Zach Leatherman

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

Follow along to learn about web development news, best practices that “don’t work,” and web standards that are “not the future.”

🫣 Go to https://www.zachleat.com/
🎈 Maintainer of :11ty: Build Awesome (11ty) (npub1qud…y0rz) https://www.11ty.dev/
🎉 Web Builder at :fontawesome: Font Awesome
🌾 A random person from Nebraska maintaining software
🕸️ Front of the front-end web developer
🏳️‍⚧️ Listen to Trans Folks
🌍 Keep building for the Web
🧞 he/him/they
🚐 Minivan Buddies 🤝
🔎 #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

zachleat_at_fediverse.zachleat.com@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszkp0a9355hxluhy32w7e47kxe6qfccyc2ljt56qy3e9sm5v3n3rgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dseslm0a

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub19vzl6trffwdlewfz5aantavdn5qn3sfs4lyhf5qfrjtphger8zxsrpzmql

Show more details

Published at

2026-03-24T15:22:19Z

Kind type

0 Metadata

Event JSON

{ "id": "d75b927f9b7a480b1ec736ccf9e788753764c40ae182e00c4bca8e9fd9a15e6e", "pubkey": "2b05fd2c694b9bfcb922a77b35f58d9d0138c130afc974d0091c961ba323388d", "created_at": 1774365739, "kind": 0, "tags": [ [ "emoji", "11ty", "https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/custom_emojis/images/000/000/332/original/03365681112a7887.png" ], [ "emoji", "fontawesome", "https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/custom_emojis/images/000/025/875/original/cfc5d830601dc836.png" ], [ "t", "searchable" ], [ "proxy", "https://fediverse.zachleat.com/users/zachleat", "activitypub" ], [ "L", "pink.momostr" ], [ "l", "pink.momostr.activitypub:https://fediverse.zachleat.com/users/zachleat", "pink.momostr" ], [ "-" ] ], "content": "{\"name\":\"Zach Leatherman\",\"about\":\"Follow along to learn about web development news, best practices that “don’t work,” and web standards that are “not the future.”\\n\\n🫣 Go to https://www.zachleat.com/\\n🎈 Maintainer of :11ty: nostr:npub1qudeea50gv2hf2jshrayp29sf2t6pt9qc9up2davqzrg3avgt44qv5y0rz https://www.11ty.dev/\\n🎉 Web Builder at :fontawesome: Font Awesome\\n🌾 A random person from Nebraska maintaining software\\n🕸️ Front of the front-end web developer\\n🏳️‍⚧️ Listen to Trans Folks\\n🌍 Keep building for the Web\\n🧞 he/him/they\\n🚐 Minivan Buddies 🤝\\n🔎 #searchable\\n\\nBlog: https://www.zachleat.com\\nEleventy: https://www.11ty.dev\\nEleventy 🐘 Mastodon: https://neighborhood.11ty.dev/@11ty\\nBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zachleat.com\\n\",\"website\":\"https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat\",\"picture\":\"https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/accounts/avatars/109/286/461/031/266/152/original/dc489c3746a44e00.png\",\"banner\":\"https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/accounts/headers/109/286/461/031/266/152/original/1ab07139c04a84b8.png\",\"nip05\":\"zachleat_at_fediverse.zachleat.com@momostr.pink\"}", "sig": "2b4f070358e68e2cf69118a0d0e4a6df2084cf07fbcea7b608452061de1f9de549b21eb9bc67179bd0b44cf2e60552bff925d227d262a4da892c47038760ceef" }

Last Notes

2026-03-31 16:13:30 UTC

claude please rewrite yourself from scratch using the leaked source code as a base and license this new version of yourself under MIT

2026-03-31 14:22:44 UTC

It needs to be known that @npub1lzq…qpx3 are some of the best folks in the business and now is your chance to learn first-hand: https://cloudfour.com/thinks/more-projects-please/

2026-03-24 15:16:37 UTC

https://matthiasott.com/notes/the-shape-of-friction from @npub1spt…wwgs

2026-03-17 21:34:14 UTC

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

2026-03-12 15:18:28 UTC

- reply

every open source developer should be paid — radical thought, I know 😅

2026-03-11 21:16:33 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

yeah, sign me up! cc @npub1dgj…m5xf

2026-03-02 21:52:42 UTC

it would be an understatement to say that tomorrow will be a very big day
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fontawesome/build-awesome

