disappointed. Even a year ago today, I had some possibilities but still had this fear that my time in the Web industry might be over. Fighting for hope was a daily battle.

    I had no idea what I would do instead. I had invested twenty five years in this field. And I still enjoyed working on every project that came my way. I love crafting with code. And that was the hardest part of being unemployed. I was not motivated to do side projects because in a lot of ways, it was too painful. I missed the energy that doing creative work each day had given to me while I was employed.

    I entertained the idea of pivoting to something else or trying to retool. I bought Josh Comeau‘s Joy of React course and started learning React. But I didn’t necessarily see a way forward in that lane as all the job postings that I saw were looking for someone with years of experience. And I struggled to think about being a React developer because of some fundamental philosophical/professional disagreements with frameworks as an approach to building the web. It seemed to go against the grain of the Web not using the most up-to-date HMTL elements like dialog. I also had accessibility and progressive enhancement concerns.

    But I am still here. The timing of things came together and Revive Our Hearts ministry needed someone with my skills. It was the right fit at the right time. It brought me back full circle. I got my start in web development while working for Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru). Once again, I was going to be able to invest my skills in something I was very passionate about.

    There have been so many days, especially over the last six months, that I am just so grateful and appreciative of the fact that I still am here–that I still get to do the thing that I love doing and have built up so many skills and knowledge about. I am humbled when I see how many people are losing their jobs in the industry and still looking for new opportunities. I don’t take it for granted that I still get to do what I do. It is a privilege and a blessing.

    I don’t know how much longer it will last but I want to enjoy every minute of it. I thought about several scenes from the movie, Toy Story 2. Woody, a vintage toy cowboy, considers going to a museum as he begins to feel that his days as Andy’s beloved toy are numbered. But then later in the movie he comes to his senses.

    “I can’t prevent Andy from growing up but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

    After Buzz Lightyear, Woody’s space toy friend, asks Woody if he was still worried about Andy growing up. “Nah, it will be fun while it lasts.”

    I don’t know what is ahead for our industry. I know there is a lot of concern about how AI will change our jobs or whether there will be less jobs in the future because of AI. I still have my doubts about the “inevitability” of AI. But I am still not sure how to hedge my bets.

    But for now, “I am still here.” And I am grateful and trying to enjoy it as long as it lasts. And trusting God with what is next if it comes to that.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/still-here/feed/ 1     Adventures in subgrid https://jeffbridgforth.com/adventures-in-subgrid/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/adventures-in-subgrid/#respond Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:54:29 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12251 I remember when I first learned about subgrid back in 2019. I created a Codepen to play around with it and was able to view it in Firefox (I think I had to enable something behind a flag). I was excited about the possibilities and problems that subgrid would allow us to solve. Subgrid is […]

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    ]]>     I remember when I first learned about subgrid back in 2019. I created a Codepen to play around with it and was able to view it in Firefox (I think I had to enable something behind a flag). I was excited about the possibilities and problems that subgrid would allow us to solve. Subgrid is an addition to the original CSS Grid specification which allows us to extend the grid layout down through the DOM tree. (Subgrid was intended to be a part of the original CSS Grid implementation but needed some additional work to implement in the browser.)

    But it took longer to get broad support of subgrid across browsers (it looks like it is part of Baseline 2023) and I sort of lost interest. There were plenty of other fun toys to play with like container queries. Subgrid fell off my radar and I took very little notice of when it was finally available in the four major evergreen browsers. But that changed recently.

    A problem that subgrid solves

    I think Josh Comeau put it very well in his recent article about subgrid:

    “One of the hardest problems in CSS is when siblings need to be aware of each other inside nested / complex layouts. Subgrid offers a solution to these sorts of problems.”

    Using a grid layout (without subgrid), all the items on the grid have to be siblings. And the children elements within the grid layout don’t have a way of being aware of the grid layout that their parents are a part of. Some developers have used display: contents as a work around but that solution has some negative accessibility impacts. Subgrid is the solution that we have needed and it doesn’t negatively affect accessibility.

    So one of the main problems that I have solved with subgrid is being able to line up content across multiple columns. That is the problem I was solving with the very first Codepen that I played around with.

    A typical layout for sites that I was building in 2019 were cards with a heading, description and a link or button. There was really no way to line those elements up over multiple columns when the headings could be one line or multiple lines and descriptions had a different number of lines. And I was asked many times during the QA process (especially by designers) to find solutions to line up these elements across the columns.

    See the Pen Playing with Subgrid by Jeff Bridgforth (@webcraftsman) on CodePen.

    An example of that type of layout and what we wanted it to look like that subgrid has finally helps us to achieve

    Most of the time, I would opt to line up the “Read more” links or buttons by using a flex layout inside the card, with a flex-direction of column and a margin: auto on the top of the link or button. This would force those elements to the bottom of the card and they would line up across a grid row. This would provide a little bit nicer solution than if I didn’t use it. But I still was not able to achieve that alignment the heading, description/teaser, and read more button.

    Recent solutions with subgrid

    In several recents projects, I used subgrid to solve the very problem I have described above of having sibling content being aware of other sibling content so that they line up and share the same grid cell.

