Thomas Michael Semmler

Hi hello yes, I am a Developer focused on #a11y, HTML & CSS. Very queer, radical faerie 🏳️‍🌈. Musician and systemic psychosocial counsellor.

I am a strong enthusiast for the Web Platform, and what it stands for: openness, accessibility, empowerment, de-marginalisation. I sometimes blog on my website.

Contact me for counselling. I specialise in issues relevant to queer people and creative professionals.

Website: https://helloyes.dev
SVG Patterns: https://patterns.helloyes.dev
Counselling (in german): https://thomassemmler.com

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nachtfunke_at_indieweb.social@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2025-06-30 07:54:47 UTC

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omg right, that happens to me all the time and it always feels like the watch is throwing shade at me lol

2025-06-03 07:42:41 UTC

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> focus on the design that matters
That is a lovely term for someone who practices systemic counselling. Please elaborate how you are able to determine yourself what matters and what doesnt

2025-05-07 10:05:59 UTC

I must complain once again about working with the `w` descriptor and the `sizes` attribute. It is just so fucking difficult to verify whether the browser actually chose the size provided or not :/

2025-05-01 13:50:57 UTC

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in that case, I am not surprised 😂
My definition for “apple getting their shit together” would mean removing this crap entirely

2025-05-01 13:06:51 UTC

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I’m what context are you getting these notifications? I struggle to understand what app would possibly compose this
Or is this their famous “ai”

2025-04-01 15:36:05 UTC

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thanks, it does help to know 🫂

2025-04-01 10:14:21 UTC

God I fucking hate working with other libraries. I hate it so much. This is by far the worst part of this job. Diving into unmaintained discords, arrogant github communities, just waiting until someone barfs out "CAN YOU PROVIDE A REPL PLS", understandable but nasty, before even attempting to understand the issue. I dive and dive into docs and posts and youtube videos and ultimately I just cannot find what I look for, spend 20 hours on just browsing the web and end up making it myself #webdev

2025-03-28 21:50:13 UTC

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they are - that's a good tip, because I don't explicitly set the font-size on these elements. I'll give that a try
Sorry for the double reply. Not sure why the previous response just _lost_ it's thread? I may be having a boomer moment.
In aaaany case, setting the font-size had no effect either. It remains a mystery!

2025-03-28 21:28:07 UTC

I'm battling a really odd mobile #safari bug - or a behaviour I have yet to understand at least.
Buttons are super huge, different aspect ratio. I've tried literally everything including setting `-webkit-appearance: none;` and nothing works. Really odd.
#css
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/114/242/172/959/367/078/original/9330f03a21d754ae.png
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/114/242/172/961/248/887/original/7e619b49ea4f7f33.png

2025-03-25 15:23:35 UTC

Do I know someone who is experienced with react and material UI? I am almost imploding by stimply attempting to add a class name to the outermost wrapper of this component: https://mui.com/material-ui/api/select/
I don't know why for some forsaken reason, I can add whatever I want to all elements of the <TextField> component, but this dumb <Select> will not allow me to add a DUMB CSS CLASS to its wrapper. What the actual fuck

2025-03-22 13:40:27 UTC

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read them to filth

2025-03-22 10:25:51 UTC

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classic!

2025-03-21 22:08:20 UTC

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yes, this is what I want and what I think we need. Not creating DOM nodes with CSS for carousels.
Very excited for this, especially that this evolving via standard first.

2025-03-21 16:11:40 UTC

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yes! 1000%!

2025-03-21 16:10:58 UTC

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welche sorte(n) denn? :D

2025-03-20 23:32:35 UTC

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please don’t move fast and break things. Move slow and meep things together instead.

2025-03-20 23:30:21 UTC

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it’s cool that this is being played with but shouldn’t this come from Open UI instead? Or has it come from there?

2025-03-20 23:29:09 UTC

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I think that is a bit of an odd comparison. Scrollbars exist in the OS and there was at least a time, where we considered these things a concern of the OS as well. So it makes sense that we don’t have provide HTML to create these elements. Yes, that may be different now but I think it is entirely unprecedented. It is not the same. Scrollbars are basically a side effect and those arrow buttons come specific HTML elements. I cannot create them with CSS

2025-03-20 20:15:27 UTC

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this is cool but… isn’t this massively violating separation of concerns? CSS creates not-just-visual pseudo elements that have their own accessibility tree and I am assuming something like internal events at least. Should this not come from html?

