Zach Leatherman

https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat

🫣 Go to https://www.zachleat.com/
🎈 Creator/Maintainer of :11ty: Build Awesome (11ty) (npub1qud…y0rz) https://www.11ty.dev/
🎉 Professional Hobbyist at :fontawesome: Font Awesome
🌾 A random person from Nebraska maintaining software
🏳️‍⚧️ Listen to Trans Folks
🧞 he/him/they
🐟 out of 🌊
🕸️ Front of the front-end web developer
🔎 #searchable

Blog: https://www.zachleat.com
Eleventy: https://www.11ty.dev
Eleventy 🐘 Mastodon: https://neighborhood.11ty.dev/@11ty
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zachleat.com

Public Key

npub19vzl6trffwdlewfz5aantavdn5qn3sfs4lyhf5qfrjtphger8zxsrpzmql

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszkp0a9355hxluhy32w7e47kxe6qfccyc2ljt56qy3e9sm5v3n3rgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dseslm0a

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub19vzl6trffwdlewfz5aantavdn5qn3sfs4lyhf5qfrjtphger8zxsrpzmql

Show more details

Published at

2026-05-30T13:56:35Z

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0 Metadata

Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-03-17 21:34:14 GMT

is… is this good? is this software good? is this a good example of good software?
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/116/246/655/784/519/917/original/4cab0574b5903b10.png

2026-03-11 21:16:33 GMT

I have received A Lot Of Feedback (ALOF™) in the last week. The hardest and most insidious bits echo “Why does Open Source Thing need money?” which rhymes with “Why do you—a software developer working on Open Source Thing—need money?”
Trying not to read too much into it 😬

2026-03-03 15:15:02 GMT

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yeah, sign me up! cc @npub1dgj…m5xf

2026-02-03 16:55:07 GMT

We did it, Joe! @npub14u5…szzh is now officially on Mastodon 🏆

2026-01-08 20:45:11 GMT

it clearly needs to be repeated that layoffs are a leadership failure, full stop.

2025-12-15 18:22:24 GMT

*gently opens up the December 15th flap on my react CVE advent calendar*

2025-12-09 19:28:19 GMT

you’re very popular on linkedin (DEROGATORY)

2025-12-09 17:49:27 GMT

I don’t know if this is a good decision but it also feels long overdue
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/115/690/865/279/004/066/original/453f2283c9a82d8d.png

2025-12-03 16:46:10 GMT

TIL about https://jsx.lol/ from [@db](https://social.lol/@db ) which seems to be carrying the torch forward from my blog post a few years back: https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/

2025-11-20 15:06:42 GMT

went on a small side quest this morning and added an AI Mode toggle to my blog posts
e.g. https://www.zachleat.com/web/adventures-in-date-parsing/
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/115/582/642/907/682/947/original/9d3370a0d0d4e80b.png

2025-11-19 19:05:55 GMT

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to be clear, I don’t think what you’re doing is *wrong* — just some tradeoffs there worth noting!

2025-11-19 18:23:54 GMT

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I used to do this but then I started to wonder what happens to my site during rsync? Could a visitor see a broken site? What happens if I lose connectivity in the middle of a deploy? What happens if the deploy fails (for any number of reasons)? Instant roll back has saved me a few times now 😅

2025-11-17 20:17:51 GMT

TIL about the HTML Size Analyzer from DebugBear. Great for finding sneaky Data URIs or large payloads of JSON in your pages:
https://www.debugbear.com/html-size-analyzer

2025-11-03 16:39:35 GMT

as “industry” survey season rolls around again it’s important to remember that the results from these things reflect the biases of the most popular dev communities that promote them (and then we get to all pretend like the results are meritocratic)
I now believe it’s better to not participate at all

2025-10-31 19:52:19 GMT

Thinking about dark/light mode pickers that have three options: Auto/Dark/Light.
If the default is “Auto” — in what scenario might someone want to move away from Auto (which would visually be a noop to the same theme?)
I’m using Light mode as my system preference, but it seems unlikely that I would swap from Auto (Light mode) to Light mode (not Auto) on a specific site

2025-10-30 18:52:41 GMT

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Counterpoint: not everything in space is an astronaut

2025-10-30 15:08:22 GMT

my privacy settings are that I’m fine with a geolocation API but it should only return a boolean that reveals whether or not I’m on planet earth

2025-10-21 18:07:57 GMT

Today’s esoteric HTML element is <kbd>
As in: please press <kbd>⌘</kbd> + <kbd>R</kbd> repeatedly when AWS causes your JavaScript to fail to load.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/kbd

2025-10-15 22:14:21 GMT

If you’re using CSS Nesting, make sure your minifier supports it!
As I learned today, clean-css doesn’t support it yet: https://github.com/clean-css/clean-css/issues/1254

2025-10-01 21:12:50 GMT

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your gist is very validating, thank you!