    The Wonder App

    I used subgrid as a solution in several places on a page promoting our Wonder App for Teen Girls. In the first example, I used subgrid to line up the descriptions below headings that varied from two lines to three lines. The four boxes use a parent grid on the container (an ordered list) and then each list item uses the subgrid to line up the content. The ordered list sits inside another grid layout for the whole section. I also used a grid to create some spacing around the secondary content list in the top right. I turned on the grid lines in devtools so you can see the different grids in action.

    One of the gotchas of using subgrid is that you have to reserve space for multiple rows in your parent grid so that you can have the multiple grid rows on the subgrid. I learned this the hard way on one of the first solutions I tried with subgrid on the Revive Our Hearts site. If you don’t reserve the space for the rows, the content in each row will stack on top of each other in 1 row.

    I ended up defining the number of rows in my CSS code.

    .wonder-contents {
        grid-column: 1/-1;
}

.wonder-contents ol {    
    --rows: 2;
    display: grid;
    grid-template-columns: 1fr;
    column-gap: 36px;
    row-gap: 36px;
    list-style-type: '';
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;


    @media (min-width: calc((768 / 16) * 1em)) {
        grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr);
    }

    @media (min-width: calc((1300 / 16) * 1em)) {
        grid-template-columns: repeat(4, 1fr);
    }
}

.wonder-contents li {
    background-color: var(--teal);
    border-radius: 24px;
    color: white;
    display: grid;
    grid-template-rows: subgrid;
    grid-row: span var(--rows);
    padding: 1em;
}

    But what if you have a dynamic number of rows. Josh shared a more flexible solution in his article for when you have a dynamic number of rows.

    .wonder-contents li {
    grid-row: span 99;
}

    You want to make your row span one that will exceed the actual number of rows you’ll. We’ll wind up with a 99-row grid, and all of the unused rows will stack up together at the bottom.

    The one caveat with this solution is that you cannot use gap for the rows because then you would have 98 gaps in your subgrid because it will add the space even in your empty rows. But you could easily use a margin-block-start for all your first row to account for that.

    Two columns of comparison

    Another place that I used subgrid on the Wonder App page was further down the page where I had a comparison chart across two columns.

    <div class="wonder-comparison">
    <ul class="listing-with-dividers left-column">
        <h2>Without Daily time in God&rsquo;s word</h2>
        <li>She stays discipled by culture instead of Christ.</li>
        <li>Lies grow louder than truth.</li>
        <li>Identity becomes fragile.</li>
        <li>Her relationship with God stays shallow or stagnant.</li>
    </ul>

    <ul class="listing-with-dividers right-column js-animate" data-root-margin="-0px 0px -45% 0px">
        <h2><span class="highlight"><svg>...</svg>With</span><span class="other-text">Daily time in God&rsquo;s word</span>.</h2>
        <li>She encounters Jesus daily.</li>
        <li>She learns her identity is secure in Christ.</li>
        <li>She builds deep-rooted faith habits.</li>
        <li>She joins a global sisterhood anchored in God&rsquo;s Word.</li>
    </ul>
</div>

    This one is very similar to the first example, just more rows.

    .wonder-comparison {
    border-bottom: 24px solid;
    border-image: var(--wonder-border-color) 1;
    color: var(--teal);
    display: grid;
    container-type: inline-size;
    grid-template-columns: 1fr;
    

    @media (min-width: calc((768 / 16) * 1em)) {
        --rows: 5;
        grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr);

    }
}

.wonder-comparison .left-column {
    background-color: var(--teal);
}

.wonder-comparison .right-column {
    background-image: url(../../images/wonder-app/gradient-background.jpg);
    background-size: cover;
    background-position: center;
}


.wonder-comparison h2 {
    background-color: var(--cream);
    font-family: var(----source-sans-pro);
    font-size: 36px;
    font-weight: 700;
    text-transform: uppercase;
    margin: 0;
    padding-block-start: 5cqb;
    padding-inline: 4cqi;
    text-align: center;

    @media (min-width: calc((768 / 16) * 1em)) and (max-width: calc((1199 / 16) * 1em)) {
        padding-inline: 2cqi;
    }
} 

.wonder-comparison ul {
    display: grid;
    grid-template-rows: subgrid;
    grid-row: span var(--rows);
    padding: 10cqb 10cqi;
    
    @media (min-width: calc((768 / 16) * 1em)) and (max-width: calc((1199 / 16) * 1em)) {
        padding: 5cqb 5cqi;
    }
}

.wonder-comparison li {
    background-color: var(--cream);
    border: 0;
    align-content: center;
    padding-inline: 4cqi;
    position: relative;
    text-align: center;
    text-wrap: balance;
    text-wrap: pretty;
    text-transform: none;

    @media (min-width: calc((768 / 16) * 1em)) and (max-width: calc((1199 / 16) * 1em)) {
        padding-inline: 2cqi;
    }
}

.wonder-comparison li:not(:last-child) {
    &::after {
        background-color: var(--teal);
        bottom: -1px;
        content: '';
        height: 2px;
        position: absolute;
        left: 4cqi;
        right: 4cqi;
        z-index: 1;
    }
}

.wonder-comparison li:last-child {
    padding-block-end: 5cqb;
}

    I didn’t use gap in this example because I wanted to add borders between the list elements. I decided to use a combination of padding and generated content (::after) to add in the borders. There is not currently a way to add borders with grid layout but the CSS Gap Decorations Module Level 1 will add that ability in the future. (See CSS Gap Decorations playground to see it in action.)