2025-03-20 18:36:21 UTC

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I think all possible conjugations have been said in the replies already lol. But I’ll try:
When it comes to cuntism, one cuntifies the most, when serving fierce cuntiliciousness in a house down boots kinda way while loudly exclaiming: “fierce!”
Hope that helps! Happy birthday 😘

2025-03-19 10:04:17 UTC

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Again, I don't disagree. I just find it reductive. It is that train of thought that leads to "but why should designers have to reinvent a toggle for every project, can't there be a global design system?" and to "why should developers have to implement a toggle, shouldn't there be a global component library?".
Reduction, Reduction, Reduction - always from the organisations point of view, not from who it is delivered too.

2025-03-19 09:55:29 UTC

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I am not disagreeing, but again, this matters to an organisation. The value of naming tokens sensibly in your example is determined by how quickly it can lead to a certain output. This can be the leading difference in a system, but it is far from the only thing it can be.

2025-03-19 09:53:37 UTC

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right, but that language is still coming from a corporate point of view. That is obviously fine and valid, but the "delivery of features" as a property of a design system, is exactly what I am talking about here.
A systemic approach to design isn't excluding this, but it isn't _only_ that. Design Systems mustn't only be determined by what it can to for organisations.
Because bringing systemics into design can be just as valuable for an individual, regardless of external contribution

2025-03-19 09:49:18 UTC

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do I understand you correctly, that you are talking about expressions, values and rules that bubble to the surface as someone in your org uses the component library?

2025-03-19 09:48:16 UTC

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just to clarify how you unterstand the term "emergence" within this context. Form a systemics point of view, I understand emergence as a structure that appears as a system moves linearly in time towards an attractor. So in group dynamics, we can consider social rules to be "emergent", because they somewhat appear over time and structurally determine the system itself as time goes on and the group (=system) moves towards something

2025-03-19 09:36:27 UTC

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That is why the current discourse rarely makes a difference between "design system" and "component library". Because for organisations, the value of a design system can be summarise neatly with the existence and implementation of a component library.
The first thing you learn when diving even superficially into systemics is that a system is where an observer sees relationship between units. An organisation by nature observes something different than a person, a designer or a user.

2025-03-19 09:34:09 UTC

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thats a good question. One which many find confusifying.
A very long answer would be appropriate, but I'll condense it as so: For orgs, a design system is a system determined seeing relationships in its design process. For people, a design system is where relationships are seen within design elements.
Orgs want single sources of truths, centralised control and unified delivery pipelines. People want to be able to express complex relationships.

2025-03-19 08:09:48 UTC

This day feels like a very good reminder that Design Systems serve Organisations, not People.
It doesn't have to be that way, but it surely is at this time.

2025-03-19 05:54:48 UTC

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but you know that captchas are primarily a way to train AI models. Nobody believes these are appropriate challenges, but people are gladly willing to make things inaccessible to get training data

2025-03-19 05:50:48 UTC

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I’m happy I designated dribbble a lost cause years ago. I couldn’t believe that email when I read it. How arrogant, desperate and disrespectful.

2025-03-08 12:10:18 UTC

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obviously I absolutely agree. I just don’t think that we as devs usually have that power anymore. I myself was forced to specifically implement deceptive patterns by CEOs or do implement tracking scripts of that magnitude without consent until “someone complains” and if I pushed back I was threatened because of “noncompliance”.

2025-03-08 12:04:16 UTC

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typo, GTM

2025-03-08 11:36:40 UTC

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hm, more than justified an outrage, definitely. Nur tools like GTN have been shifting that power away from devs for a long time. Plus, devs may not have had any choice in whether or not to put it in. Not defending it, im just questioning whether it is useful to consider devs the ones in power. I have myself been in this position very often where marketing personell just doesn’t care and I was forced.

2025-03-06 13:14:52 UTC

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I hate that you have to have the company's name redacted in your article on your very own website :/

2025-03-02 14:13:55 UTC

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I think we’re going to a certain era of disillusionment. Consider how willingly tech companies dropped DEIB policies, how they devoutly obeyed the ridiculous demands of the new fascist US government. Yes, scale and hierarchy makes a difference when taking about these things, but its values can be found in all layers and expressions of tech in some form or another. And one of these values is the need for scaling by reducing human labor in order to maximize profit.

2025-03-02 14:10:02 UTC

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I entirely empathize with you because I have felt the same disappointment and consequential wave of self-doubt about my own convictions and judgement of these things. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing we continue to underestimate, is how equivalent tech is to organized religion and how willing even capable and reasonable people are to accept its dogmas and blindly follow its prophets and evangelists.

