A day of laughter and learning

April 1st 2025

Last saturday was State of the Browser 13 ~ it remains one of my favourite conferences. It always feels more like a family reunion than a web conference. Dave and his team of volunteers always manage to make this day welcoming and special ツ

the 5 event organsiers in the pub, photo © Ginestra, posted on Discord
The SOTB team: Jim, Alana, Dave, Hannah, Ginestra (photo © Ginestra)

They bring together many familiar faces – invite speakers old and new who deliver the most insightful as well as entertaining talks. And this year was no different, I actually think it was one of the best ones yet ~ a day of laughter and learning ~ a huge thank you to them all!

The speakers

Andreas Kling
Andreas Kling
Niya Dobazova
Niya Dobazova
Josh Tumath
Josh Tumath
Manuel Matuzović
Manuel Matuzović
Scott Rile
Scott Riley
Sara Joy
Sara Joy
Oliver Schöndorfer
Oliver Schöndorfer
Dave Letorey, photo © Marc Thiele
Dave Letorey

(Photos courtesy of the State of the Browser website)

snaps from the day

photos © Marc Thiele
photos from Marc Thiele
Yinka with volunteers © Yinka
the volunteers
Emma, Prisca, Nelly © David
with Emma & Nelly
Peterson & Yinka © Yinka
Peterson & Yinka
Niya on stage
Niya, giving her first talk
Emma, Prisca, Nelly, David © David
with Emma, Nelly & David
collection of selfie shots: Andy with Mac, PPK, Chris, Marc, Prisca © Andy, posted on Mastodon
Andy & friends <3
group photo in pub garden, MA alumni © David
our MA family

Enjoy watching these brilliant talks ツ

The rest of the videos will be added when they go online. I’d particularly like to say thank you to Manuel for his insights and for prompting an update to my chapter on colour and giving me permission to use his slides ツ

Andreas Kling – Ladybird: Building a new browser from scratch

What does it take to build a web browser from scratch in 2025?
In this talk, I’ll introduce Ladybird, a truly independent browser being built for the modern web. Ladybird isn’t a fork of some existing browser—it’s a ground-up implementation of the web platform, balancing compatibility with sustainability for a small team on a modest budget. I’ll share the story of how Ladybird came to life, the challenges we’ve faced along the way, and what’s next for this ambitious project.

Notes quoted from the State of the Browser website, please view the speaker’s page for transcript and links.

Niya Dobazova – To light-dark() or Not To light-dark()

Light/dark mode has been around for a while now, but surprisingly, it isn’t implemented more often. Nowadays, it’s much easier to include in our products, so shouldn’t we use it more? What is so great about it? Is it that important?

This talk will introduce you to the light-dark() function, and the differences between light-dark() and its predecessors. You will also learn about the importance of light/dark mode to accessibility and its environmental impact. Come and see how easy it is to start implementing it.

Notes quoted from the State of the Browser website, please view the speaker’s page for transcript and links.

PS: this was Niya’s very first talk ~ she’s currently our student on the MA Web Design & Content Planning at the University of Greenwich. And we are so proud of her taking on this challenge in front of such a big crowd as well ~ very well done, Niya ツ ツ ツ

Josh Tumath – How do we keep going wrong? Roundabouts and APIs.

We’re always taught to put our end-users first. But when making a design system or platform or even a programming language like CSS, aren’t designers and developers our users, too? How do we design good APIs for our features and components that those users will intuitively understand?

In a roundabout way, I’ll talk about what I’ve learnt from the work of the CSSWG and from helping to shepherd the BBC’s WebCore Design System which has grown to hundreds of components contributed by many different teams.

Notes quoted from the State of the Browser website, please view the speaker’s page for transcript and links.

Manuel Matuzović – Color in CSS: How I learned to disrespect Tennis.

Everybody’s talking about container queries, nesting, scroll-driven animation, and view transitions. In all the excitement for these new modules, one topic is a bit overlooked: color in CSS. Manuel Matuzović summarizes all the new things we can do in CSS with color to create flexible, scalable, accessible, and user-friendly design systems. Oh, and he talks about squash…

Notes quoted from the State of the Browser website, please view the speaker’s page for transcript and links.

Scott Riley – Mindful Design for Developers

In an age of homogenous boilerplate, AI slop, technological monoliths and endemic apathy, making things for humans is hard. In this talk, Scott will look at how we can view what we create through a lens of mindfulness and self-determination, how the early principles of the web can shape our work, and how the browser might just be the last bastion of creative democracy we have left. Oh and he’ll probably talk about Pokémon too much for a man at his big age.

Notes quoted from the State of the Browser website, please view the speaker’s page for transcript and links.

Oliver Schöndorfer – Typographer vs. Accessibility

The closing talk was Oliver — and it could not have been a better talk to round off this brilliant day!

In a fun, engaging session, Oliver takes an often overwhelming and fuzzy topic for creatives and breaks it down. You will walk away inspired with practical guidelines on how you can set the text of your next design project beautifully accessible, to reach and convince more people.

Notes quoted from the State of the Browser website, please view the speaker’s page for transcript and links.

Links from Dave’s closing remarks

Do check out the list of links from Dave’s closing remarks, as shared on Discord. There’s some brilliant stuff to be found – have a look ツ

New Browsers

Campaigning

Entering our industry

W3 – Became 30

Standards are progressing at a rapid rate

Empathy, Diversity & Inclusion are everywhere

Accessibility

We can do better than this!