Top all-time · #3505
Polypane Blog
Company blog · polypane.app/blog · on HN as kilianwebdesign
Polypane Blog is the company blog at polypane.app, writing about web and design. Since 2020, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 52 times, most often “Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-29, and you can follow it by feed.
See every screen, device & user preference in sync while you build. Plus all the tools to ship responsive, fast, accessible and SEO-friendly sites.
Most-linked posts?
- Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-04-13
- /3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-06-09
- Forced colors explained2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-04-20
- Using the Intl Segmenter API2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-03
- Creating websites with prefers-reduced-data2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-30
- Not All Browser APIs Are "Web" APIs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-10
What Hacker News says?
That's pretty cool! Get ready to keep these up to date monthly or become obsolete quickly. One of the downsides of tools like this is that your URL needs to be available online so if there's an issue, your iteration loop is quite long. In Polypane [1] I've built social media previews that work with any local URL but also let you overwrite that URL for the social media that display those. I built (and frequently main…
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: Linkpreview, see how your sites looks in social media and chat apps”Submitted Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers as a story · 207 points
HN discussionStill a little skeptical of the layout. but i've already found two cool sites that i wouldn't have known of before - https://polypane.app/ - https://www.hackerpaper.com/
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on ““Sequel” to the million dollar homepage using WebGL”Submitted Polypane – Browser for Developers as a story · 197 points
HN discussionVery cool. I recently implemented my own accessibility tree visualization [1] Yours is very interesting, getting away from the tree itself to a visualization more focused on grouping discrete units. My thinking was to show the entire structure and through that help people focus on a logical flow through the page. Flipping that around and thinking of the tree as a set of discrete blocks, where the cohesion inside eac…
Comment linking /blog/polypane-20-1-the-accessibility-tree/
on “Show HN: Visualization of website accessibility tree”Submitted Polypane: A browser for responsive and accessible development as a story · 97 points
HN discussionhttps://polypane.app/docs/emulation/
Comment linking /docs/emulation/
on “Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers”Submitted Polypane 18: Introducing Polypane Portal as a story · 61 points
HN discussionThis feels like a lay-up, but here you go :) https://polypane.app/docs/emulation/#emulation-or-simulation Polypane doesn't simulate the specific rendering engine of other browsers, it just pretends to be another browser (which is what emulation is) so you can test that the code you wrote for those browsers (for example, a polyfill) responds well. You'll still need to test in those real browsers to check against thei…
Comment linking /docs/portal/
on “Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers”Submitted Forced colors explained as a story · 53 points
HN discussionUsing Polypane doesn't mean you can skip out on testing other rendering engines. That's such an important point that I even mention it on the homepage! So yeah, you should be testing (mobile) Safari and Firefox too. Chrome on android has some different APIs compared to Chrome on desktop, but rendering is identical. When developing your site, you can use Polypane Portal[1] to tunnel your local site to real devices wh…
Comment linking /portal/
on “Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers”Submitted Creating websites with prefers-reduced-data as a story · 20 points
HN discussionNot to get off-topic, but in the site footer the author mentions he's the developer of: https://polypane.app/ Has anyone used it? Thoughts?
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on “When going somewhere does a thing: on links and buttons”Submitted Forced Colors Explained as a story · 16 points
HN discussionInteresting. As someone using webviews extensively[1], the main issue is that the "iframe" model of security many operate on makes sense on the web, but not in native apps. When it comes to embedding third party content with iframes, you essentially want two-way security and privacy. The embedder can't change things in the embedded and vice versa. With webviews however, that model doesn't make much sense: the embedd…
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on “W3C Proposes the Creation of a WebView Community Group”Submitted Beautiful CSS 3D Transforms as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYep. Been working on Polypane full time since 2019 as a solo developer. Electron based, available on mac, windows and linux, in x64 and arm versions. Its subscription based and I release a new update roughly every month. It was a side project before that but I started charging for it when I went full time. https://polypane.app
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on “Ask HN: Anyone making a living building desktop applications?”Submitted Show HN: A fast color contrast checker that suggests better colors as a story · 6 points
HN discussionEveryone's comparing this to a regular browser. But since it's electron based, I'm just wondering whether this could be a path to creating a really good browser for development. As of now, most of the debugging that's done on browsers are either based on the tools provided by the browser itself, or via extensions and add-ons. I just hope, this kind of paves the way for developers themselves to add features and capab…
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on “Min: A fast, minimal browser that protects your privacy”Submitted Always open localhost in your development browser as a story · 5 points
HN discussionNot open source, it's based on code I built for https://polypane.app But I am planning on making an extension for every (modern) browser that can have one.
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on “Show HN: Fix contrast, a free browser extension that fixes text contrast issues”Submitted Offset parent and stacking context: positioning elements in all three dimensions as a story · 4 points
HN discussionGames also often render text. > And how easy is to use a modern 3D engine versus HTML/CSS? CSS transforms include a little 3D "engine"! https://polypane.app/css-3d-transform-examples/
Comment linking /css-3d-transform-examples/
on “SwiftUI Is Convenient, but Slow”Submitted CSS layouts without using media queries as a story · 4 points
HN discussionNice overview, though I would advice against using device-specific breakpoints even beyond giving them device-specific names. Phones continue to get larger every year so designs made for 320px specifically started to become unoptimized when phones became 375px wide, and those in turn started becoming unoptimized when 414px became the norm, then iPhone 14 came out at 428px wide and that'll just continue. The best str…
Comment linking /blog/the-complete-guide-to-css-media-queries/
on “Everything You Want to Know About Media Queries and Responsive Design”Submitted Experimenting with Random() in CSS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWe do, there are people making web browsers that do unique things or work in unique ways. Note that innovation in my view is trying something new, I don't believe it needs to succeed necessarily. https://bonsaibrowser.com https://polypane.app To some extent Vivaldi is one as well. https://vivaldi.com The brave browser integrates a cryptocurrency as a first-class citizen. There are also other types of innovation on t…
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on “Ask HN: Why do we never see inovation in web browsers?”Submitted The Intl API: The best browser API you're not using as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe point isn't showing what they look like, it's that the result is randomized. Screenshots aren't, so that kind of defeats the purpose. The article starts with instructions on how to actually see and interact with the demos (the easiest is to use https://polypane.app ), as well as a video showing all the demos from the article running in Polypane.
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on “Experimenting with Random() in CSS”Submitted Not All Browser APIs Are "Web" APIs as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