2025-03-02 14:06:17 UTC

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someone said on mastodon a while ago, that the only “problem” AI companies are trying to solve is wages. So from that pov, it makes much more sense. Because quality is irrelevant. The question is, is it adequate enough to fool someone, anyone, that it actually made something. And years of working in tech has taught me that dehumanizing “users” and painting them as dumb and exclusively need driven is considered a must. So these things fit together well, unfortunately :/

2025-03-01 17:34:18 UTC

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what the actual fuck lol

2025-03-01 07:35:15 UTC

And just like that, allergy season has started

2025-02-28 17:37:26 UTC

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I didn’t know you are also a runner! Looks stunning!

2025-02-25 15:39:07 UTC

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the entire field has become a minefield to me. I must put my trust in influencers as experts on this topic. My approach to digital accessibility is that I rely on people like you to guide me because I don’t have the means and time to assert the trustworthiness of organizations. I assume that every company will exploit any people, especially those that rely on their services. I had a certain trust in deque, but this makes me question it.

2025-02-25 15:34:04 UTC

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is this a sign that deque as a company is not trustworthy?

2025-02-15 14:06:10 UTC

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that true - as long as Microsoft wants it so. I am personally not willing to take that deal - but what you say makes total sense. I’ve come to the conclusion though that the vast majority of data can indeed perish over time. What should be conserved can be my own conscious choice then. And to be honest, I personally have more trust in the longevity of a printed photo than a photo on a file system :D

2025-02-15 13:55:16 UTC

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it wasn’t intended to sound like an attack, I’m sorry. I was genuinely interested to hear what your usage for onedrive is. Thanks for elaborating. In the end, it’s not for me to decide what tech is appropriate for someone. Yet I want people to remain autonomous and in control over their own data. As long as you are happy, that is all that matters.

2025-02-15 13:43:35 UTC

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all this to say is that many of these problems look more complicated than they really are. And it is in the companies interest to uphold this illusion so they can not only sell us but make us dependent on bullshit services

2025-02-15 13:24:00 UTC

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vscode is shit. Windows is a somewhat nasty necessity if you game, other than that I don’t see a need for this either. I don’t need ads in my start menu, wtf. Microsoft is one of the most evil companies ever. And I genuinely do not understand what one would use onedrive for, unless you sync multiple windows machines. Actually interested to hear what you need onedrive for.

2025-02-15 11:14:03 UTC

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it’s constantly on my mind as well. I’m also always thinking about using a self hosted gitlab. But I never know if I would be able to manage this with my limited self-hosting experience and abilities.

2025-02-05 12:58:51 UTC

Hello #webcomponents people. Lets say you need to do a <custom-parent><custom-child> typ of thing, how do you actually do that? I am asking because I noticed that the connectedCallback is firing twice, once you move things around in there and I don't know how to fix it.
I am not using shadow dom.
#webdev #webcomponents #html #css #javascript

2025-02-04 10:13:13 UTC

Do you know of directories, libraries, websites etc. that list a variety of different web components?
I am not looking for component libraries or complete frameworks, I am looking for standalone web components.
#html #css #javascript #webdev #webcomponents

2025-02-02 16:38:14 UTC

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I’m shamed to admit, I don’t know what ASML is :(

2025-01-29 12:11:06 UTC

Okay #react people. Say for example, you are loading data from an API and you have to process it further after it was loaded before you can actually render it somewhere. Are you writing the function that fetches data to return data, or are you still writing the data to state and you have a separate useEffect that processes that data whenever it changes?

2025-01-21 08:28:26 UTC

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ich kann auch auf orf.at keinen Artikel finden - ich find es echt arg, dass darüber nicht berichtet wird in unseren Medien.

2024-12-20 11:55:38 UTC

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just so I understand, Safari's behaviour here is the intended, correct way?

2024-12-19 11:29:24 UTC

My blind spot in web dev is that I absolutely hate working with responsive images. Working with the `w` descriptor just won't click for me. It feels imprecise and after almost 10 years of responsive images I still cannot confidently read from dev tools, whether the browser actually chose the image I encouraged it to. The sizes attribute continues to be an enigma.
This is not an invitation for you to link me to your blog post, I have read them all, it just won't click.
#html #css #webdev

2024-12-06 10:57:31 UTC

I'm at this point in my tech career, where I make follow up calls to e-mails I have sent because I cannot be sure they actually got it lol

2024-11-20 08:50:29 UTC

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there is obviously reasoning behind it, but I wish it wasn't obfuscated. I just want to understand it.
But most of all I want things to be congruent in both ways. It should land in HTML first before JavaScript gets access. Why can JavaScript open it, which is constantly used to misappropriate and break the web for people, but HTML cannot even control itself? That is so fucking dumb.