    I also used container query units for padding and positioning of the borders. I like being able to set up proportional properties based on the containers that will change the value of the padding based on the container size.

    Another example of lining up content across columns

    Another place that I used subgrid to line up content across columns was on a year-end donation page. The headings had a different numbers of lines and the paragraphs were different sizes. Once again, subgrid was able to help me make the content look better because the content was able to share a common grid.

    Going on from here

    I am excited to explore more ways that I could utilize subgrid in the future. I liked a couple of examples from Josh’s article. The first one was of a layout with a a grid cell of a heading and a couple of paragraphs. The other cells were images of the portfolio that he introduced with the first cell of text content. He could have just the content cell and then six images but it made more sense to make the images into an unordered list. Subgrid then allows him to place the list items on the parent grid.

    Later in the article, he has a grid of cards that contain an image and then text content. Without subgrid, he would not have been able to line up the images and make them the same size because he was using the fr unit. But without a relationship to the other siblings, the image size would be different in each card.

    He also mentioned a couple of other gotchas to using subgrid besides reserving space for the rows which I mentioned above.

    I am excited to find more solutions that subgrid unlocks. If you would like to learn more about subgrid, I would encourage you to read Josh’s article, Brand New Layouts with CSS Subgrid. He also mentioned that Kevin Powell has several helpful resources which I will list below.

    Additional resources

    The post Adventures in subgrid appeared first on Jeff Bridgforth.

    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/adventures-in-subgrid/feed/ 0     Weeknotes 26:09 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-4-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-4-2026/#respond Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:05:26 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12224 Articles I read What I watched Books I am reading Walking What I played

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    ]]>
  • I continued working on the Mujer Verdadera ’26 website. My team leader and I met with the team on Wednesday to show the progress. I got very positive response from them and they appreciated that I picked up several important points from the style guide they had provided. They liked the bright colors. We are still gathering feedback on the homepage. I began working on secondary pages at the end of the week as I set a design direction based off the homepage design.
  • I also continued putting the finishing touches on the new Wonder of the Word page. We launched the revision on Thursday afternoon.
    • I updated a Kindness Challenge, reordering some of the content and making a few content updates to freshen up this challenge that we are promoting.
    • I continued working on some small tasks as we move the site for our South Africa ministry from WordPress to Django.
    • I fixed a layout issue in our daily Read Through the Bible email. The Bible chapter titles were too long on smaller screens so I adjusted the font size. I also tested it with the longest one word title to make sure it does not break in the future.
    • I came up with a UX solution where users can go directly to a page to donate online or choose a dropdown of options related to donations. The solution should be implemented later this week.

    Articles I read

    What I watched

    We enjoyed the Twenty One Pilots show with our daughter. She saw their Breach tour in Birmingham in October. It is fun to share in her interests in music. My wife and I both like Twenty One Pilots as well.

    Books I am reading

    Walking

    • Saturday – 3.85 miles in 1 hour 9 minutes

    What I played

    • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 4-1 in games I played this week. The last game I played, I came back from an early 6-0 deficit. I tied it with 3 runs in the 8th and then hit a homer to win it in the 11th. I am having a lot of fun playing with this team.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-march-4-2026/feed/ 0     Two museum memories https://jeffbridgforth.com/two-museum-memories/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/two-museum-memories/#respond Thu, 05 Mar 2026 01:08:34 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12229 This month the topic for the IndieWeb Blog Carnival is “Museum Memories.” I am taking a cue from Joe Crawford and writing about two museum experiences that popped into my mind while I was reading his post this morning. Thanks to James for picking this topic and to Joe for the inspiration. Design Museum of […]

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    ]]>     This month the topic for the IndieWeb Blog Carnival is “Museum Memories.” I am taking a cue from Joe Crawford and writing about two museum experiences that popped into my mind while I was reading his post this morning. Thanks to James for picking this topic and to Joe for the inspiration.

    Design Museum of Barcelona

    I visited the Design Museum of Barcelona almost two years ago when I traveled in Europe with my son. I believe this is the last museum that I visited so it is probably the freshest on my mind.

    My son and I visited the museum late in the day on our last day of our trip. We were able to take advantage of free admission because it was the first Saturday of the month. My son was excited because he had wanted to visit this museum during his semester of study abroad in Barcelona (Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering) but never gotten over to it.

    Taken by my son with his very nice camera

    We started with the product design exhibition. I enjoyed observing my son get excited to see products that had been discussed in his furniture design class. He would see one, get excited, take a picture, and tell me a bit about it. And then the process kept repeating as we made our way around the exhibit. It gave me such joy to witness his excitement to see the real objects that he had only seen in slides in the classroom.

    I took a lot of pictures of a lot of different chairs. There were several objects from the 1992 Olympics that Barcelona hosted including one of the torches from the relay. The last part of the exhibit focused on creative solutions to use recycled materials and solutions to make the world more inclusive including adding texture to sidewalks to signal to blind people that a street crossing was ahead. I thought the sink that recycled water to use in a toilet was a very clever idea. I thought about reading the book, User Friendly, and learning about making products more useful to people.