2025-10-01 20:30:10 GMT

is there really no low-level mechanism to intercept boolean primitive coercion in JavaScript?
why can’t I extend `Boolean` to make `new MyBoolean(false)` be `falsy`? (I understand why it isn’t, but I want to make it so)
> Note: Unlike other type conversions like string coercion or number coercion, boolean coercion does not attempt to convert objects to primitives by calling user methods.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Boolean#boolean_coercion

2025-09-23 16:32:12 GMT

has anyone stopped to consider that the rapture is just another supply chain attack

2025-09-19 12:12:25 GMT

Please add this tiny bit-o-CSS for stable scrollbar gutters to your Reset Stylesheets
https://www.zachleat.com/web/stable-scrollbar-gutters/

2025-09-17 15:34:13 GMT

hmm — the favicon for microsoft.com has been broken for at least a week now

2025-09-17 13:44:27 GMT

HTML Programmer.
—from the always lovely @npub16cx…2vq4
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/115/219/924/619/055/259/original/4f42dd806f7a02d3.png

2025-09-15 19:39:43 GMT

✅ an HTML web site hosted on a disposable vape
⛔️ a JavaScript-heavy web site that feels like its loading from a disposable vape

2025-09-08 17:03:19 GMT

Crashing out at how poorly npm (Microsoft) is handling this security incident. Eleventy is not affected any more but *lots* of other tools in the JavaScript ecosystem are!
Hours later and the compromised package versions are still public…
Maybe don’t install anything from npm today, folks.

2025-08-27 16:41:37 GMT

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my promise is to create bad software much more slowly

2025-08-27 16:32:53 GMT

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it takes no stance on quality

2025-08-27 16:24:56 GMT

I think software should be good

2025-08-19 17:47:06 GMT

A note from my late Grandmother about Eleventy
https://www.zachleat.com/web/history-of-eleventy-name/

2025-08-05 13:36:37 GMT

The most underrated code comment continues to be:
// Start here tomorrow

2025-08-01 21:29:24 GMT

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😅😅😅 doing what I can 🥰

2025-08-01 21:02:43 GMT

Trying to sneak in some long overdue @11ty/webc maintenance before close of business 👀

2025-07-29 16:12:23 GMT

for resiliency and redundant fallback make sure you have more than one single point of failure in your software stack

2025-07-25 13:57:31 GMT

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I wrote this saga up in blog post form: https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/114913999540366417

2025-07-25 13:01:19 GMT

Never write your own Date Parsing Library (I wrote my own Date Parsing Library)
https://www.zachleat.com/web/adventures-in-date-parsing/

2025-07-22 21:24:33 GMT

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One more entry in my epic date parsing adventure. I’ve shipped a breaking change to this library to ensure that all valid date strings supported in Eleventy v4 will be RFC 9557-compatible, ensuring friendliness with the standardized Temporal APIs coming to a JavaScript runtime near you. Our full test suite runs against both!
Read (a little) more: https://github.com/11ty/parse-date-strings/releases/tag/v2.0.0

2025-07-21 22:22:56 GMT

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continued from https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/114870836413532617
and https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/issues/3587

2025-07-21 22:22:44 GMT

I really tried to avoid this one but unfortunately this is now something I maintain 😭 https://github.com/11ty/parse-date-strings

2025-07-21 13:23:16 GMT

"2025-W01-1" is December 30, 2024

2025-07-18 22:33:04 GMT

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For extra curious folks, the big ol’ PR to kick this off merged yesterday: https://github.com/11ty/eleventy/pull/3858

2025-07-18 21:32:11 GMT

work has started on @npub1qud…y0rz 4.0 👀

2025-07-18 15:27:42 GMT

controversially: why can’t software be good?

2025-07-17 16:58:34 GMT

Can anyone recommend a snail mail comic book subscription service?

2025-07-17 15:58:45 GMT

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I don’t see a link to Bluesky from your web site, fwiw!

