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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npub1lpjsp4e4aguw8frxw67dwpspzygj06e5d25qvupyqaev3dema0zssa5j0h

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[email protected]

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nprofile1qqs0segq6u675w8r53n8d0xhqcq3zyf8av6x42qxwqjqwukgkua7h3gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds7v7039

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relay.damus.io

nos.lol

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npub1lpjsp4e4aguw8frxw67dwpspzygj06e5d25qvupyqaev3dema0zssa5j0h

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Last Notes

2026-01-04 17:13:19 UTC

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is that the one with the cat-like species?

2025-09-02 20:23:54 UTC

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that's essentially what I am doing already as a workaround! To workaround, instead of reading from the custom prop, the value from another prop that actually reads that custom prop is read.
In my case, the variable contains a clamp() value. Reading it directly, will give me that clamp() as a string. So instead, I am now reading the padding from another element which uses that custom prop. That will then contain the computed value.

2025-09-02 20:04:53 UTC

So, I use getPropertyValue() quite often to read some value from CSS custom properties. But I fail when it contains one of those awesome #CSS values, like clamp() or max().
Is there a way in #javascript to somehow get the computed, calculated pixel value of something like this?
Background here is that I am working with a javascript library that requires some things to be set in pixel values, but I work with fluid values all throughout the site.

2025-08-06 16:56:26 UTC

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this circulates in my mind as well, but then again I wonder if the trail of enshittification will follow anything that is a _platform_ and if I should just self host :/ did you ever consider that as well?

2025-07-29 18:36:58 UTC

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how would they ever verify it, and what difference would it possibly make?

2025-07-29 18:36:35 UTC

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what a weird demand. Like why do they care? It makes no difference besides them believing that you used it.
I think I may ha e literally said „yes sure whatever you say, I am definitely using the stochastic parrot to write your code“ and then just not do it lol

2025-06-30 07:56:18 UTC

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someone told me once that whenever it tells you your training load, it looks at the accumulated quantified effort from that point on plus 7 days in the past. So if you’re doing a really hard workout, it may only affect your training load a week later or something lol

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

2025-06-29 20:58:35 UTC

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that Brittany Broski sticker is *hysterical*, I laughed out loud

2025-06-19 19:14:08 UTC

Longest ride today
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/114/711/621/930/939/694/original/f65679a97a0f5d62.png

2025-06-18 12:37:40 UTC

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absolutely. I've learned to accept that these types of frameworks don't emerge because they solve a problem, they emerge because their creators or investors can see a business case for it.

2025-06-18 12:30:41 UTC

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right? "No magic" but also "don't worry about it".
One mustn't ever consider _any_ service or "Product" in tech to be persistent. I cannot think of worse ideas but to make your entire service or product 100% dependent on something like Cloudflare. Wtf.

2025-06-18 12:06:05 UTC

Love that one proclaim to build a web framework around „web fundamentals“, yet also make it an essential hard requirement to lock in on cloudflare.

2025-06-10 10:27:55 UTC

Living with body dysmorphia is a _wild_ thing because you never know how you see yourself when you look at a picture. I attended a wedding this weekend and I just saw some pictures with me on it and I look like an entirely different person. At first I didn't even recognise myself lol.

2025-06-08 20:08:32 UTC

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„AI Developer“ - enough said.
Thank you for calling this out. It’s appalling. And we’ll be seeing lots of this from now on.

2025-06-08 20:06:21 UTC

What are you thinking taking out your Tupperware salmon on a flight? I really sometimes wish I was just a tiny bit sensitive. My god. Honestly people. One can’t always control the the smell one omits, but you can choose not to EAT FISH IN AN AIRPLANE

2025-06-05 07:18:00 UTC

Why is it that every time that I travel, I find some entirely minor thing that I wish I had done better that will haunt me over the trip. Like I’m on my way to the airport and all I can think about is „I should have clipped my nails once more“
So stupid lol

2025-06-04 17:47:46 UTC

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Sometimes that happens, but I’ve also found myself in the opposite direction where I eventually had to switch to grid instead.
But yes, it happens a lot. I don’t think it’s a skill issue or case of bad api design. I think grid just misses some things. Or, we’re just so used to repelling fixed values, that they look like magic numbers to is every time we use them.

2025-06-04 07:45:10 UTC

I'll be in #Manchester from Thursday to Sunday and I have some time to spend. Got any recommendations for things to do? Also if you know a good place for #coffee I'd appreciated a hint!

2025-06-03 10:33:24 UTC

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"material", as in material ui for example.