    We moved on to another floor and another exhibit about graphic design in Catalonia. The exhibit included a lot of different artifacts–posters, magazines, packaging, album covers, and other physical objects. There was even a section on digital. We enjoyed making our way through this floor through our shared interest in graphic design.

    Cobi, the Olympic mascot of the 1992 Barcelona Games

    We also enjoyed an exhibit about how fashion “shapes” a body. They had examples of different approaches that exaggerate the body shape, lengthen the body shape, articulate the body shape, and others that I cannot remember. I think my youngest would have enjoyed the exhibit.

    I wish I had taken more pictures in the fashion exhibit. My son got at least one. The second picture is of me after a long day of walking around and seeing much of Barcelona. I was ready to go get churrios and then rest at our hotel.

    This visit stands out because of the shared experience with my son. The museum was focused on design, which we are both involved in. I have designed and built websites for over 25 years. He has been practicing graphic design for about 7 years and is about to get an art degree and has three years of working with agencies in the summer and freelancing during school.

    So the exhibits touched something deep inside of who we are as designers/creatives. I am so glad that I got to be with him when he visited this museum. As I already mentioned, most of my enjoyment came from watching his reactions to seeing pieces that he had studied earlier in the year. And he was able to give me some good perspective on a lot of the things we were seeing because of what he had learned during his time in Barcelona. It was a great way to end our time in Europe.

    Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida

    The second museum visit that came to mind this morning was my visit to the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. I went with a friend. We had just attended the Front End Design Conference the day before. We toured the museum in the morning and then I took him to the airport before making my way back to home in Orlando.

    I cannot say that I am big fan of Dalí or the style of art that he is known for. I also did not know that the art of his early career was more realistic or more in line of what I think of when I think of art. I really enjoyed seeing the entire collection. Some of his earlier paintings were very large and covered most of all of a wall in the museum.

    I remember that the thing I enjoyed the most was being up close to the art and seeing all the brush strokes. Some of his work was heavy with paint and I enjoyed the texture of seeing that up close. I cannot say I came away a bigger fan of Dalí’s work but I did have a better appreciation of him as I worked my way through his life and gained a better understanding of how he developed as an artist.

    The visit was also memorable because of the company. I had met Jason online. Actually, our relationship started when he commented on one of my blog posts. That led to us following each other and interacting on Twitter. He found out about the conference through a tweet I had made about going.

    We split the cost of a hotel room and had a blast hanging out and getting to know each beyond throughout the weekend. We found out that both of our wives had asked us about staying with a “stranger” because we only knew each other through the Internet. It worked out great and we did it again the next year (the conference) and visited the Museum of Fine Arts.

    I also enjoyed the architecture of the museum itself. The spiral stairs capped off by the glass ceiling was beautiful and let in a lot of nice Florida sunshine.

    It is difficult to limit this post to just two experiences. So many others come to mind, many from the trip two years ago where I visited Barcelona and Budapest. But those are stories for another time. Or you can visit my daily articles from the trip to explore on your own.

    Museums I have visited (not an exhaustive list)

    Museums I would like to visit

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/two-museum-memories/feed/ 0     Weeknotes 26:08 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-26-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-26-2026/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:57:55 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12208 I had a lot of fun working on a couple of projects this week. I got to try some things that I have been wanting to do and was able to take some time to experiment. I was happy that I went for it with a couple of solutions. I continued working on the revision […]

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    ]]>     I had a lot of fun working on a couple of projects this week. I got to try some things that I have been wanting to do and was able to take some time to experiment. I was happy that I went for it with a couple of solutions.

    I continued working on the revision of the Wonder of the Word page (which launched today). I also started a new project. I am building a conference website for our Spanish ministry, Aviva Nuestros Corazones. Mujer Verdadera ’26 will take place in Miami in November. I was given a style guide from the ANC design team along with some design assets and access to photos from their last conference in 2023. It was fun to design layouts, take cues from the True Woman ’25 and Mujer Verdadera ’23 sites, and experiment with some different ideas. By the end of the week, the landing page was almost fully formed.

    Adventures with clip-paths

    Several places on the Revive Our Hearts site, there are curves that transition between sections so there is not a hard edge. I like look of that design element and how it adds a softness to the design. I used it heavily in the Annual Praise Report which had the theme of “The River Flows.” The curves lent itself well to the theme and the design elements created by our design team for the print report. I reused some SVGs that the previous develop had created.

    But there were times I would have liked to have created my own. I wanted to learn how to use Bezier curves with the pen tool in Affinity Designer. But I knew it would take some practice and I didn’t have the luxury of the time to learn while working on the praise report.

    But recently, I have watched a couple of videos and practiced a bit creating those curves in Affinity Designer. Last week, I wanted to create a clip-path shape for the new Wonder of the Word page. I used the curves from a design mockup to “trace” and place my pen points. My little bit of practice paid off and I was able to create the shape I needed to use as clip-path mask. But I ran into some trouble exporting my SVG. I finally was able to trace the problem to my export settings. My shape was not exporting the full dimensions of what I had created. Finally after a couple of hours of wrestling with it, I had a working clip-path.

