The Curious Engineer

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Christian Heilmann

christianheilmann.com

For a better web with more professional jobs - can talk, will travel

Frontend / CSS / browsersJavaScript / TypeScriptTech news / industryEssays / personal

’05’10’15’20’25
Posts
1,827 from 27 Jan 2005 to 28 Oct 2026
Posting
weekly (28 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://christianheilmann.com/feed/

Latest

October 2026

  1. Without-love – a creative coding challenge
  2. Pardon my dust – re-homing 21 years of blog content of christianheilmann.com
  3. Returning to Bengaluru in November, see you there.
  4. TLDRs newsletters are TLDR so I wrote a converter that gets all the important links
  5. AI needs fewer Iron Men and more Smart Hulks

September 2026

  1. Moderators wanted for WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America on the 23rd!

August 2026

  1. Coming to San Jose for the WeAreDevelopers World Congress 23rd of September – get tickets half price now!
  2. Quick Tip: Translating long documents with Microsoft Edge Immersive Reader
  3. Anti-Social Media
  4. A blueprint for democracy to defend itself against fascism from 1937 – more important now than ever…

June 2026

  1. TIL: Browsers offer a “copy email” in the context menu on mailto: links
  2. Remember: The “f” in xenophobia stands for “fun”

May 2026

  1. Accessibility question: is nesting interactive elements bad?

April 2026

  1. How do developers define their worth when code is written by AI?

March 2026

  1. Take the “chart explosion” coding challenge and earn your spot at CODE100 in July in Berlin
  2. You are falling behind because you haven’t fed the insincerity machine in the last 5 minutes
  3. Talking on the “We love open source” podcasts about the threats of AI to open source and free software.
  4. LinkedIn should punish the “comment X to get access” bait spam

February 2026

  1. Quick tip: hosting HTML/CSS/JS demos from source code on GitHub Pages
  2. I fell for a phishing attack and lost access to my X account. Here are five mistakes I did that you need to avoid!
  3. I fell for a phishing mail and lost access to Twitter/X
  4. WebMCP – a much needed way to make agents play with rather than against the web
  5. When being Hitler’s guard was a literal drag…

January 2026

  1. Monky Business: Creating a Cistercian Numerals Generator
  2. You are already behind by not having read this post.

December 2025

  1. Building my faux lego advent calendar feels like current software development
  2. Ad Blockers helped kill the open web

November 2025

  1. Shuffling a CSS grid using custom properties

October 2025

  1. AI is Dunning-Kruger as a service
  2. Abandonware of the web: do you know that there is an HTML tables API?
  3. Call for Papers is open for the WeAreDevelopers Berlin and San Jose events 2026 – here’s what we’re looking for…

September 2025

  1. Time to separate the art from the artist
  2. As I remember London
  3. Web Development according to Grok is all about libraries…
  4. A CSS only time progress bar to use in markdown / GitHub Pages
  5. Returning to the US: see you at All Things Open 2025

August 2025

  1. A lesson from history for Software Engineers, Product Owners and CEOs
  2. Using GitHub Pages as a URL shortener / redirection service
  3. Things not to do as a presenter if you want a great talk recording

July 2025

  1. Presentations should always work offline – especially in online conferences
  2. Day Zero Activities of WeAreDevelopers World Congress tomorrow

June 2025

  1. Two tools to create QR codes for free and without any ad breaks
  2. TIL: Smart glasses aren’t just for pricks, they are an accessibility aid

May 2025

  1. Excellent tools: EditGPT – an AI powered review and edit suite for writers
  2. About showing the “open to work” badge
  3. Vibe coding, creativity, craft and professionalism… are we making ourselves redundant? Live on stage!

April 2025

  1. 0x32
  2. Keeping it on the – another HTML gem you never use
  3. The rise of Model Fatigue – or is it just me?

March 2025

  1. Getting ready for WeAreDevelopers WebDev & AI Day – 27/03/2025
  2. Nobody should be a “content creator”

February 2025

  1. Building a “shoutout” component in plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript
  2. How to trim a video in MacOS using Finder!

January 2025

  1. Derpify.js is now on npm and GitHub – a tool for these trying times…
  2. 80 years ago
  3. Quick tip: Rotating images and videos 90 degrees in MacOS Finder using CMD+R or CMD+L
  4. WAD Live 22/01/2025 – Accessibility, JavaScript Bundlers and Git Basics
  5. “modern” is rubbish
  6. Learning HTML is the best investment I ever did
  7. trimMiddle() – the missing String trim method

December 2024

  1. A Twitter eulogy and the complicated relationship with my X…
  2. Stupid interview questions will get you limited developers – is that what the market wants?
  3. A behind the scenes of how I create an edition of the WeAreDevelopers Dev Digest – 3 hours in 1 minute speedrun

November 2024

  1. What’s your excuse for not using the web share API?
  2. Social media platforms should make it easier to add alternative text using an [Alt: description] syntax
  3. Exif by magic – the forgotten extra information in JPEG and TIFF files

October 2024

  1. I just pulled a 2006 and uploaded my holiday photos to Flickr with a Creative Commons Licence

September 2024

  1. Let’s bring back browsing
  2. A billion new developers thanks to AI?
  3. Quick tip: using flatMap() to extract data from a huge set without any loop
  4. No more “Expert, Intermediate, Beginner”: Classifying talks in Call for Papers/Conference agendas
  5. Eine Milliarde neuer Entwickler dank KI? Linkliste