2025-07-17 14:32:02 GMT

In my 19 full-time professional years in this business there have been many eras in which very prominent web developers have argued “don’t worry about it” in discussions of web performance and time has *never* proven those arguments to have merit, even with continually improving network connections and hardware.
The web is diverse. Let’s keep it that way!

2025-07-07 15:20:33 GMT

web components are usb-c
react is the lightning cable
thank you for coming to my ted talk

2025-06-17 14:03:09 GMT

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wow, this is *incredible* — what a lovely endorsement 🥰

2025-06-14 20:46:49 GMT

I went out to try to improve society, somewhat. #NoKings
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/683/669/289/387/255/original/bd10c1d8c015ba55.jpeg

2025-06-12 19:35:51 GMT

maybe as a society we should spend less time “Verifying that you are a human” and more time “Verifying your humanity”

2025-06-06 22:06:20 GMT

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oh dang, how do you know this? I’d love another source!

2025-06-06 21:32:06 GMT

https://www.theverge.com/news/680893/nintendo-switch-2-eshop-faster look, I just want to know what the tech stack of the old shop was 😅

2025-06-06 16:32:49 GMT

Web sites with a Facebook pixel were communicating with local native apps (Instagram, Facebook, maybe WhatsApp) to log (and attribute) incognito web browsing activity.
Write-up: https://localmess.github.io/
Story: https://english.elpais.com/technology/2025-06-03/the-covert-method-meta-uses-to-track-mobile-browsing-without-consent-even-in-incognito-mode-or-with-a-vpn.html

2025-06-01 00:15:32 GMT

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1. core web vitals are the only web perf metrics that matter
2. react is fast enough
3. how to use toxic masculinity as a leadership tactic to avoid self reflection and personal growth, a guide to online community building
4. how to actively circumvent the web platform until it affects you personally, a hero’s journey

2025-05-23 13:55:07 GMT

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why would your external links need updating?

2025-05-23 13:40:07 GMT

Just how portable is your web site? Could you switch hosting providers in an hour? In a day? Would it take you a week?
You should think about it.

2025-05-22 14:34:33 GMT

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WordPress: 3.076M
Top 6 JavaScript Frameworks combined: 0.321M
WordPress in 2025 is ~10× the combined origins of Next.js, Nuxt.js, Gatsby, Astro, SvelteKit, and Remix.

2025-05-22 14:31:13 GMT

I’m curious: is this chart surprising to y’all?
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/551/951/097/256/415/original/0f83cd3992b9848e.png

2025-05-22 13:44:42 GMT

Web performance experts, would love to see a performance breakdown of this web site: https://indieweb.social/@yvg/114550400917431252

2025-05-20 15:32:51 GMT

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the react and tailwind communities are terrible at this — any criticism is met with an avalanche of time-wasting replies

2025-05-20 15:01:05 GMT

what tech companies *haven’t* done layoffs in the last 3 years? it’s time for a goodwill thread

2025-05-16 22:12:57 GMT

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✅ Server render
⚠️ Client render
⛔️ Proprietary single-vendor edge runtimes that may or may not be around in a few years

2025-05-16 21:55:33 GMT

11ty.dev now runs Eleventy clientside on the home page https://neighborhood.11ty.dev/@11ty/114519676689929120

2025-05-16 14:37:22 GMT

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just checking if I could help (or if it was my fault)! sounds like you got it figured out!

2025-05-16 14:25:49 GMT

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pinned how?

2025-05-14 21:48:06 GMT

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don’t tell anyone that it’s a web component

2025-05-14 21:37:54 GMT

Still a work in progress but here’s a little sneak peek at the Eleventy demo runner: https://11ty-website-git-editor-11ty.vercel.app/#try-eleventy-in-the-browser

2025-04-30 16:46:35 GMT

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did you move fast? yes
did you break things? also yes
did you learn nothing? we’re happy to announce our series A round of funding on our next project

2025-04-30 14:16:03 GMT

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tools don’t leverage the platform appropriately and are unable to pivot when new features are introduced at lower levels ok byeeeeeeee

2025-04-22 20:05:36 GMT

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weirdos unite 🤝

2025-04-22 19:47:52 GMT

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omg don’t do this 😅

2025-04-17 16:25:15 GMT

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so my individual data is worthless to the advertisers they’re selling it to?

2025-04-16 14:26:58 GMT

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hey do you have a second to chat

2025-03-26 16:32:51 GMT

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boosting this is an attack!!