2024-11-20 08:49:19 UTC

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what an odd phrasing. Very messy if you ask me, because if that is so and opening the dialog on any other occasion but on page load is an expression of attempting to represent an unintended "type of control", then why was the JavaScript method added to do so?
Stuff like this makes me really angry, because this entire thing just reads as a sloppy implementation without reasoning. Not only that, but events are incomplete as well: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLDialogElement#events - no open events

2024-11-07 12:52:20 UTC

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one may see an interesting (or also unsurprising) correlation here 😘

2024-11-05 07:34:52 UTC

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i think choose lemons with the promise of scaling, in many areas. It’s not true of course, but that is the story that they are telling themselves and other people. Today, I see agencies and in house teams alike talk about next like they talked about with Wordpress. The narrative of a unified stack that will allow them to move faster and save cost in the process is what sells them. Same is true for individuals. Performance is irrelevant as long as the process is cheaper.

2024-10-31 22:26:11 UTC

Whenever I stand up to sprint on my bike I sometimes get an immediate sharp #pain in my #knee, like a knife. It’ll persist for a few hours when that happens. I don’t know what that is. I can run for up to 3 hours and bike even longer sitting down with my knees being entirely unaffected, but if I make one tiny powerful movement standing up the bike, it’s basically over for a while.
I cannot find anything online on that topic. #cycling #running

2024-10-18 12:51:38 UTC

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Pasta Queen hat auch ein Rezept das hier gut adaptiert werden könnte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQf56gB0SLc - hier sind's halt Mandeln, getrocknete Tomaten & Ricotta. Aber experimentieren hier lohnt sich.
Wobei ich zugeben muss, ich würd mit den Walnüssen experimentieren und evl. Pekanüsse verwenden oder sie Nüsse vorher rösten, weil sie können doch recht bitter sein.

2024-10-18 12:50:28 UTC

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ich würd's ganz gleich machen wie jedes andere Pesto auch, nur anstatt Basilikum & Pinienkerne dann eben Walnüsse und Ricotta. Letztendlich ist ja jedes Pesto doch eine Kräutersauce, daher würd ich da halt mit was passendem Experimentieren als Basis. Petersilie oder Minze, vielleicht Salbei würden als Basis gut gehen?
Ich orientiere mich an Helen Rennie's Rezept. Link zum Timestamp mit Non-Basil Pesto Ideen: https://youtu.be/qnZZ63D4T2Q?si=GL4GGa5iOYr9NhYQ&t=516

2024-10-18 12:37:48 UTC

It is indisputably true that once you make your own pesto, you will not ever be able to consume that substance they put in jars and label the same ever again.

2024-09-12 14:37:11 UTC

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I've been reading this for so long but for a while now, instead of having them on their website, it is now a mailchimp link. Do you happen to know why that is? I cannot seem to get the feed to the links on their website.

2024-09-09 19:30:26 UTC

I'm a bit of a pickle. I launched my interim website for my counselling business. Very bare bones with really nothing on it.
The truth is, I just need some tracking. I need to know about people coming to the website. But I just cannot afford any of the privacy-preserving analytics solution.
I think I just may have to switch to god awful google analytics until the business runs good enough to buy fathom/plausible.
I really dislike that privacy, even to website visitors must be bought.

2024-09-09 17:22:10 UTC

Nowadays Apple events really are the height of corporate cringe.

2024-09-01 14:23:59 UTC

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i was facing a similar issue a few years ago. I realized that most of the fonts of adobe, back then typekit, were not theirs either. Most of them were from specific designers or foundries, other companies. I contacted the studio directly from the font we needed and we got a license from themselves directly.
Obviously rather expensive upfront cost. But that depends on the font itself and your specific usage.

2024-07-31 07:17:44 UTC

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This is really bringing the windows experience to Mac OS. I already had to restart my system 5 times and I can still not use this stupid external SSD

2024-07-31 06:57:14 UTC

I bought an external SSD to store some business files and I am losing my shit. Why do I have to install 4 pieces of software, one of which will force me to access the kernel settings just to use a fucking external hard drive?
These products should come with a warning label: Forces you to sacrifice a rare rainbow elven child before use.
What is even happening