Top all-time · #1211
Rachel Andrew
Personal blog · rachelandrew.co.uk · on HN as rachelandrewwebdesign
Rachel Andrew's personal blog at rachelandrew.co.uk covers web and design. Since 2011, 60 different Hacker News readers have linked it 102 times, most often “HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-01-31
- /archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-to-use-the-ie-implementation-of-css-grid-layout/5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-06-23
- /archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-grid-or-flexbox/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-12-21
- The Horrible Implications of the EU VAT “Place of Supply” Change3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-10-13
- How small companies and freelancers can deal with the VATMOSS EU VAT changes3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-11-25
- The Profitable Side Project Handbook2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-01-12
- You do not need a CSS Grid based Grid System (2017)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-01
- Where's the holistic AI productivity data?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-06-18
- Stop solving problems you don't yet have2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-02
- /archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-to-use-the-ie-implementation-of-css-grid-layout/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-02-01
What Hacker News says?
I recommend taking the State of CSS[1] survey, it is a nice way of keeping up with the latest features. Other then that I use PostCSS with the postcss-preset-env[2] plugin. There you can enable various future features of the language and have it compile down to a more supported version. If your really want to dive into the future of CSS you can read the issue board for the CSSWG[3] (beware, it can suck hours out of…
Comment linking /
on “Things I wish I’d known about CSS”Submitted HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points as a story · 371 points
HN discussionI put my CSS Layout knowledge into an online course at: https://thecssworkshop.com/ Interestingly it has been very popular with teams (so selling a set of licenses so a whole team of developers can use the material). I also teach the same material in person (either in-house or in open workshops) so I'm keeping the two in sync. I made some notes about that process on my blog: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/…
Comment linking /archives/2016/06/03/creating-an-epub-for-workshop-notes/
on “Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?”Submitted You don't need a grid framework on top of the CSS grid layout as a story · 150 points
HN discussionI wrote up an explanation here: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-...
Comment linking /archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-grid-or-flexbox/
on “Firefox 52 released”Submitted The end of the clearfix hack? as a story · 123 points
HN discussionIt's not as simple as using auto-prefixer, since IE10 and IE11 use the older syntax. However, it's surprisingly not that bad for simple layouts. Here's a great resource covering the hows and whys: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-... And here's a simplified example I threw together recently to demonstrate it in action: https://codepen.io/shahab/pen/ypWmZG Basically, you lose auto-placement…
Comment linking /archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-to-use-the-ie-implementation-of-css-grid-layout/
on “CSS Grid for UI Layouts”Submitted The Horrible Implications of the EU VAT “Place of Supply” Change as a story · 67 points
HN discussionWe just finished deploying a major contract where the military is a primary customer. They still have many machines running IE 11. I used CSS Grid and it's working well. IE 11 supports the initial version of the spec and has the -ms prefixes, but works. There are some things you can't do (like areas), but it largely works with that syntax, if you design with column/row in mind. See this for details on the IE 10/11 i…
Comment linking /archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-to-use-the-ie-implementation-of-css-grid-layout/
on “CSS grid garden”Submitted EU VAT rules make EU startups uncompetitive in a global market as a story · 63 points
HN discussionBoth Jen Simmons and Rachel Andrew have lots of good resources for understanding the new CSS layout techniques. This article of Rachel's is a year old, but will still give you a good understanding of the differences between the two: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-... Jen's got lots of great links here: http://jensimmons.com/post/feb-27-2017/learn-css-grid , including thoughts about how w…
Comment linking /archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-grid-or-flexbox/
on “Grid Garden – A game for learning CSS grid”Submitted How small companies and freelancers can deal with the VATMOSS EU VAT changes as a story · 31 points
HN discussionFlexbox excels for UI and CSS grid will work nice for layouts and some UI structure too. Together they are a powerhouse: this article explains it well https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-...
