Chris Lilley 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

“Father of SVG”. @W3C staff. Co-developed PNG, @font-face, WOFF. W3C rep to ICC. These days working on Web Fonts, Web Audio, CSS. He/him.

Bandcamp: https://bandcamp.com/nantonos
Website: https://svgees.us/
Work: https://www.w3.org/staff/#chris
Blog: https://svgees.us/blog/

Public Key

npub1cqvw363r6fp05z6ulvex550gg2emcjcflaugwzfn5k5ythsvwugsxc0eaf

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsvqx8gag3aysh6pdw0kvn2285y9vaufvyl77y8pye6t2z9mcx8wygpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsf09ngl

Publishing to

nostr.land

nos.lol

relay.damus.io

Author Public Key

npub1cqvw363r6fp05z6ulvex550gg2emcjcflaugwzfn5k5ythsvwugsxc0eaf

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Last Notes

2026-06-14 10:24:11 GMT

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Was great to see you! I too heard the huge bang at 05:57 and no idea what it was?

2026-04-02 16:20:32 GMT

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Message from Zoe (Can I talk to him?):
"Hello I really really really ❤️ love ❤️ your books. And now my daddy is going to buy me 4 and 5 of Pepper and Carrot".

2026-04-02 15:55:32 GMT

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Does that mean the old publisher is no more? (I have hardcover Pepper & Carrot 1 to 3, was about to order 4 and 5. My six year old loves them).

2026-03-23 22:03:26 GMT

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It was explained by @npub159n…rz7e how to make a custom light-dark function:
https://www.bram.us/2025/09/30/css-custom-light-dark/

2026-03-23 19:18:41 GMT

CSS has just added an image form of light-dark(). So as well as choosing between a pair of colors based on light or dark mode, you can also choose between a pair of images.
No you can't mix them because parsing would be hard.
#CSS
https://www.w3.org/TR/css-color-5/#light-dark

2026-01-04 11:41:46 GMT

Currently stuck in Lesvos because *all* flights in Greece are grounded since 9am due to a technical malfunction until at least 16:00.
Apparently flights were landing manually! Now the Greek airspace is entirely empty.

2025-11-21 03:13:52 GMT

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"JavaScript pour les nulls" as an example

2025-10-22 15:31:01 GMT

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Excellence in alt text!
(The illustrations are quite nice, too 😉 )

2025-10-02 11:45:11 GMT

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No, that isn't going to work either, because the gamma function is non linear.
Just do the conversion in linear space. This isn't the 1950s.

2025-09-24 12:15:51 GMT

Confronted today with a form that requires my US driving license number, plus the US state in which it was issued.
There is no other option.
I'm disabled, can't drive, and have no driving license in the US or, indeed, anywhere else.
#disability #UXFail

2025-07-31 16:38:48 GMT

Incremental Font Transfer is now an @W3C Candidate Recommendation.
IFT defines a method to incrementally transfer a font from server to client. The client loads only the portion(s) of the font that they actually need, significantly reducing data transfer. Multiple incremental additions to the same font are possible, such as a user agent updating a font as a user browses multiple pages.
https://www.w3.org/TR/IFT/
#webfonts

2025-07-14 07:20:03 GMT

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The UK doesn't have a privatized water industry. England does.

2025-07-11 21:41:55 GMT

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Note: assuming you can fit 25 cookies on one layer and each is 5mm thick then the pile on Mudoch's plate would be 200 km high for one billion cookies.
So "illustration not to scale".

2025-06-25 19:32:22 GMT

It is often asserted that HSL is easier to use, when picking colors. Turns out there is little evidence for that.
https://svgees.us/blog/hsl-bad.html

2025-06-24 13:18:24 GMT

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Chris Blume, who chairs the PNG Working Group, explains why this is important
https://www.programmax.net/articles/png-is-back/index.html

2025-06-24 13:16:32 GMT

The Third Edition of Portable Network Graphics (PNG) today became a W3C Standard.
It adds support for High Dynamic Range (HDR), and adds Animated PNG to the official standard.
https://www.w3.org/TR/png-3/

2025-05-16 01:49:15 GMT

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How chaotic! Who could have predicted it!
*Googles Eris mythology*
Oh

2025-05-07 17:39:32 GMT

As expected, the scientifically illiterate (per BMA) UK supreme court ruling is providing the exact opposite of "clarity"
#ukpol
https://inews.co.uk/news/gyms-trans-people-supreme-court-3676459

2024-12-15 01:01:30 GMT

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I see
https://wallethub.com/profile/lendingtree-13760348i

2024-12-14 20:51:34 GMT

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Watch out for their privacy-invading form, though:
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/113/653/147/725/874/605/original/b8013cc4fcd2cbff.png

2024-11-26 17:23:02 GMT

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Traquair house?

