Technology

Implementing Hybrid Semantic + Lexical Search

Semantic search alone wasn't good enough. Here's how I improved search on kentcdodds.com through three rounds of iteration with Cursor and GPT-5.4, each time learning something that the previous design missed.

Kent C. Dodds · EN

Introducing Kody: Your Personal Software Factory

Kody turns the good answer into a package you keep.

Kent C. Dodds · EN

You Own the Outcome: Product Engineering in the Age of AI

Agents are great at producing code. The valuable work left for you is deciding what should exist, how it should behave, and what you're willing to trade for it.

Kent C. Dodds · EN

animation-trigger

The CSS animation-trigger property allows you to delay the start of a CSS animation until a specific trigger occurs. animation-trigger originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

Creating Web Widgets Using the Document Picture-in-Picture API

The general idea is that we create a Document Picture-in-Picture window (DPIP window), and then we put HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into it. Creating Web Widgets Using the Document Picture-in-Picture API originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

What’s !important #18: , Syntax ::highlight()ing, named-feature(), and More

Well, that’s a wrap. No, not a flex-wrap, but rather today marks a new day, week, month, season, aaaand new edition of What’s important (#18), bringing you the best content that developers have produced over the last couple of weeks or so. What’s !important #18: <geolocation>, Syntax ::highlight()ing, named-feature(), and More originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

Let’s Use the Emergent CSS random() Function in all the Browsers

The journey to create a polyfill for the upcoming CSS random() function that works in all browsers. Let’s Use the Emergent CSS random() Function in all the Browsers originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

CSS-Tricks has a new owner!

Yes, I've got the keys to the castle, so to speak. And, even after 12 years of working on the site, I'll admit I'm a little overwhelmed and nervous about that. CSS-Tricks has a new owner! originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

What’s !important #19: CSS Refraction Effects, Scroll State Queries, @custom-media, and More

We’re back! Don't worry, this isn’t a trick (despite what our name suggests!). However, due to the hiatus, we're also a little behind. That’s why this issue of What’s !important is absolutely stacked. All killer, no filler. Here's what you missed. What’s !important #19: CSS Refraction Effects, Scroll State Queries, @custom-media, and More originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

The Frankenstein Table

A super scary way to go about tables using other layout techniques, like CSS Grid. The Frankenstein Table originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

What’s !important #20: GTA 6 Scroll Effects, Scrollspies, random()

This is the final issue of What’s !important on CSS-Tricks.com. The good news is that it’s coming back in an expanded form as the CSS-Tricks newsletter. I had ya there for a second, didn’t I? Sorry, I couldn’t decide whether to trick or treat, so I went for both. Happy Halloween What’s !important #20: GTA 6 Scroll Effects, Scrollspies, random() originally handwritten and published with love on CSS-Tricks . You should really get the newsletter as well.

CSS-Tricks · EN

Mamba Explained

Is Attention all you need? Mamba, a novel AI model based on State Space Models (SSMs), emerges as a formidable alternative to the widely used Transformer models, addressing their inefficiency in processing long sequences.

The Gradient · EN

A Brief Overview of Gender Bias in AI

A brief overview and discussion on gender bias in AI

The Gradient · EN

Financial Market Applications of LLMs

The AI revolution drove frenzied investment in both private and public companies and captured the public’s imagination in 2023. Transformational consumer products like ChatGPT are powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) that excel at modeling sequences of tokens that represent words or parts of words [2]. Amazingly, structural

The Gradient · EN

We Need Positive Visions for AI Grounded in Wellbeing

Introduction Imagine yourself a decade ago, jumping directly into the present shock of conversing naturally with an encyclopedic AI that crafts images, writes code, and debates philosophy. Won’t this technology almost certainly transform society — and hasn’t AI’s impact on us so far been

The Gradient · EN

What's Missing From LLM Chatbots: A Sense of Purpose

LLM-based chatbots’ capabilities have been advancing every month. These improvements are mostly measured by benchmarks like MMLU, HumanEval, and MATH (e.g. sonnet 3.5, gpt-4o). However, as these measures get more and more saturated, is user experience increasing in proportion to these scores? If we envision a future

The Gradient · EN

Shape, Symmetries, and Structure: The Changing Role of Mathematics in Machine Learning Research

What is the Role of Mathematics in Modern Machine Learning? The past decade has witnessed a shift in how progress is made in machine learning. Research involving carefully designed and mathematically principled architectures result in only marginal improvements while compute-intensive and engineering-first efforts that scale to ever larger training sets

The Gradient · EN

AGI Is Not Multimodal

"In projecting language back as the model for thought, we lose sight of the tacit embodied understanding that undergirds our intelligence." –Terry Winograd The recent successes of generative AI models have convinced some that AGI is imminent. While these models appear to capture the essence of human

The Gradient · EN

After Orthogonality: Virtue-Ethical Agency and AI Alignment

Preface This essay argues that rational people don’t have goals, and that rational AIs shouldn’t have goals. Human actions are rational not because we direct them at some final ‘goals,’ but because we align actions to practices [1] : networks of actions, action-dispositions, action-evaluation criteria,

The Gradient · EN

Building A UX ROI Case That Survives The Boardroom

Strong UX ideas do not secure investment on their own. Through a worked example, Alex Williams breaks down how to define business value, calculate costs, test causality, and build a credible case for the return on a design initiative. - UX - Design - Business

Smashing Magazine · EN

Stop Treating CSS Container Queries Like Traditional Media Queries

Despite broad browser support, container queries remain surprisingly underused and frequently misunderstood. Let’s look at how they differ from media queries, when to reach for each, and how container queries help reusable components respond naturally to the contexts in which they appear. - CSS - Tools - Techniques

Smashing Magazine · EN

Under Autumn’s Spell (October 2026 Wallpapers Edition)

October is just around the corner, which means it’s time for some new desktop wallpapers! Designed by the community for the community, they’re here to brighten your screens, and maybe spark some creativity along the way.

Smashing Magazine · EN

A Practical Guide To Naming Things

A practical guide to naming UI components, with useful resources, naming conventions, and structures. You’ll find more [useful guides](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/guides/) and [online workshops](https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops) here on Smashing Magazine, so make sure to browse and explore.

Smashing Magazine · EN

Is Your Organization Messing Up AI Adoption?

What can digital transformation teach us about AI adoption? Paul Boag revisits his book Digital Adaptation to show how lessons from the past can help organizations navigate the challenges of AI today.

Smashing Magazine · EN