Stephanie Eckles is a Sr. SWE focused on design systems at Microsoft. She’s also the author of ModernCSS.dev which provides modern solutions to old CSS problems as in-depth tutorials and is the creator of StyleStage.dev, and author of SmolCSS.dev and 11ty.Rocks. Steph has well over a decade of webdev experience that she enjoys sharing as an author, egghead and workshop instructor, Twitch streamer, and conference speaker. She’s an advocate for accessibility, scalable CSS, and the Jamstack (especially Eleventy). Offline, she’s mom to two girls and a cowboy corgi and enjoys baking.
CSS is expanding into an immensely powerful language. While modern features are fun to demo, the “weirdness” is what frustrates developers and generates memes. We’ll dive in and make sense of the quirks so that you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time building.
To start, we’ll learn how CSS composites DOM element styles together. Terms such as “stacking context” will finally make sense, and at long last, you’ll choose the right type of positioning on the first try. Then, we’ll zoom in on some fundamental properties and curious behaviors you probably should be taking advantage of when creating complex layouts and components.
By gaining an understanding of the peculiarities of CSS, you’ll gain efficiency in developing and possibly even find that CSS can spark joy!