A Web Day Out in Brighton — 13 Mar 2026

Jemima Abu

I can’t believe it’s not JavaScript

The day kick off in style and energy with a talk by Jemima Abu who covered some of the latest native HTML elements or CSS properties available in baseline. It was talk full of sparkles and passion. I connected immediately. It was my first opportunity to listen to Jemima present in person, and boy was I impressed.

We have a lot of shit in our packages

I’m probably going to repeat myself in this post, but the care and passion (and love) for native HTML and CSS was palpable. Both on stage and in the audience. I use a bunch of the elements that were presented, but the popover API stood out. It came up in a number of talks that followed. Tooltips, modals, or styling the select element, the popover api is at the rescue.

Rachel Andrew

A pragmatic guide to browser support

Rachel Andrew (the grid lady, by her own admission) talked about Web Platform Baseline, how it worked and how to use it, relying on common sense and giving many useful tips on how to suggest new features, and how to decide to use one feature (or not) and when.

Think about your audience
Think about your team
Understand path to baseline.

Rachel’s presentations are so well structured and illustrated, it’s each time a renewed pleasure to listen to her.

Aleth Gueguen

Progressive web apps from the trenches

Aleth Gueguen presented real world use and tests of PWAs with loads of tips, especially for iOS - surprise surprise - that are golden for people developing real world solutions that must run in real world conditions. Precious.

Let the user know the state of their data
Make it seamful
Provide a button to trigger a sync.

Harry Roberts

Build for the web, build on the web, build with the web

Harry Roberts stormed the event with a punchy presentation that resonated close to my heart, and not only because he was kind enough to call me out, but because of what he echoed what I’m trying to express in a professional capacity for a while now. I was fortunate to work with Harry last year for a client, and he is an amazing person, generous, committed and so talented. I always learn so much when he’s around.

The web is versionless, and versionless is a virtue
Stick with the web.

A opiniated talk on his love from the web. Check-out his post for a deep dive. His stories about SPA, made me laugh… (if you can name 5 pages of your website, it’s not an SPA). Harry elegantly framed out loud what I’ve been struggling to verbalise these last years.

Manuel Matuzovič

Breaking with habits

Manuel is my latest favourite speaker and person. I had the pleasure of discovering him at Smashing Conf in Freiburg and later at beyond tellerrand (or the other way around) and I finally got to meet him in person at Web Day Out (it was his birthday!) He’s passionate (nerdy) and loves sharing his experience and knowledge, and is really a truly nice person.

I love the way he dives deep into a subject to explore and understand all the nook and cranies (checkout his talks on colour, or his type scale - brilliant!). I always learn so much each time our paths cross. Check out his blog and his no-class CSS framework Oli.

Richard Rutter

What’s new in web typography?

Richard made me love typography, and I try to jump on every opportunity to read or listen to him. He dived into nerdy typographic details like font-size-adjust (0.417!), variable font properties or fluid typography. Check out his aspect value calculator.

His segment on lists (don’t miss his article on Piccalil.li) and headings positioning and aligment (text-box) were stunning. So many details… I was reminded to use OpenType properties more often (eg. font-variant-position). Super subtle.

Jake Archibald

Customisable `select` and the friends we made along the way

A fascinating time travel in the history of the select element. It turns out select is the element the most re-created by developers, and the one that gives the most frustration (by far) - no surprise.

OpenUI W3C community group worked hard on the process that led to the popover API mentioned earlier by Jemima. Read more about the popover accessibility.

The stylable select has finally landed in browsers - 33 years after its initial proposal.

Many more stories about the top layer in which popover renders and how to position it (position-area) or style the picker (appearance) with any CSS properties and pseudo-selectors (::picker-icon). The select element allows any HTML element now, like div or img (or button!). Ever heard of selectedcontent? Powerful.

Lola Odelola

The browser is the playground

Lola started with a project she led last year “alt-text as an Artistic Practice”. How would you describe an abstract image? Consider alt-text as the primary way to experience an image (prefer-alt-text - turns out, it’s a bad idea).

Robb sits in a room painted in shades of disrupted sleep and red velvet. He is amongst friends, drifting between the embers of his second coffee and the spark of a third.
– Robb

or

Three aging emos post gradiose yet humbly against the urban backdrop of Leeds, looking either wistfully off into the distance or straight into the camera, they embody everything that can be right with the world. Hope, confidence, quietness, serenity, camaraderie. The day was good, and so are these people.
– Salma

Lola dove deep into into W3C processes (she is the co-chair of W3C Technical Architecture Group) and described and explained many things I wasn’t aware of (eg. the priority of constituencies or reducing user fingerprinting). Throught her talk, she elegantly demonstrated why a ‘dream feature’ (like prefer-alt-text) can be a bad idea, and all that from the point of view of a browser engineer.

Make friends, not followers

Michael Flarup wrote about the comeback of small conferences in his latest newsletter that echoes another reason why I like attending these kind of events so much:

A conference is one of the few places where a scattered online community briefly becomes real.

There’s a realness that comes from meeting your peers face to face. All of the fluff that so often surrounds online discourse falls away. There is no hype, just passion. No engagement hook, just curiosity.

Instead of making followers, you make friends.

Thank you Jeremy and Clearleft for hosting such events 💜