David Bushell’s Blog
David Bushell — Freelance web designer and front-end developer
Front-end web development, CSS, and modern browser APIs through real client work. Outspoken on AI ethics and human-first web craftsmanship.
dbushell.com/blogDavid Bushell has been building websites since before responsive design had a name, and his blog is the ongoing record of a craftsman who still finds the work genuinely interesting. He writes about CSS, web fonts, accessibility, and modern browser APIs — not in the abstract, but through the lens of actual client projects and tools he's built for himself. The site is on its eleventh redesign, each one documented, making the blog itself a living artifact of how web design practice evolves. He's also one of the sharper voices pushing back on AI in the industry, with a formal policy on his site and posts that challenge the hype with specificity rather than knee-jerk dismissal.
Written by David Bushell since 2012.
Very Active
Publishes multiple times per week
13
Independent Blog
English
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Croissant and CORS proxy update
Croissant is my home-cooked RSS reader. I wish it was only a progressive web app (PWA) but due to missing CORS headers, many feeds remain inaccessible.My RSS feeds have the Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header and so should yours! Blogs Are Back has a guide to enable CORS for your blog.Bypassing CORS requires some kind of proxy. Other readers use a custom browser extension. That is clever, but extensions can be dangerous. I decided on two solutions. I wrapped my PWA in a Tauri app. This is also...
Everything you never wanted to know about visually-hidden
Nobody asked for it but nevertheless, I present to you my definitive “it depends” tome on visually-hidden web content. I’ll probably make an amendment before you’ve finished reading. If you enjoy more questions than answers, buckle up! I’ll start with the original premise, even though I stray off-topic on tangents and never recover.The questionI was nerd-sniped on Bluesky. Ana Tudor asked:Is there still any point to most styles in visually hidden classes in ’26?Any point to shrinking dimensions...
Web font choice and loading strategy
When I rebuilt my website I took great care to optimise fonts for both performance and aesthetics. Fonts account for around 50% of my website (bytes downloaded on an empty cache). I designed and set a performance budget around my font usage.I use three distinct font families and three different methods to load them.Default practiceWeb fonts are usually defined by the CSS @font-face rule. The font-display property allows us some control over how fonts are loaded. The swap value has become somewha...
Declarative Dialog Menu with Invoker Commands
The off-canvas menu — aka the Hamburger, if you must — has been hot ever since Jobs’ invented mobile web and Ethan Marcott put a name to responsive design.My journeyMaking an off-canvas menu free from heinous JavaScript has always been possible, but not ideal. I wrote up one technique for Smashing Magazine in 2013. Later I explored <dialog> in an absurdly titled post where I used the new Popover API.Current thoughtsI strongly push clients towards a simple, always visible, flex-box-wrapping...
Big Design, Bold Ideas
I’ve only gone and done it again! I redesigned my website. This is the eleventh major version. I dare say it’s my best attempt yet. There are similarities to what came before and plenty of fresh CSS paint to modernise the style.You can visit my time machine to see the ten previous designs that have graced my homepage. Almost two decades of work. What a journey!Why change?I’ve been comfortable and coasting for years. This year feels different. I’ve made a career building for the open web. That is...
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If you want front-end writing from someone who still builds things by hand and thinks carefully about why — not just how — this is a blog worth your time.