August 2024

  1. Talk notes: Let’s make a simpler, more accessible web

July 2024

  1. Interaction bait is killing social media
  2. Hot take: social platforms should disallow special character growth hacking
  3. Dev Digest 122 – Cracks in the polyfill

June 2024

  1. Quick productivity tip: Renaming lots of files in MacOS Finder
  2. Witnessing the death of the web as a news medium
  3. Dev Digest 118 – Not a total recall

May 2024

  1. About yesterday’s European Song Contest 2024
  2. Dev Digest Issue 115 – password beefstew is not Strog/|n0FF

April 2024

  1. Calling all Manchester and surrounding – come to / apply for CODE100 on 22nd of May!

March 2024

  1. New CODE100 challenge: #BuntStattBraun
  2. Dev Digest 108 – Git off my cloud!
  3. Giving your app a temporary public URL with VS Code port forwarding
  4. Dev Digest 107 – and the OSScar goes to…
  5. Kirby apps and regressive enhancements

February 2024

  1. Apple vs. PWAs – Go act now and help avoid this disaster…
  2. How does a changed market affect Developer Relations?
  3. Lines of code – how to not measure code quality and developer efficiency

January 2024

  1. Using details/summary and colour coding on GitHub pages
  2. 10 print chr$(205.5 + rnd(1));:goto 10 in JavaScript

December 2023

  1. Rob Bateman and his journey to resurrect Flash content on today’s web
  2. A santa themed CODE100 puzzle – Hitting the chimney

November 2023

  1. Cracking a “Developer Tools Killer” script…
  2. Pangram validator in one line
  3. Neuer Kurs auf LinkedIn Learning: Grundlagen der Programmierung – Barrierefreie Software

October 2023

  1. Today was a great day for accessibility!
  2. My company is hiring: who wants to work with me in Developer Relations?
  3. Falling Behind In Style – explosive and continuous growth is bad for tech
  4. Lossless Cut is my new favourite tool to cut parts from a video without any hassle

September 2023

  1. I was a guest on the inaugural DevRelShow and chatted about what DevRel is about, my new job at WeAreDevelopers and showed some cool tools
  2. The 10 tools I install on every new Mac I get
  3. Podcast: AI solutions need good UX with Chris Heilmann

August 2023

  1. Adding sound wave overlays to videos and pictures using FFMPEG
  2. New feature in VideoTap: Clips – create short excerpt videos from bigger ones by highlighting text in the transcript
  3. Hemingway is now Hemingw-AI! My favourite writing tool just got an AI upgrade and it’s great.
  4. Quick tip: Getting all links from any web site into a spreadsheet using browser developer tools
  5. Adding GitHub repository info, pages links and latest commits to any page using github-include
  6. Adding a “share to mastodon” link to any web site – and here
  7. What’s my job in my new role as Director of DevRel at WeAreDevelopers?
  8. The Verge’s new way to display news item links is a terrible idea
  9. Hey du da, im Radio… Interview mit Christian Heilmann im Deutschlandfunk über KI und Softwareentwicklung
  10. Assistive technology shouldn’t be a mystery box
  11. GitHub Copilot is a great example for in-context AI chat

July 2023

  1. Five things about public speaking
  2. Browser-Entwicklerwerkzeuge für Nicht-Entwickler:innen – neuer Kurs auf LinkedIn Learning
  3. What if the Nazis had the internet and social media?
  4. Please, WordPress, keep the alternative text I entered
  5. Getting AI to bullshit for you
  6. What’s next for Chris? I’ve got a new job!

June 2023

  1. Reading tweets without being logged in
  2. Is it too late to fix the problem of AI clutter on the web?
  3. Interview with Goto Unscripted about the present and future of developer tools
  4. Turning the screw with AI – ways for developer advocates to debunk the “AI can replace developers” myth
  5. New array methods in JavaScript bring immutability
  6. The many ways to select the n-th character from a string.

May 2023

  1. Nobody thrives on rejection – here are reasons I didn’t take job offers
  2. PrivateGPT – Running “ChatGPT” offline on local documents
  3. I just did a test to apply as a front end developer – and things aren’t going well
  4. Developer Tools That Shouldn’t Be Secrets • Christian Heilmann • GOTO 2022
  5. An open proposal to OpenAI, Bard, Amazon, et al…: GPTeachers
  6. The ongoing defence of frontend as a full-time job
  7. Here is where developers perish…
  8. Crown dwarf witness – Recording a new course for LinkedIn Learning in Graz

April 2023

  1. Microsoft Edge now allows you to simulate dark, light, high contrast mode, blurred vision and colour deficiencies right from the Device Emulation toolbar
  2. Interview questions: Outline your thoughts on open source software development, why is it something a company should do?
  3. Upgrading our CSS habits: aspect-ratio
  4. Interview questions: What practices in software teams lead to better quality products?
  5. Resetting Twitter’s interests list using browser developer tools
  6. GitHub Copilot for Docs – putting the “fun” into RTFM
  7. Review: Video Tap – automatically convert YouTube videos to blog posts
  8. The Future of Senior Developers in an AI-Driven World

March 2023

  1. Modern Web Development: Centering DIVs in new exciting wrong ways with AI!
  2. GitHub Copilot for the Command Line is amazing!
  3. This is the time to be unpredictable and human
  4. WYSIWYGPT
  5. Looking for a new opportunity
  6. Next speaking gig: Modern Web Development, Thu., 30 Mar, 5pm in Berlin’s Microsoft Reactor and streaming.
  7. ChatGPT is a game changer, but it could become a problem…

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