Top all-time · #3165
Kilian Valkhof
Personal blog · kilianvalkhof.com · on HN as kiliandesignweb
Kilian Valkhof's personal blog at kilianvalkhof.com covers design and web. Since 2008, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 73 times, most often “What design tools get wrong”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Front-end & user experience developer
Most-linked posts?
- What design tools get wrong3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-08
- The problem with new URL(), and how URL.parse() fixes that3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-04-24
- Detecting media query support in CSS and JavaScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-07-13
- /2021/css-html/you-want-overflow-auto-not-overflow-scroll/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-11
- On better browsers: arbitrary media queries and browser UIs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-14
- Suggesting text-size-adjust for CSS reset (2022)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-15
- How I built my own browser2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-10
- Prescriptive software is better than descriptive software2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-05
- When going somewhere does a thing: on links and buttons2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-10-04
What Hacker News says?
Judging by the sidebar navigation on Statux I'm guessing you're using a Mac? https://kilianvalkhof.com/2021/css-html/you-want-overflow-au...
Comment linking /2021/css-html/you-want-overflow-auto-not-overflow-scroll/
on “Ask HN: Show me your half baked project”Submitted What design tools get wrong as a story · 199 points
HN discussionMy personal pet-peeve is devs using the number input for things that contain digits but aren't "numbers" (credit card numbers, 2fa codes, postal codes etc)[0]. Number input provides a lot of footguns and you're usually better off using something else. [0] https://kilianvalkhof.com/2022/css-html/are-you-sure-thats-a...
Comment linking /2022/css-html/are-you-sure-thats-a-number-input/
on “The number input is the worst input”Submitted Things I learned creating my own Messenger chatbot as a story · 195 points
HN discussionThis site is a prime example of a Mac developers using overflow: auto when they should use overflow: scroll[1]. [1] https://kilianvalkhof.com/2021/css-html/you-want-overflow-au...
Comment linking /2021/css-html/you-want-overflow-auto-not-overflow-scroll/
on “Goat Ops”Submitted When going somewhere does a thing: on links and buttons as a story · 190 points
HN discussionI have made a simple game using Akihabara: http://kilianvalkhof.com/ktype2/ (mind you, "a" is "z" on your keyboard, and you use it to shoot, too. one of the frameworks idiosyncrasies) It's...undocumented. That's really the most I can make of it, now. I have promised to work on helping document it, which I will try to do over the holidays, but as of now, you pretty much have to read the entire code, and you'd still h…
Comment linking /ktype2/
on “Impact HTML5 Game Engine released”Submitted Prescriptive software is better than descriptive software as a story · 170 points
HN discussionSome links I've saved. That said, there's no accounting for taste: https://tylr.fun/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30440123 https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-suffers-from-a-digital-petr... https://vpostrel.com/ https://h3rald.com/ https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2022/boring/ http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html https://moxie.org/stories.html https://trevorklee.com/my-terrible-plan-for-reducing-opioid-...…
Comment linking /2021/web/prescriptive-software-is-better-than-descriptive-software/
on “Ask HN: What are the best-designed personal blogs you’ve come across?”Submitted The problem with new URL(), and how URL.parse() fixes that as a story · 130 points
HN discussionRelated very recent suggestions that explore controllable user settings managed through the browser: - https://kilianvalkhof.com/2022/css-html/on-better-browsers-a... - https://kittygiraudel.com/2022/09/14/dominant-hand-respectin...