    .hero-image {
    background-image: url(/static/images/wow/landing/hero-desktop.webp?ec0d9c26cd5f&9dbb2f080e8e);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center top;
    background-size: cover;
    clip-path: url(#wow-hero-clip);
    left: 0;
    overflow: clip;
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    z-index: 2;
}

    The SVG for the clip path is added to the HTML code to reference in the CSS

    <svg width="0" height="0" viewBox="0 0 1800 1080" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" role="presentation">
    <defs>
        <clipPath id="wow-hero-clip" clipPathUnits="objectBoundingBox">
            <path fill-rule="evenodd" clip-rule="evenodd" d="M0.999,0 L1,0.987 C0.988,0.985,0.978,0.99,0.96,0.996 C0.915,1,0.891,0.982,0.851,0.973 C0.819,0.965,0.788,0.981,0.757,0.981 C0.719,0.981,0.678,0.954,0.641,0.942 C0.586,0.925,0.561,0.938,0.5,0.949 C0.462,0.956,0.423,0.942,0.385,0.93 C0.315,0.907,0.3,0.928,0.237,0.932 C0.192,0.935,0.184,0.935,0.102,0.909 C0.063,0.896,0.062,0.874,0.011,0.905 C0.008,0.907,0,0.91,0,0.91 L0,0 L0.999,0" fill="black"></path>
        </clipPath>
    </defs>
</svg>

    Originally, it we were just going to clip the photo and go into the next section. But Emily, the communication director, and myself felt like it needed a ribbon of color as a transition. Originally, it was going to follow the same clip-path shape. But that seemed boring. So I ended up making the generated element a percentage larger and it gave me a dynamic feel that added to the flow of the design. I love those happy accidents.

    I also used curves in the Mujer Verdadera ’26. I had come across a wave generator tool at the end of last year.

    You can change all sorts of settings to get the curve you want. I had a lot lower amplitude than the default one shown above. I changed the frequency to 2 or 1.5 to get some gentle ups and down and you can change the phase to move along the x-axis. Then you can copy the code and use that as a clip-path in your CSS. I created a couple of different curves and then created a few for mobile and tablet. I was really excited to what the clip-paths added to my design and allow me to clip sections with background images and clip sections with decorations that looked so much better than a straight edge.

    Road Trip

    I took a road trip at the end of the week. I traveled up to Murray, Kentucky to visit my son and go to a Murray State basketball game with him on Saturday. I stopped in Nashville on Friday afternoon and had lunch with my daughter. It was nice to spend time with her and her guinea pigs. I got to Murray just before sunset and had dinner with my son and his fiancé at Rudy’s on the Square.

    On Saturday, I met my son on campus and we had lunch together. After lunch, he took me over to his studio space to show me several of the things he has been working on for his senior art show. I enjoyed hanging out in the print studios and then we hung out at the student union before heading over to the game.

    The first half of the game was very scrappy and Murray State fell behind the worst team in the conference, Evansville, by 11 points. But the Racers kept in there and were able to take a slim one-point lead before halftime. The Racers looked better in the second half. Then went on several short runs but the Purple Aces kept threatening to come back. Finally, the Racers had a good run and the Aces were getting tired. The Racers won 88-75.

    We had great seats just behind the visiting team’s bench

    I am really glad that I got to go to one last basketball game with my son before he graduates. I had gone to a game with him his freshmen year about the same time of year. This visit reminded me a lot of that one because he took my to the art and design building and showed me some 3D prints he was working on. It was fun to see Ryan and take in the game. We walked but to his dorm after the game and talked a bit before parting. He has a review for his art show at the end of the week so he was working hard through the weekend to get ready.

    On Saturday, I took some time to write some thoughts about Murray, Kentucky and my 15 visits there over the past four years.

    While I was in Murray, my wife and youngest were making a campus visit to East Tennessee State University. It is the school she is most excited about. And the visit confirmed that this is the place she would like to go after she graduates from Chattanooga State Community College in May.

    Fake Spring

    I enjoyed the warmer weather at the end of the week. I took a walk on Friday morning in shorts and new walking shoes. But “fake” spring faked me out and I forgot to pack my jacket. And the temperature fell as I traveled north and was in the twenties on Saturday morning with a very brisk wind out of the north. I was able to double layer with long sleeve shirts but would have been much more comfortable in my jacket. I survived and of course I brought the cold weather home with me.

    Articles I read

    What I watched

    Jeff Bridgforth

    @jeffbridgforth.com

    @kevinpowell.co Nooo!! Cliffhanger. You are so cruel. 🙂

    I have enjoyed this peek into your world.

    Books I am reading

    Walking

    • Thursday – 3.39 miles in 1 hour 3 minutes
    • Friday – 1.53 miles in 27 minutes – I took a short walk on Friday morning before packing and hitting the road for my trip to Kentucky. I enjoyed wearing my shorts and my new walking shoes that I bought Thursday night.