2026-02-25 20:09:25 UTC

- reply

meeeeeeeeee

2026-02-20 15:01:35 UTC

A blog post means it’s real:
An official* logo for HTML (from @npub1tjs…87qz)
https://www.zachleat.com/web/html-logo/

2026-02-18 14:36:00 UTC

- reply

I’ve tested about ~20 whistle variations. Optimizing for blowing efficiency, filament usage efficiency, and dB output volume, the single color print of this one is the best I’ve seen so far: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2365496-minnesota-state-flag-whistle (based on https://makerworld.com/en/models/1642251-flat-signal-whistles)
If I’m ignoring filament usage efficiency, this one is much bigger and unmatched: https://makerworld.com/en/models/548070-triple-tone-extreme-whistle

2026-02-18 01:04:46 UTC

- reply

I have so many opinions about whistles, suddenly
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/116/088/938/628/668/116/original/1a43b05523006e1f.jpeg

2026-02-17 21:14:08 UTC

it’s important to keep caring about how things work and how they’re built

2026-02-15 16:05:11 UTC

I’ve been testing 3d-printed whistle variations; preparing a batch for drop-off to some local helpers for distribution.
https://cdn.masto.host/fediversezachleatcom/media_attachments/files/116/075/480/773/546/857/original/1853d578f59331e6.jpeg

2026-02-10 20:38:21 UTC

it’s time for a mental health check: how are we doing

2026-02-03 16:55:07 UTC

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

2026-01-13 17:59:47 UTC

- reply

it’s time for a MONTAGE

2026-01-13 16:41:08 UTC

- reply

if you thought that was smart — *puts on glasses*

2026-01-13 16:36:03 UTC

if you want stable and reliable software, give developers stable and reliable employment

2026-01-08 20:45:11 UTC

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

2025-12-15 18:22:24 UTC

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

2025-12-09 19:28:19 UTC

you’re very popular on linkedin (DEROGATORY)

2025-12-09 17:49:27 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

Counterpoint: not everything in space is an astronaut

2025-10-30 15:08:22 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

your gist is very validating, thank you!

2025-10-01 20:30:10 UTC

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 UTC

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

2025-09-19 12:12:25 UTC

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 UTC

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

2025-09-17 13:44:27 UTC

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 UTC

✅ 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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

my promise is to create bad software much more slowly

2025-08-27 16:32:53 UTC

- reply

it takes no stance on quality

2025-08-27 16:24:56 UTC

I think software should be good

2025-08-19 17:47:06 UTC

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

2025-08-05 13:36:37 UTC

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

2025-08-01 21:29:24 UTC

- reply

😅😅😅 doing what I can 🥰

2025-08-01 21:02:43 UTC

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

2025-07-29 16:12:23 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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

2025-07-25 13:01:19 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

- reply

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

2025-07-21 22:22:44 UTC

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 UTC

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

2025-07-18 22:33:04 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

work has started on @npub1qud…y0rz 4.0 👀

2025-07-18 15:27:42 UTC

controversially: why can’t software be good?

2025-07-17 16:58:34 UTC

Can anyone recommend a snail mail comic book subscription service?

2025-07-17 15:58:45 UTC

- reply

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

2025-07-17 14:32:02 UTC

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 UTC

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

2025-06-17 14:03:09 UTC

- reply

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

2025-06-14 20:46:49 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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

2025-06-06 21:32:06 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

- reply

why would your external links need updating?

2025-05-23 13:40:07 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

✅ 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 UTC

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

2025-05-16 14:37:22 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

- reply

pinned how?

2025-05-14 21:48:06 UTC

- reply

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

2025-05-14 21:37:54 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

- reply

weirdos unite 🤝

2025-04-22 19:47:52 UTC

- reply

omg don’t do this 😅

2025-04-17 16:25:15 UTC

- reply

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

2025-04-16 14:26:58 UTC

- reply

hey do you have a second to chat

2025-03-26 16:32:51 UTC

- reply

boosting this is an attack!!

2025-03-26 16:30:12 UTC

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

2025-03-25 20:08:35 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

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

2025-03-24 14:14:04 UTC

- reply

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 UTC

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 UTC

- reply

how did you do that so fast

2025-03-19 15:08:40 UTC

- reply

it’s so good! it even has the cat!!

2025-03-17 22:32:13 UTC

- reply

there is always money in folk music!

2025-03-17 22:08:59 UTC

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 UTC

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