Comment linking /2022/css-html/on-better-browsers-arbitrary-media-queries-and-browser-uis/
on “Website Fidelity”Submitted I just released F.lux for Ubuntu (fades your screens at night) as a story · 91 points
HN discussionNo ads! Haha. Not in it for the money ;) A list of friends would be cool, but it's hard to get them via the Facebook api (Just getting a full size facebook image is hard: http://kilianvalkhof.com/2011/javascript/full-size-profile-p... )
Comment linking /2011/javascript/full-size-profile-picture-via-the-facebook-javascript-sdk/
on “Show HN: My useless but fun laser eyes web app”Submitted Using easing for more than just CSS transitions as a story · 82 points
HN discussionBackground here: http://kilianvalkhof.com/2011/web/laserey-es-draw-lasers-fro... Basically, it's a fun little project for me to try out a whole bunch of new stuff, including the file API, the drag-and-drop-api, openCV and Canvas. It works best in Firefox, and otherwise in chrome (though performance on mac is abysmally slow) Let me know what you think, and please set a laserified photo as your Facebook profile pictur…
Comment linking /2011/web/laserey-es-draw-lasers-from-your-eyes/
on “Show HN: My useless but fun laser eyes web app”Submitted CSS3 loading spinners without images as a story · 58 points
HN discussionLystener.com takes your last.fm username and display the lyrics for the song you're currently listening to. By simply selecting the lyrics you like you can post them to Twitter or Facebook. Clean interface, easy to use website. In the future I want to expand it to saving your favorite quotes, making top ten lists of songs and artists, but for now, this is an app I made in about a weekend (with a week of tweaking) an…
Comment linking /2010/web/a-web-app-in-a-weekend-lystener-com/
on “Ask HN: check out my new web app lystener.com”Submitted Annoying.js: How to be an asshole as a story · 53 points
HN discussionI wrote this much in the same vein as http://lystener.com , as just an easier, better and prettier way than other guitar tab sites. Let me know what you think! :) Edit: For people wanting more info, I wrote a blog post too: http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/guitar-tabs-as-they-... It has invites to the hosting platform I use: http://djangy.com , a very cool "Heroku for Django"
Comment linking /2010/css-xhtml/guitar-tabs-as-they-should-be-guitaryst-com/
on “My webapp: Guitar tabs as they should be”Submitted Dear HN: I wrote an SVG charting library. What do you think? as a story · 52 points
HN discussion> What's less obvious (and the article doesn't mention) is that you can select elements with more than one class using .classA.classB ...Except in IE6. It's great otherwise. Relative and absolute positioning (and floats and display values) are the hardest parts of CSS. I wrote a three part explanation about it two years ago that also explains CSS's concept of "flow": http://kilianvalkhof.com/2008/css-xhtml/understan…
Comment linking /2008/css-xhtml/understanding-css-positioning-part-1/
on “Advice on CSS you'll wish your mother told you”Submitted How I built my own browser as a story · 50 points
HN discussionVendor prefixes are important because different browsers implement work-in-progress specs differently . Theoretically (or practically, such as with border-radius), given the same value, browser X will implement it vastly different from browser Y. Edit: rebuttal posted http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/css-vendor-prefixes-...
Comment linking /2010/css-xhtml/css-vendor-prefixes-considered-important/
on “CSS vendor prefixes - Can we all get along”Submitted The case of the disappearing favicon as a story · 39 points
HN discussionThe linked Kilian article [0] explains that it’s for Firefox on Android devices. [0]: https://kilianvalkhof.com/2022/css-html/your-css-reset-needs...
Comment linking /2022/css-html/your-css-reset-needs-text-size-adjust-probably/
on “Being picky about a CSS reset for fun”Submitted A fast, simple list filter with jQuery as a story · 37 points
HN discussionAuthor here. I wrote FromScratch to accommodate how I want note taking to work: it's always an alt-tab away, it takes care of all the tedious bits (saving, window positioning) and allows me to very quickly take notes or update my TODO and get on with things. It's open source and cross-platform, built using Electron and React. The main focus is to keep the note taking experience as simple as possible. Future expansio…
Comment linking /2016/web/fromscratch-a-simple-but-smart-note-taking-app/
on “Show HN: I made a simple but smart note taking application”Submitted Dear HN: I wrote a cross-platform GUI image compressor as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted I built my own web browser as a story · 19 points
HN discussionSubmitted The box model is not layout as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
