Dispatches from the workbench — essays on design systems, performance, and the honest craft of building interfaces that feel physical.https://abhisawant.me/https://abhisawant.me/blog/a-view-transition-starts-with-a-screenshot/https://abhisawant.me/blog/a-view-transition-starts-with-a-screenshot/The browser photographs your page before and after a change and animates the photographs, which explains duplicate names, smeared text, and a frozen page.Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSAnimationBrowser_APIshttps://abhisawant.me/blog/container-queries-need-a-container/https://abhisawant.me/blog/container-queries-need-a-container/Why an element can never respond to its own width, what inline-size containment quietly costs you, and how the browser decides which container answers a query.Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSLayoutDesign_Systemshttps://abhisawant.me/blog/css-grid-sizes-tracks-not-items/https://abhisawant.me/blog/css-grid-sizes-tracks-not-items/Why a three-column grid overflows its container, what the fr unit is actually dividing up, and the four rules that follow from the answer.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSLayouthttps://abhisawant.me/blog/grid-places-first-sizes-second/https://abhisawant.me/blog/grid-places-first-sizes-second/The placement algorithm runs on line numbers and spans alone, before any track has a width, which is why phantom columns appear and negative line numbers quietly stop working.Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSLayouthttps://abhisawant.me/blog/nothing-tells-you-when-sticky-sticks/https://abhisawant.me/blog/nothing-tells-you-when-sticky-sticks/A sticky element pins without changing a single style, so here is how to detect the pinned state with a sentinel, and how CSS now does it natively.Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSLayoutBrowser_APIshttps://abhisawant.me/blog/rem-is-a-setting-not-a-size/https://abhisawant.me/blog/rem-is-a-setting-not-a-size/Browser zoom scales pixels too, so the real difference between rem and px is whether your layout listens to the reader's font-size setting. Here is how to decide per property.Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSAccessibilityDesign_Systemshttps://abhisawant.me/blog/subgrid-borrows-its-parents-tracks/https://abhisawant.me/blog/subgrid-borrows-its-parents-tracks/Nested grids can't align with each other because tracks stop at the container that declared them. Subgrid is the one keyword that removes the boundary.Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSLayouthttps://abhisawant.me/blog/theming-is-three-separate-questions/https://abhisawant.me/blog/theming-is-three-separate-questions/light-dark(), contrast-color() and style queries each answer a different question about a component's surroundings, and picking the wrong one is how themes break.Thu, 22 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSDesign_SystemsAccessibilityhttps://abhisawant.me/blog/what-has-actually-selects/https://abhisawant.me/blog/what-has-actually-selects/The argument is non-forgiving, the specificity leaks out of it, and the anchor sits where you started — the rules that make advanced :has() predictable.Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTCSSFormsPerformance