Intro to poetic css

content/blog/2026/poetic-css-intro.md

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+---
+title: CSS is one big progressive enhancement
+sub: An intro to my upcoming Poetic CSS course
+author: miriam
+date: 2026-02-12
+summary:
+  I hear over and over
+  that CSS feels like a series of workarounds,
+  rather than a unified system.
+  And sometimes that's because
+  there are essential features missing from the language,
+  but often it's a problem
+  with the way CSS is taught.
+---
+
+Since coding my first website
+in the early 2000's,
+taking my first client in 2006,
+and starting OddBird a few years later,
+I've dedicated my career
+to helping address this issue from all sides.
+I started sharing CSS tools in Sass
+then joined the Sass core team,
+started teaching at conferences
+and on the Mozilla developer channel,
+and eventually became part of the
+CSS Working Group --
+designing features like cascade layers,
+scope, and container queries.
+All of that while working with OddBird
+to build top-shelf
+web sites and applications
+for clients around the world.
+
+A lot has changed over those 20 years,
+with new CSS features rolling out
+faster than ever.
+But underneath the heap of different properties and values
+that we usually learn,
+there's a logic that holds it all together --
+and that hasn't really changed at all.
+Instead,
+new CSS features like variables and cascade layers
+have given us more and more _direct access_
+to understand and manipulate
+the internal features that make CSS
+both _powerful_ and also _complicated_.
+
+This is not some secret
+that's been kept from you,
+but often a fundamental confusion
+about the role of design on the web,
+and the problem CSS was created to address --
+a problem that doesn't exist
+in any other design context.
+
+The purpose of CSS,
+and the driving logic of the language
+is _progressive enhancement_:
+design that will work
+across different browsers,
+on different platforms and devices,
+with different interfaces,
+in different languages and writing modes,
+while leaving the end user
+with full control of the outcome.
+
+A world wide web:
+[on everything,
+for everyone](https://w3.org/Consortium/mission.html#principles).
+
+Many of us learned about
+progressive enhancement
+as one _approach_ to web development --
+a way of thinking about our sites
+so that they will work for more people.
+That's often framed as a moral argument,
+something that you _should_ consider
+for the sake of inclusion.
+But I want to show you
+how CSS is a progressive enhancement
+_from the inside out_,
+and not a complication
+that you can opt out of.
+
+If you want to design websites,
+CSS is the only way to do it.
+And if you write CSS,
+then there's no way to avoid progressive enhancement.
+It's the foundation of the language,
+and the driving force behind every
+strength and weakness that CSS has.
+If you find that impractical,
+you're probably right!
+Universal design certainly makes things complicated!
+But you'll be surprised how much of the work
+CSS can do for us if we let it.
+And if you try to reject those principles,
+you will be fighting the language at every step.
+
+With that goal in mind,
+we can revisit the various features of CSS
+and see how they all fit together
+from that underlying principle.
+Not to gloss over the rough edges
+(CSS has
+[its share of mistakes](https://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes))
+but to _understand where they come from_.
+
+Once we understand CSS
+as a series of progressive enhancements,
+we can revisit the essential features
+and put them in context,
+to really understand how they work.
+The result is a language
+that prioritizes resilience over precision,
+and _showing your work_ over _getting the right answer_.
+
+Like poetry,
+CSS works best when
+we choose our words carefully
+to _express our intent_
+without being overly restrictive.
+
+There are many excellent CSS courses in the world,
+and I recommend learning from more than one source.
+But this course is all about systems:
+
+- Understanding the internal system logic of CSS itself
+- And building our own systems to efficiently work with CSS
+
+We'll talk about individual features
+like flexbox and grid and container queries,
+but we'll also re-visit
+underlying principles like inheritance,
+the cascade, and value resolution.
+I want to completely change how you think about
+something like 'CSS variables' --
+fundamentally different
+from any other variables
+in any other language --
+so that you have more tools to reach for
+in every-day situations.
+
+The goal is extremely practical and grounded:
+helping you write better CSS,
+more quickly and efficiently.
+If you're doing it by hand,
+or having an LLM to write it for you --
+either way,
+your job is to make it work.
+But to get there you have to understand
+how all the pieces fit together.
+
+Without that understanding,
+all you have is a bag of memorized tricks.
+
+## Making progress
+
+We've been planning this course for a while,
+but fitting it in around other projects
+made it slow to pick up momentum --
+and we didn't want to start selling something
+that only exists in our minds!
+
+It's not done,
+but we're getting to the point
+where we have actual lessons
+to share with early subscribers.
+Maybe that's you?
+
+The course structure is roughed in,
+many of the demos have been built,
+slide decks and transcripts/articles are taking shape,
+I've done some camera tests
+(using old lights from my Mozilla videos),
+and I'm starting to film
+the first set of lessons.
+
+But there's a lot more to do
+Turning a series of videos into a _course_
+that you can access.
+Hopefully we'll get that infrastructure in place soon --
+a landing page with the course outline,
+a checkout flow,
+and a platform you can log into
+for access.
+We're working on it!
+
+You're in the right place
+to get updates along the way.