    What I played

    • NBA2K25 (Nuggets) – I played my first game of the playoffs. I guess I did not save when I simulated the play-in tournament because I was suppose to play the Lakers but ended up playing the Spurs. It was a tight game but I pulled away in the second half and won by 20 points (I believe that is correct).
    • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 5-3 this week. I lost a series to the Rangers. I swept the Yankees in my first home series. And I split the first two games of a series with the A’s.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-26-2026/feed/ 1     Murray, Kentucky https://jeffbridgforth.com/murray-kentucky/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/murray-kentucky/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:39:32 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12203 Yesterday, I traveled most of the day from Chattanooga to Murray, Kentucky. Along the way, I stopped in Nashville to visit my oldest. But this trip was planned around me going to a Murray State basketball game this afternoon with my son. I had come up his freshmen year to see a game with him […]

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    ]]>     Yesterday, I traveled most of the day from Chattanooga to Murray, Kentucky. Along the way, I stopped in Nashville to visit my oldest. But this trip was planned around me going to a Murray State basketball game this afternoon with my son. I had come up his freshmen year to see a game with him and I wanted to make sure we got to do it one more time before he graduates in May.

    I made my first visit to Murray almost four years ago. My son and I traveled up for his in-person interview for the presidential fellows scholarship. It was also our first time to visit the campus. We had planned to visit earlier in the year but winter weather cancelled a weekend trip and they ended up doing several things online, including a group interview for the scholarship my son was pursuing.

    We were woken up early in the morning but a tornado siren. It is hard to get your wits about you and make sure you grab anything that is real important like car keys when you are jolted from a deep sleep by that terrifying sound. Just weeks earlier, a tornado had hit a town nearby and done a lot of damage so I took this very seriously. We crammed into the breakfast area of the Holiday Inn Express we were staying at and waited anxiously. About forty minutes later, we received the all clear. I felt sorry for my son knowing that he was not going to have the full night’s sleep he had hoped for before the interview.

    His interview was early in the morning so we got up and drove over to campus. We were welcomed by the staff in the honor school office and chatted with some other students and parents that were also interviewing that morning. My son’s interview went really well and for the first time in the process, he felt pretty confident that he was going to get the scholarship. They awarded up to 16 so we knew he had about a 50% chance at this point. (He did end up getting the scholarship).

    It was cold and gray that first visit. We got an individualized campus tour and got to tour the honor’s college dormitory. My son felt like this was the right place for him. I bought him his first Murray State sway, a yellow sweatshirt. We saw Batman at the small movie theater and then hung out at the hotel the rest of the evening.

    I did not know at the time how many visits I would make to Murray over the next four years or how I would come to like this small town in Kentucky. My son has had great opportunities here and I am very grateful. I have enjoyed spending time here with him. Being a visual person, it helps me to not feel like he is so far away because I have been able to spend time in his world and can visually picture places in my mind when I am talking to him and hearing stories about his experiences.

    My lasting memories of this place will be the times that I have helped him move in and move out each year. I usually spend a few days with him in Murray when those times occur. Usually I spend more time during the move out because I will help him pack up in between him finishing up his finals.

    I also have some fun memories of time by myself. I have written several articles on this site while in Murray. My second trip to Murray was to bring my son for a retreat with other presidential fellows the weekend before moving in. I ended up staying in Murray for a few days by myself while he was on the retreat. It was a nice little retreat of my own. Another time, I came up for a few days to help him move out in December. He spent the spring studying abroad in Barcelona. I was writing a post a day so I wrote several in my down time when I was not helping him to pack up.

    This is my fifteenth trip to Murray. I may only have two more trips. One for his senior art show and then the final one for his graduation (and to help him move out). There is a chance that he might be here again next year. His fiancé is considering different graduate school options and Murray State is one of them. There is even a chance that my youngest could transfer here next year after she graduates from community college.

    I felt a little bit nostalgic on this trip knowing that it was one of the last ones that I will be making. It will be my last one by myself. And this one is more relaxed then the next two will be. I am exciting about attending the basketball game this afternoon and cheering on the Racers with my son. I am grateful for all the great memories I have built here and we still have a few more to build in the future.

    My first Murray State basketball game in Murray, February 2023

    Murray is where I discovered Culver’s, which is my favorite place to get a burger. I love their mushroom and swiss butter burger. I a couple of those beauties on my first trip here. They built a Culver’s in Chattanooga that opened up in September and I have been a regular customer. I am not sure if I will visit Culver’s on this trip or not. It is still my favorite of all the Culver’s I have been to.

    I had the idea for this post as I was driving into Murray last night on Highway 80. The setting sun was behind some blue clouds and I was just thinking how much I enjoy visiting this small Kentucky town that was not even on my radar five years ago.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/murray-kentucky/feed/ 0     Weeknotes 26:07 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-15-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-15-2026/#comments Mon, 16 Feb 2026 02:18:21 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12198 I need to commit my code more often One thing I realized this week is that I need to commit my work to Git more often. I am not sure if it was my year hiatus or just not thinking about it and being intentional, but I have gotten in the habit of not committing […]

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    ]]>     I need to commit my code more often

    One thing I realized this week is that I need to commit my work to Git more often. I am not sure if it was my year hiatus or just not thinking about it and being intentional, but I have gotten in the habit of not committing my work at important junctures when working on bigger projects.