2024-11-21 19:36:57 GMT

Congratulations @npub1sxq…k8dy on your election as rector!

2024-11-17 17:59:41 GMT

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Remember PCMCIA card memory? (Which is what the Compact in CF refers to)

2024-11-07 21:17:54 GMT

@npub1x59…gect I recall you wrote about Android shipping with out-of-date fonts, and now I can't find it among your prolific toots. Did I imagine it?

2024-10-25 18:43:11 GMT

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Open #CSSWG issue on Criteria for generic font families. Alan Stearns wrote:
"I do think there is consensus that the criteria should be strict enough to exclude at least fantasy if we were able to re-evaluate current generic font families."
https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/4910#issuecomment-607931058

2024-10-25 18:36:35 GMT

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Early drafts of CSS 2 started to actually define the generics. From Nov 1997:
Fantasy fonts, as used in CSS, are primarily decorative whilst still containing representations of characters (as opposed to Pi or Picture fonts, which do not represent characters).
Latin fonts
Alpha Geometrique, Critter, Cottonwood, FB Reactor, Studz
https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-CSS2-971104/fonts.html#h-14.2.6.4

2024-10-25 18:29:22 GMT

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It took until April 1996 for fantasy to be at least defined by example:
The following generic families are defined:
'serif' (e.g. Times)
'sans-serif' (e.g. Helvetica)
'cursive' (e.g. Zapf-Chancery)
'fantasy' (e.g. Western)
'monospace' (e.g. Courier)
https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-css1-960418.html#font-family

2024-10-25 18:22:15 GMT

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And here we have it, from the first working draft of CSS 1 in 1995:
In level 1, the following generic families are specified:
'serif':
'sans-serif'
'cursive', e.g., Sirene, Zapf Chancery
'fantasy'
'monospace'
https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-css1-951117.html#fonts
I say specified rather than defined because, well, there was no definition 😅

2024-10-25 18:03:04 GMT

In keeping with the scary seasonal theme, who is using the *fantasy* #CSS generic font family. And why?
No seriously, why?
It is on 0.5% of websites, and I am somewhat horrified.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EkdvJ8e0B9Rr42evC2Ds5Ekwq6gF9oLBW0BA5cmSUT4/edit?gid=1543061572#gid=1543061572

2024-09-18 02:20:46 GMT

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Indiscriminate large-scale bombing of civilians. The world, predictably, yawns and gives the Israeli govt another free pass.

2024-09-08 15:56:32 GMT

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This is what I meant by failure of imagination. Styling is capable of making nested links clearly discernable. Nothing says that all links are the same shade of blue with no other highlighting. Nothing says that child elements always render with 100% overlap of their parent.

2024-09-08 15:35:01 GMT

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Nitpicking third opinion: it is a design flaw in HTML that nested links are disallowed, and represents a failure of imagination.

2024-09-07 11:26:26 GMT

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The defenders of outsourcing could usefully cite some evidence in support of their views. But they won't, as there is none.

2024-08-16 09:29:30 GMT

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"Fix the problems they have inherited" is doing a lot of work here.
Firstly it implies that Labour didn't cause any of them (they did, for example PFI) and secondly it assumes the desire to fix them rather than continue them (eg two child cap) or make them worse (winter fuel allowance).
The cosy assumption that everything will improve simply by the Tories not being in power this time really needs to be examined.

2024-08-11 18:23:10 GMT

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Monolingual engineers confidently decide that being bilingual or multilingual is just weird and can be ignored, rather than applying to most of the world.
#i18n

2024-07-02 11:50:05 GMT

The Web, and the Internet, are decentralized. This is not an optional feature; it is a core part of how they work and why they have been so successful. Which is why I signed an open letter to the United Nations that explains how some proposals for their Global Digital Compact significantly endanger them. #OpenInternet
https://open-internet-governance.org/letter

2024-06-17 14:51:04 GMT

Congratulations to @npub1k5x…df3x for being the first browser to correctly implement currentColor in CSS Relative Colors:
https://wpt.fyi/results/css/css-color?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&q=relative-currentcolor