August 5, 2026

Week of July 26–August 1

Front End Study Hall #55

I attended Front End Study Hall on Thursday. I had not been in awhile. It was good to join. I didn’t contribute to the discussion. There were some interesting topics that I might explore through writing in the future. I would be interested to think more about longevity on the web and dealing with dead links. It is something I have been thinking about as I add to my memory keeper and link to the Internet Archive for articles and sites that are no longer around. And some of my own projects.

New Instapaper interface

Last week, I noticed that Instapaper updated its web interface. I am not a big fan. It made me think of Terry Godier’s Phantom Obligation article. He asked, “why do RSS readers look like email clients?” Instapaper feels more like that now. I liked the previous design. It was simplier and different than most everything else I use. Now the interface is similar to a lot of the tools I use.

Read later apps already feel like an obligation. There was a reason that I saved all the articles. But the reality is that I do not have the time to read everything that looks even the slight bit interesting. From time to time, I would go through and purge the articles that I had not read yet. I tried to purge back to about two pages, still knowing that was probably too much.

Not only does the new Instapaper take on the inbox look. It also adds number to all the folders. This just increases the “guilt” that Terry talks about in his article. But it is a phantom obligation.

I liked the simpler design of Instapaper, which had more breathing space, that didn’t look like so many other app interfaces I already use, and that didn’t tell me how many unread articles, likes, notes, or other things that I have accumulated. It has lost its uniqueness.

I would recommend Terry’s article. I love the use of animations in his storytelling.

Around the workshop

• I worked on a lot of small projects this week. I added features and popup ads for August. I updated the hero image on the homepage. And I helped my teammate with some tasks related to migrating our South African ministry’s site into Django.
• I finished up a project that animated video dialogs based on what I learned from Chris Coyier several weeks ago. The changes got pushed to production later in the week. But when I did QA on it, the dialogs were not animating. I determined that the minifier in our build process was ignoring my @starting-style rule. I worked with our backend engineer and he updated our build process to use a more modern tool.
• I built out a HTML email template for the Study Through the Bible project that we will launch in 2027. We have MJML baked into our build process so it is very easy to build new email templates. MJML became my favorite tool for creating HMTL emails that work across clients.
• I revisited the Mujer Verdadera ’27 microsite. The Spanish team were ready to add a sponsor section to the landing page. I added a new section and had to rethink some things to fit in a new piece to the new design. I ended up updating one of the sections with a photo background that I was using on a secondary page. It helped to keep the rhythm that I had created in the initial design.
• Our ministry had an AI overview meeting with an outside consultant that works with our ministry. He talked about AI and how they have taken a human-centered approach within their digital agency. We also had a smaller group meeting with our digital team to ask specific questions of our guest.

Articles I read

• Works & Wonders – Trains, Honey, Forest Sounds (Tim Challies)
• One Tool to Rule Them All (Brad Littlejohn)
• A Life of Prayer (Joel M. Ellis)
• When You Need To Make a Triangle, Think Conic Gradients (Chris Coyier, Master.dev Blog)
• Meta used AI to tag workers who took leave to be laid off, lawsuit claims (Dara Kerr, The Guardian) – I had started reading this a couple of weeks ago but never finished.
• Why I Don’t Really Carry a Phone With Me Anymore (Tim Challies)
• Last week in the studio (CW30-26) (Andy Clarke)
• AI and Ethics: 10 Concerns (Paul O’Brien) – This article did a good job of summarizing the concerns I have about AI.
• Bookshelves (James’ Coffee Blog)
• Collections (Jonathan Snook) – This gives me an idea for a post-to talk about my own collections.
• On the semantic web (Karl Koch)
• What’s !important #15: Boundary-aware CSS, Time-based CSS, Full-bleed CSS, and More (Daniel Swartz, CSS-Tricks)
• What’s new in web UI (Bramus and Una Kravets, Chrome for Developers) – I scanned through the listing. I was familiar with most of all of the things they discusssed.
• Tuesday Notes (Joe Crawford)
• Revisiting CSS Multi-Column Layout (Andy Clarke, CSS Tricks)
• Getting Creative With Images in Long-Form Content (Andy Clarke, CSS Tricks)
• Why I love working with the web (Remy Sharp)
• Container Queries and Units in Action (Miriam Suzanne, web.dev)
• Understanding AT Protocol (Rachel Andrew)
• The AI Aesthetic (Jim Nielsen)
• A Permanent Home (Jeffrey Zeldman)
• A New Way to Round the Corners of CSS Shapes (Temani Afif, CSS Tip)
• Young people are turning to AI more than pastors with their spiritual questions (Christian Today)
• Can Anyone Harden Their Heart Beyond God’s Reach? (Tim Challies)
• Rembrandt Began a Biblical Painting. Another Artist Finished It ‘Rather Crudely.’ Now, Restorations Have Revealed the Long-Lost Original (Ellen Wexler, Smithsonian Magazine)

What I watched

• We’ve been using container queries wrong (Kevin Powell)
• Quarterback: Season 3 (Netflix)
• American Pickers (Samsung TV Plus)
• Terminator 2 – I watched the end of this the other night because it was on TV.
• Somebody Feed Phil, Mexico City (Netflix)

Books I am reading

• The Discipline of Grace (Jerry Bridges) 
• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (Cory Doctorow)
• Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (Bobby Jamieson)
• Enjoying Jesus (Tim Chester)

Walking

• Monday – 1.80 miles in 35 minutes – I took a walk before a meeting to get out of the house for a bit and to spend some time praying about some things on my heart.

What I played

• MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – I went 4-1 in games I played this week. I came back in several of them to win.
• FC 26 (FC Barecelona) – I played 5 league games and a Champions League game. I won all 6 of them.