    For example, this week, I wanted to try to add a carousel within a carousel. I should have committed my work to that point. I had a good working solution that I was trying to push farther. As I pursued the solution, I came to the realization that it was not possible to do the carousel inside another carousel. The bullet navigation kept affecting the parent carousel and not the child. I tried several different things but it seems like the event kept propagated on the parent regardless of what I tried (even using stopPropagation() in my script). I came to the point where I decided I needed to abandon this idea.

    If I had committed my earlier code, I could have easily just reset my code. But instead, I had to figured out what I had added and delete it from the codebase (because I had not committed changes before pursuing this enhanced solution). Fortunately my changes were evident and it was easy to undo. But what if it had been more complex? It would be a good point of practice to commit my changes to the repo before trying new solutions. It is something I was better at doing in the past. Just need to get back in the practice of creating those benchmarks. I think my future self will be much happier if I do.

    Kill your darlings

    One of the hardest things to do as a creative is to “kill your darlings.” It means to abandon an idea or work that you done that you really like but realize that it just does not work. Either it is not a good fit for the client or the solution does not work out for some reason.

    I had this come up this week. I was creating a timeline for the new version of the Wonder of the Word page on Revive Our Hearts. I have already created two versions of the timeline in the past year. A few weeks into the job at Revive Our Hearts, I created a tabbed content solution after considering several different approaches.

    At the end of the year, I created a scroll-driven animation timeline with a fallback to horizontal scroll for our annual report. That solution was closer to what I originally had wanted to do on the Wonder of the Word page. Our communication director liked it so much that she had me implement that solution on the Wonder of the Word page.

    Last week, I met with my team leader and Emily. She wanted to update the Wonder of the Word page to reflect how the initiative has evolved over the last year. One of the changes she asked for was to rethink the scroll-driven timeline. She felt like readers might visit the page frequently to see updates and didn’t want them to have to scroll through the timeline each time. I agreed that it was time to rethink it.

    I ended up deciding on a direction that was a hybrid of a carousel and things I liked about the original tab solution. Using Glide JS, I created two sliders/carousels that were synched. The first carousel was for each year and the second carousel showed what we were doing in each of those years. The idea was inspired by a solution I had created for a freelance project several years ago. This synchronized timeline was the project I was trying to enhance with a carousel within a carousel.

    This was a video recording I did to show the solution to Emily. I removed the audio because it was only relevant to what I was trying to show her. You could also move the carousel with the arrows to the right and left of the main content. I didn’t have any of the images yet for the different projects that are a part of the Wonder of the Word.

    As much as I liked how this solution turned out, it just didn’t work well on mobile. And most of our traffic comes from mobile. I decided it was best to go with a straight carousel.

    I am glad I attempted the timeline solution. I don’t see it as a fruitless exercise and it is part of the creative process of coming up with the best solution. In this case, the timeline was not the best solution. You have to be willing to kill your darlings and let go of ideas and solutions that are not the best or don’t work out the best for the project.

    Articles I read

    Caught my eye

    Nic Chan’s personal site

    I came across Nic’s site when I read the Wishcessibility article. I love the transitions that makes this feel like a desktop. I enjoyed clicking around on the different desktop icons. The mobile version works pretty well also.

    Sticky Header – Pure CSS (Codepen)

    See the Pen Sticky Header – Pure CSS by Adir (@Adir-SL) on CodePen.

    What I watched

    • Never* use git pull (YouTube) – My team leader sent this to me and it seems like a good practice.
    • Making a Frontend Masters workshop – Day 1: Travel & Tech Check (Kevin Powell, YouTube) – I enjoyed watching Kevin’s adventure.
    • The West Wing (Netflix)
    • Miracle: The Boys of ’80 (Netflix) – I enjoyed this documentary, commentary, and reunion of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team that stunned the Soviets and revitalized this spirits of the nation.
    • 2026 Winter Olympics (NBC and Peacock)
    • Super Bowl 60 (NBC) – I had the game on but it was not very exciting until the fourth quarter. Neither team scored a touchdown till the 4th quarter. I think the Chiefs Super Bowls over the past 6 years were much more exciting than this one (even the two that they lost).

    Books I am reading

    What I listened to

    Walking

    • Thursday – 3.12 miles in 1 hour 3 minutes
    • Saturday – 3.78 miles in 1 hour 10 minutes

    What I played

    • NBA2K25 (Nuggets) – I finished the regular season with a win and kept my winning streak in tact. I finished with the best record in the league. I will play the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.
    • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – After finishing my season with the 2020 Twins, I decided to play with the 2023 Orioles. The real team had a great season with 101 wins. I liked Adley Rutschman and wanted to play with this team. I played 3 games to start the season on Saturday and swept the Red Sox in Boston.

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    ]]>     https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-15-2026/feed/ 1     Weeknotes 26:06 https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-9-2026/ https://jeffbridgforth.com/weeknotes-february-9-2026/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2026 02:24:14 +0000 https://jeffbridgforth.com/?p=12188 Fixing an annoying bug I took some time on Monday to fix a bug that I keep noticing but have not taken time to investigate. It seemed like a quirky bug that I thought only I experienced (because no one else had mentioned it). The issue was with a Glide bullet (Glide.js). If I clicked […]

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    ]]>     Fixing an annoying bug

    I took some time on Monday to fix a bug that I keep noticing but have not taken time to investigate. It seemed like a quirky bug that I thought only I experienced (because no one else had mentioned it).