2025-06-03 10:32:59 UTC

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the two way street is only one if you make it so! If you rely on material, it is a one way street. The two way street being, that feedback can flow bidirectionally.
Then again also look at the vocabulary of design systems. People who use its components are often considered "consumers", not co-creators.
I am also not saying that this expression of design systems is inherit to the idea, it is just evident in how it is constructed. One most definitely can build design systems differently.

2025-06-03 09:55:42 UTC

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in these ideas it's not about output. It's more about "Haltung", about your own perspective and stance toward yourself, your craft, and how and what you consider those affected by the decisions you as a craftsperson get to make, and those that get made for you.
Design systems mostly sell a premise of scalability by postulating that designers mustn't decide what a button or an input element or a tab looks like. So they make that decisions for us. People are affected by these decisions.

2025-06-03 09:52:29 UTC

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so inevitably, a leading difference ("Leitdifferenz") emerges by which is determined, what to cover and what not to cover.
And we know how profit-oriented organisations must decide in these cases.

2025-06-03 09:49:58 UTC

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you haven't misunderstood it at all, because you say that context must matter for decision making.
My argument is more than other disciplines, design is about empathising context and making decisions around that. A design system abstracts that process entirely and postulates pre-fabricated decisions. Now, depending on how that systems considers the designer-enduser relationship, it may already cover a wide variety of potential contexts. But it cannot cover everything

2025-06-03 07:52:40 UTC

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well, that entirely serves my point. This sentence may one day come to haunt you.

2025-06-03 07:46:49 UTC

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I feel like that answer speaks for itself. Because you've just brilliantly demonstrated, that designers have been habituated to understand their discipline to be entirely in service of efficient value extraction.
A valid way of thinking. But the world view it relies is dehumanised to the core and it devaluates the core craft of design work to what it can do for businesses.
Ironically, the entire point of my article - scaling is the only leading difference for industry.

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

2025-06-03 07:41:31 UTC

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love to hear it, please tell me more about it!

2025-05-24 12:40:00 UTC

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also, in that same line of arguments - we used to have a frameset doctype that literally would solve so many use cases. Was killed with html 5. probably for good reasons, but I feel like it was killed too early instead of evolving it.

2025-05-24 12:38:29 UTC

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I remember a time when it was entirely normal to use technology literally intended for these purposes: php
I am not sure how it became so frowned upon. Maybe not even so - maybe the skillset is just different. But this is somewhat php‘s original purpose

2025-05-24 12:09:10 UTC

For three days and nights now, a sneeze has been tickling my nose from the insight. Announcing itself and rising toward 99% of sneezability but never getting there. Very frustrating.
Experience has taught me that when it eventually gets out, it will be so powerful that the entirety of vienna is probably gonna hear it.

2025-05-21 17:52:44 UTC

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wtf… didn’t see this one coming. Once again we’re reminded that design is not hasn’t been oriented by the needs of people but by the needs of capitalism

2025-05-18 13:54:20 UTC

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I am unsure what went wrong there. Usually, one can see the early signs of enshittification in these situations. As in, one can infer the intent that lead to the decisions for such an experience. But here it just seems like bad design.
I see another option, they couldn’t technically make it work. Both make me suspicious of its ability to dethrone figma.

2025-05-17 23:28:42 UTC

I cannot believe that #eurovision is coming to Austria again. But 0 points for Switzerland is crazy. And this many votes for Israel is also disappointing. Or, to be more precise, disillusioning.

2025-05-17 16:38:55 UTC

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The god awful pricing and continuous and inevitable enshittification of #figma basically forces me to use penpot at this point, so I'll basically power through it.
But my goodness, it is frustrating to work with :/
Yet I put all my hopes in it, because Figmas days are very much counted.
#design #ui #ux

2025-05-17 16:37:25 UTC

I am really frustrated with #penpot. I need it to succeed but it just won't get it _quite_ right in executing.
The UI & UX for managing tokens for example is just so bad. I really want them to step up their game because it just fails in the necessary details.
A simple example is that in order for me to choose a token, for example a color, for a background color. It will not be presented as an option in background color, I must go to a different panel dedicated for token management. Like what

2025-05-11 12:25:04 UTC

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I hate that there is already someone in the replies from figma doing damage control. “Accessibility is beta” what a fucking sentence

2025-05-10 14:04:47 UTC

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well, I wouldn’t call the 2500km I have run since then “procrastination”

2025-05-10 13:36:22 UTC

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what procrastination? 😅

2025-05-10 12:09:56 UTC

First half marathon distance after two years of being too afraid to attempt it #running
https://cdn.masto.host/indiewebsocial/media_attachments/files/114/483/459/241/692/621/original/56314d336d7c1091.png

2025-05-09 10:00:02 UTC

Heyo #eleventy people. I am using eleventy image and I have noticed that in certain instances it creates blurry edges on images.
I originally thought it was an issue with the figma export, but the problem is only visible after eleventy image has processed the images. Any ideas?

