Kilian Valkhof

Building tools that make developers awesome.

I no longer understand prefers-contrast

CSS & HTML, 8 March 2023

The prefers-contrast media query indicates whether someone prefers more or less contrast within the boundaries of your sites design. At least, that’s what I thought it meant, and it’s also how macOS seems to implement it with their ‘increase contrast’ accessibility feature. This is in contrast to the forced-colors media query, which overwrites all your styles.

::backdrop doesn’t inherit from anywhere

CSS & HTML, 19 January 2023

Earlier this month I was implementing a lightbox for devtoolstips.org using <dialog>. I'll be writing about that soon but you can find the implementation in that link, it's remarkable how little code you need. While styling, I made use of the CSS custom properties that where already defined in the CSS to style the dialog and it's backdrop. Or so I thought.

I was on the Syntax.fm podcast to talk about Polypane

Web, 4 January 2023

Last Friday I went on the Syntax.fm Supper Club podcast to chat with Scott and Wes about everything Polypane. We go pretty deep into some of the features and in hindsight it’s funny how most of it boils down to “I needed this feature so I built it”. I had a great time geeking out about it so thank you Scott and Wes for having me!

My experience at Modern Frontends

Life, Web, 24 November 2022

Sometimes we want something to be true so badly, we ignore all the red flags. I had only spoken at this big of a conference once, and that was mostly by accident. So when my CFP got accepted to Modern Frontends, I was elated. A huge conference, in London, surrounded by amazing speakers.

Screenshotting VoiceOver on macOS

Accessibility, 31 October 2022

For an article I was writing I wanted to create a quick screenshot of one of the Rotor screens that Voiceover on macOS shows. I couldn't because when you have VoiceOver active the screenshot shortcuts (cmd + shift + 3/4) no longer work because they're captured by VoiceOver instead. If you also have this problem, you can use the screencapture command line tool.

Polypane browser for responsive web development and design Hi, I'm Kilian. I make Polypane, the browser for responsive web development and design. If you're reading this site, that's probably interesting to you. Try it out!

I develop more software and tools:

Superposition

Use the design system you already have

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A cross-platform, simple and smart autosaving scratchpad.

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Go on a text adventure in Facebook Messenger.

Electron
Newsletter

The latest Electron news, articles, apps and interviews.

Trimage

Drag-and-drop lossless compression of PNG and JPG images for web.

Messenger Demo Viewer

Demo your (bot) interactions on Messenger.