    The issue was with a Glide bullet (Glide.js). If I clicked on a bullet to change the active slide in the Glide carousel, the circle was not changing color. As I tried to identify the problem, I noticed that the bullet would not change color when I clicked it but it I clicked onto another part of the page, the bullet would take on the active color. I finally was able to determine that a focus style was the culprit.

    When I add focus styles to links, I declare a style to remove the outline if the focus is put on the link by the mouse, not tabbing. It is the third declaration below:

    &:focus-visible {
    outline: white dotted 2px;
    outline-offset: 8px;
}

&:focus {
    outline: white dotted 2px;
    outline-offset: 8px;
}

&:focus:not(:focus-visible) {
    outline:none;
}

    To fix my issue, I had to declare another rule with the .glide__bullet--active class just after the third rule to put the correct background color:

    .glide__bullet:focus:not(:focus-visible) {
    background: var(--glide-gray);
    outline: 0;
}

.glide__bullet--active.glide__bullet:focus:not(:focus-visible) {
    background-color: var(--glide-accent-color);
}

    Improved component

    I also took some time to improve a component I created for our annual report and then also implemented on The Wonder of the Word page. I created a timeline component that uses scroll-driven animations for browsers that support them. The section felt too sparse and like it was missing something. It finally hit me this week what it needed. A background image. I added the background image and updated a few things (I had to get rid of some color gradients on the side that made it look like the timeline faded on the edges). I also updated the font on the year numbers as I did not like the look of the serif numbers.

    Original implementation
    Revised version – It feels more engaging to me. Not as bland.

    New UI for Essentials Course

    I mentioned last week that I worked on an improved UI for our Women’s Ministry Essentials course page. It is a much more compact page and I believe it makes it easier for a quick glance to view the homework, the teaching video, linking to the community chat, and bonus resources. The changes were implemented on the production site this week. I used the <details> disclosure element for the hide/show functionality.

    New version of The Wonder of the Word page

    I met with a couple of teammates to discuss a new version of The Wonder of the Word. Our communication director, Emily, made a paper napkin “sketch” of several of her ideas in Photoshop. To her credit, it looked more like a mockup that I have gotten from other designers in the past. Having that visual was very helpful to understand the direction that she wanted to take with the changes to the page.

    I started building a new template on Friday and look forward to putting my own fingerprints on the design. Emily has given me the freedom to take the ideas from her sketch and to improve on them as I think best.

    The Fundamentals of CSS Layout

    Polypane has an excellent article on the fundamentals of CSS layout. The tutorial walks through the multiple layout algorithms of CSS starting with normal flow and building upon it with positioning, flexbox and grid. The article spends a lot of time discussing different aspects of normal flow and this sets the basis for understanding many of the differences in how the other algorithms work differently.

    The article is very upfront that there are things they left out–content sizing, container-queries, aspect-ratio, subgrid, and a deeper dive into flexbox and grid. They tease that that they might cover these topics in the future.

    This is a great introduction to CSS layout and I would recommend it to anyone doing front-end development. I even learned some new things.

    Jeff Bridgforth

    @jeffbridgforth.com

    TIL: I learned about box-decoration-break. I wish I had learned about this sooner as I know some problems I tried to solve in the past would have benefitted from it.

    https://polypane.app/blog/understanding-the-fundamentals-of-css-layout/

    Playing around

    I have seen several people talk about redesigning their sites. I have been considering doing some small changes to my site. I played around with some new color schemes in Dev Tools and considered a new font. I would also like to revisit the navigation and the top banner. I am still in the sandbox phase so stay tuned.

    Caught my eye

    img:hover { scale: 1.2; clip-path: inset( 10% 10% 10% 10% round 20px ); } nice, n' simple codepen.io/argyleink/pe…

    [image or embed]

    — Adam Argyle (@nerdy.dev) February 6, 2026 at 1:05 AM

    Articles I read

    What I watched

    • How to use Pen Tool in Affinity Designer (Kru Mark Tutorials, YouTube) – I want to better understand how to draw curves so that I can make SVGs and custom clip-paths.
    • The West Wing (Netflix)
    • Picard: Season 3 (Paramount Plus) – I heard a lot of good things about this season. I have enjoyed the first 3 episodes I watched this week.
    • All Creatures Great & Small (PBS App) – We have watched ahead with Passport and PBS App
    • Stray Kids Dominate Experience (Theater) – My wife and I enjoyed going to this with our daughter. Gave us a peek into the K Pop fandom. I enjoy their music and it was pretty impressive to see the production that was put into their concert. Our daughter attended the concert tour this past summer in Atlanta.

    Books I am reading

    Walking

    I was glad to get back out walking on Saturday. I also spent 20 minutes on the Gazelle on Tuesday.

    • Saturday – 3.12 miles in 57 minutes

    What I played

    • MLB The Show 20 (Twins) – I won Game 4, 7-3, and swept the Cubs in the World Series on Sunday. I enjoyed playing with this team and already miss playing with them.
    • NBA 2K25 (Nuggets) – I survived a late rally by the Pacers to keep my winning streak alive.

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