2025-05-07 15:29:37 UTC

I thought they had gotten the message. And yet today, I found a grey-yellowish bird turd on my laundry. A pigeon shat on my drying bed sheets.
This is war.

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 :/

2025-05-07 09:28:28 UTC

My goddess, seriously. Every time I use google fonts it has disintegrated even further in some way. Now I cannot even download specific weights any more, I have to download the entire thing?
Why does this keep happening? It feels like every 6 months, someone makes this website a bit shittier by intention

2025-05-07 08:00:12 UTC

Hello #eleventy people! I am using the #i18n plugin and I am having a weird issue in which collections created within language-specific directories don't set their respective language and instead use the fallback language. So any collection item created in `fr/` or `it/` will only ever have a `page.lang` of `de` because that is the fallback.
What could possibly cause this?

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”

2025-04-26 17:01:18 UTC

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we laugh about this now, but this doesn’t seem too far from plausible, given the state of things xD

2025-04-17 18:59:22 UTC

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oh yes indeed - not you belittling them, the other way around.
Google mustn’t be trusted with this kind of stuff.

2025-04-17 18:37:49 UTC

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this is a fascinating GitHub issue because it illustrates the process of marginalization within discourse, in my opinion. There’s a German word for some of the discourse in there: “Bagatellisierung” is what I would call it. It describes a psychological defense mechanism by downplaying facts or belittling the severity of consequences.
An issue that is already starting with “we here at google feel…” is already a red flag at this point,

2025-04-16 07:18:09 UTC

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literally me with page transitions. Couldn't care less about this but people think it's the holy grail of everything

2025-04-16 07:06:01 UTC

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I hear you. Yet at the same time, a trigger (as in something causing a flashback, or "intrusion") can be any form of sensory input. The strongest one being smells, but even accents, dialects or weather phenomena can be true triggers to people.
I'll put CW's on things that have been known to be common intrusion-inducing triggers and not things like selfies. But yet at the same I also won't be posting selfies anyway so.. xD

2025-04-14 17:44:47 UTC

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though at the same time, with the inflationary use of therapy speak in some communities, I wonder how much of what is considered a trigger could really be classified as one.
All this to say that I relate to what you’re saying.

2025-04-14 17:42:17 UTC

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it’s a double edged sword because it does protect peile from (intrusion inducing) triggering situations in some cases. But mental health professionals are also lamenting it because it hinders integrative aspects of trauma therapies :/

2025-04-13 08:57:31 UTC

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lol

2025-04-12 03:45:20 UTC

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I’m so so sorry. Google is not a good place to be.

2025-04-11 10:35:05 UTC

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and obviously I 100% agree with @npub15dl…nlg5 and you on this. A certification is not at all a replacement. I'm afraid I have to see these things very separately. The certificate will _allow_ me to do the actual work. To _learn how to do_ the actual work, there are other ways. @npub1jpy…yfwv summarised it really well.
Does that make sense?

2025-04-11 10:33:31 UTC

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the thing is, I've been in a few situations where clients require an official audit. Maybe it is a bit different in Austria, where these certifications, while surely superficial in certain contexts, get you very far and in many instances serve as an entrance ticket.
If I wanna start offering this as a service, _knowing_ how to do it is not enough. As is experience in these instances. What they want, and often require, is a sheet of paper that verifies your credentials.

2025-04-11 08:52:35 UTC

Hello #a11y people - I've been wanting to get some sort of training & certification, that'll allow me to officially perform accessibility audits for websites. Is the IAAP still _the_ thing to do? Or is there a different type of certification that I should work towards?
I am understanding that certification does not equal ability.
#webdev #accessibility

2025-04-04 19:15:06 UTC

90% of people have a foto of themselves in Amsterdam on a canal bridge on Hinge. Are they all bots or wtf is going on here?? #gay #hinge

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

2025-03-28 19:20:20 UTC

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I’ve been looking for a new privacy focused analytics tool as well but holy shit they are getting even more expensive!

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

2025-03-21 16:10:11 UTC

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thanks for the elaboration!

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 😘

2025-03-20 13:35:25 UTC

I trip up and get annoyed every time a new, when I want to make a web component that just is also capable of using slots. I just don't want to use the shadow dom. It is annoying and nasty.

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 18:49:57 UTC

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I honestly, whole heartedly wish for US people to have something that can at least be remotely considered a “left” movement with momentum. 🫂

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 17:50:15 UTC

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I can promise you’re not as slow as I am 🤝 besides, slow running is more beneficial anyway 😍

2025-02-28 17:37:26 UTC

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