2025-03-26 16:30:12 GMT

can we have a feature where a toot self destructs when it hits 50 boosts

2025-03-25 20:08:35 GMT

bribecoding is a new phenomenon where you pay open source developers a living wage to work on projects that your business uses

2025-03-24 14:23:46 GMT

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https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/217/859/156/696/937/original/4047d959222e4b1c.png

2025-03-24 14:14:04 GMT

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Update: thanks to [@chrisw_b](https://social.chriswb.dev/@chrisw_b ) for hunting this down: looks like a huge flaw in the vulnerability scanner being used by these tools (it ignores namespaces on package names!)
More info:
https://github.com/jridgewell/gen-mapping/issues/12
https://github.com/anchore/grype/issues/1701

2025-03-24 13:41:43 GMT

Why does socket.dev report that the latest version of next.js has a malware dependency? https://socket.dev/npm/package/next/alerts/15.2.3?tab=dependencies
“Malicious code in gen-mapping (npm) Any computer that has this package installed or running should be considered fully compromised.”
Update: looks like this is a pretty big flaw in the vulnerability scanner — not in next (check the replies for more info)
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/217/692/651/408/497/original/f1a71ff323856269.png

2025-03-20 19:15:40 GMT

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how did you do that so fast

2025-03-19 15:08:40 GMT

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it’s so good! it even has the cat!!

2025-03-17 22:32:13 GMT

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there is always money in folk music!

2025-03-17 22:08:59 GMT

CEO selling AI claims “90% of code will be written by AI in 3–6 months; 100% in 12 months.“
https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3
set your calendar reminders, folks — and remember that hype is a monetizable asset (in silicon valley)

2025-03-16 23:34:21 GMT

let me just say up front that I love Star Trek—but we have to agree that LCARS is not good UI. societal utopia, sure—where are the user interface folks

2025-03-07 14:19:18 GMT

dismissing valid feedback as “change aversion” is a big ol’ red flag 🚩🚩🚩

2025-03-06 15:47:13 GMT

Manual ‘till it hurts from @npub1uy4…kptm https://adactio.com/journal/21397

2025-02-28 15:25:22 GMT

📮 New blog post:
Extract Colors from an Image for CSS Themes: https://www.zachleat.com/web/extract-colors/

2025-02-27 15:28:48 GMT

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This open source work is part of a larger migration of the Font Awesome blog (Blog Awesome) from WordPress to Eleventy, currently ongoing!
https://github.com/11ty/eleventy-import was also born from that too!

2025-02-27 15:26:55 GMT

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https://llmstxt.org/ is docs for the proposal and this thought likely stems from a somewhat heated discussion on Bluesky a few days ago: https://bsky.app/profile/zachleat.com/post/3lix4zcjuwc2j

2025-02-27 15:07:40 GMT

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If you’re curious, I used the brand new `@11ty/image-color` to fetch the border colors from each site’s favicon/avatar: https://fosstodon.org/@eleventy/114076444351199781

2025-02-27 14:55:12 GMT

The one nice thing about /llms.txt is that folks deeply entrenched in JavaScript-heavy webdev are now providing lightweight experiences of their content on the web (but for LLMs, not users — mind you)

2025-02-26 23:33:10 GMT

automated themed screenshot border colors
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/114/072/797/367/820/623/original/0550a7ace24fe33e.png

2025-02-21 20:40:42 GMT

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I am very professional

2025-02-21 20:10:52 GMT

I am an external opening of the rectum located inside the intergluteal cleft AITA?

2025-02-14 21:27:22 GMT

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you lost me at bundler *runs away*

2025-02-14 21:12:35 GMT

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well if you’re wanting both mechanisms you probably wouldn’t do import "./nimble.js" with import "./nimble.js?define", you’d do import "./nimble.js" with `Nimble.define()`—right?
(which to me seems like yet another vote for opt-in rather than opt-out)

2025-02-14 19:26:55 GMT

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some good discussion on the bundler question documented here from @npub1wwc…ahuz which I somehow missed: https://til.jakelazaroff.com/html/define-a-custom-element/

2025-02-14 16:39:48 GMT

?nodefine — a pattern to skip automatic Custom Element definitions
https://www.zachleat.com/web/nodefine/

2025-02-05 14:21:19 GMT

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holy shit please make this a blog post — so much great info packed into a tiny toot