iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Heydon's stuff is always amazing and so much fun!

Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

For me, it's all I've ever done, so it's hard to stop. If bodysurfing were a viable option, I would likely choose that at this point

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There are likely more, but I can only think of one industry other than AI where the people making the thing tell you how dangerous it is, and then they keep making the thing: tobacco. Marketing disguised as warning labels.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Iteration 3 is up, in which I struggle with some elisp and update my Now page. www.the-haystack.com/public03/

the-haystack.com

Designing in public, iteration 3

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Well, I'm doing a thing that makes me nervous but is also fun. www.the-haystack.com/public/

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Overheard: "It has a 5.8 on IMDB, dude! I'm not gonna watch that."

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

It's getting close to "Tinker Tailor Soldier Car"

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

That's the name of the stage ;)

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Hahaha, nou ik ben te lang in Nederland om applaus te verdienen. Doe maar gewoon en dan doe je gek genoeg, zei een Nederlander.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Dat gaat je niet lukken met een app, man. Je moet hier gewoon komen wonen. 😉

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

On the way home from enjoying a fantastic #CSSDay. The talks were great and it was wonderful to meet friends old and new. The web is still the best platform to build creative stuff, and CSS is the best design tool to do it with.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Also it feels like it's code injection time, doesn't it?

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

So many words come to mind and all of them are profane.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

I'll see you in June at CSS Day. I (unfortunately) won't be at Smashing due to another speaking engagement. Enjoy your talk and have fun!

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

In your defense, I also like 1.5 as a default (though depending on typeface I often settle on 1.4 or 1.6). I think it's good you're promoting it. It's also simply much more typographically pleasant. Cheers!

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Kevin I think most parents don't care because they're always on their phones *runs*

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

@joshwcomeau.com I was reading through your reset explanation, and enjoying it way more than necessary. You write that WCAG states that line-height should be at least 1.5. I understand WCAG as only saying that IF set to that, there should be no loss of content or functionality. Am I misreading?

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

1. When you said ooh+ahh I thought they were abbreviations (object oriented WHAT?) 2. Is this in that category mbtype.com/fonts/equity/

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

Fair point. Flexbox was also heavily inspired by XUL, which followed the model for many UI libraries, so perhaps better fits a developer mental model. Grid (especially template syntax) is arguably a more designer (even print) inspired mental model, so maybe less intuitive for many people.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

I so wonder why people avoid grid

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

I tend to punch up. Not too hard, but just enough. And then I get overconfident. And then life provides me with some melodramatic pick-your-battles moment. And then I struggle. And then I'm like, "meh, okay." Rave. Repeat. But I climb a tiny bit each time.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Bookmark is its own word, so IMHO no need for camelCase.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

One irony of design: sometimes, done well, its impact is undervalued. And sometimes, done poorly, its impact is overvalued.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Oh, my. The opportunity you've been waiting for. Remember us small folk after your rise.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

I just visit it less. Not helpful, I know. But I find value in dosing the negativity that comes in.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

That's AI, Phil. No one's buying it

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

I promise I will create some human content in 2026 for the LLMs to assimilate

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

Oh, so that was a clown's nose

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

I keep seeing articles about "no more UI". But if you *use* it, there's always a UI. You type, click, tap, drag, draw, speak, breathe, look, feel, move. When we stop considering UI to be purely visual is when we start to understand the beautiful complexities (and possibilities) of interaction.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

I find it curious that the scariest warnings about AI are from the people who made it happen.

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

That's a great observation, Matthias! Would you like me to suggest some other suspicious accounts, or help you set up your own? I'm here to help! 💪

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Stephen Hay @haystephen.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

A weird design systems phenomenon: designers feeling limited in their creativity, and proposing system changes to get that creativity back. But often, this "creativity" is misplaced. When looking at system elements, zoom outside of your context. When trying to be creative, zoom further into it.

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