Comment linking /archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-grid-or-flexbox/
on “Bootstrap 4 drops IE9 support and goes full flexbox”Submitted The Profitable Side Project Handbook as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI start out in Scrivener and end up in HTML. Scrivener is great for the actual writing process, although it takes a bit of learning to get used to. I wrote up on my blog about creating the various versions http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/01/07/html-epub-mobi... I've also recently presented on how to build books in CSS and HTML and the slides and various useful resources are here: http://rachelandrew.co.uk/pr…
Comment linking /presentations/css-books
on “What was your best passive income in 2014?”Submitted The Horrible Implications of the EU VAT “Place of Supply” Change as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI keep meaning to write up complete figures but I launched my self-published ebook The Profitable Side Project Handbook in January http://rachelandrew.co.uk/books/the-profitable-side-project Sales from that are well over 10K USD at this point. A lot of that was over the launch week, I've not had a huge amount of time to devote to marketing it over the last couple of months as our main business (which was a side proj…
Comment linking /books/the-profitable-side-project
on “What was your best passive income in 2014?”Submitted VATMOSS and SaaS ecommerce, payment and delivery apps as a story · 10 points
HN discussionIn that case, the customer could cheat. I am not totally sure about the current discussion on that, but the problem is, that you definitively can not rely on the address given of the customer, because in this case the customer will always give a country with the lowest sales tax. Also you must provide proofs for the location. The IP address is IMHO (and not only my opinion) better and will be more likely be recogniz…
Comment linking /archives/2014/12/08/consensus-and-vatmoss/
on “Ask HN: Who here would be interested in a free daily updated GeoIP database?”Submitted CSS Grid is coming as a story · 5 points
HN discussion"If you need a grid system," Not "you need to add your own." In the near future, grid systems will be more and more obsolete ( https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2017/07/01/you-do-not-ne... ), and Shoelace is prepared for that. Why add the weight if you don't need it?
Comment linking /archives/2017/07/01/you-do-not-need-a-css-grid-based-grid-system/
on “Shoelace.css – A back to the basics CSS starter kit”Submitted VATMOSS – the first quarter as a story · 5 points
HN discussionIf you find that you lose motivation or get bored with a side project then I think you really need to ask yourself why you are doing it. We find the time and energy for those things that we place importance on. If the project isn't important to you then maybe it is time to move on. If it is important and this is just a temporary state - perhaps due to hitting a difficult part or a bit you don't enjoy dealing with -…
Comment linking /archives/2014/03/21/chapter-1-the-profitable-side-project-handbook/
on “Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects?”Submitted HTML, CSS and our vanishing industry entry points as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSigil is really good for tweaking your EPUBs http://sigil-ebook.com/ I use Pandoc to generate my EPUB and then Sigil to do a bit of tidying. Usually just the front matter etc. Some other resources here, the slides from ConFoo are the most up to date http://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/css-books
Comment linking /presentations/css-books
on “Free Ebook: How to Code in HTML5 and CSS3”Submitted CSS Grid is Coming as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI run a VAT Registered business and we had one notification of the change of place of supply - despite the fact that we already do cross-border sales and allow our customers in the EU who have a VAT number to deal with VAT under the existing reverse charge rules. So we knew about it, but could have easily missed it. The people who didn't know about it are those it is the worst for. Small traders who were not VAT Reg…
Comment linking /archives/2014/10/13/the-horrible-implications-of-the-eu-vat-place-of-supply-change/
on ““I’m in the US – what if I just ignore the EU VAT changes?””Submitted Making Your Product a First Class Citizen (2013) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionEven when using semantic markup as you describe, there are still accessibility gotchas waiting to pounce. https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2019/06/04/grid-cont...
Comment linking /archives/2019/06/04/grid-content-re-ordering-and-accessibility/
on “Colleges improve website accessibility as they are defendants in lawsuits”Submitted Multiple-column layout, rows, rules, and floats as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
