Dave Rupert

Dave Rupert

Dave Rupert

I'm Dave Rupert, I write web components at Microsoft and am co-host of ShopTalk, a podcast about front-end web design and development. Previously, I co-founded a startup called Luro and an agency called Paravel with two of my best friends. I'm married to the drummer of a mid-2000s indie rock band, I'm a dad to two wonderful kids, and I live in Austin, TX where I work out of my backyard office.

Latest Posts

You might have noticed that I did a big design refresh on my entire site… unless you’re on RSS I guess. I’ll talk about aspects in detail, but at a high level there’s been three big changes: A monospace font Named CSS grid lines Juicier...
As I was playing around with contrast-color(), I got a wild idea that you could use contrast-color() to invert its return value by nesting it: contrast-color(contrast-color(var(--some-color)). When would this be useful? Uh… Good...
In my first post on contrast-color() I demo’d using color-mix() to change a background-color on hover, but I will be honest… mixing black and white isn’t always what you want. It would be cool and helpful to coerce contrast-color() to...
One predictable pain point with contrast-color() is that it only returns black and white named colors. From a design systems perspective, that’s not ideal because you want your colors. You want your harmonious brand and the colors you...
Firefox 146 added support for contrast-color() joining Safari 26 in the First Implementor’s Club. For those unfamiliar, contrast-color(<color>) is a new CSS function that will take a <color> as input and returns either white or black...
2025 was… a year. And I made it to the end of that year. If you’re reading this, I imagine you did too and let’s celebrate that. But also not one without loss; of loved ones, of health, of relationships, of jobs, of liberties, of...
🎵 Christmas time is here. Happiness and cheer. Fun for all… that children call… their favorite time of year. School’s out. The work laptop’s closed. Now is a good time to recount the vibes. I wanted to get out this vibecheck before...
Two friends of mine (brothers, actually) got laid off from their job at a megachurch here in Austin. We met through a mutual friend that started attending their church. Our kids hang out on Roblox, so we’re connected through dadship and...
Try Grid Paper I’ve been getting into drawing dungeons on isomorphic grids. It’s fun but I was a little frustrated with the process of sourcing and printing out graph paper with an isomorphic grid on it. You have two bad options,...
Inkwell Games bills itself as “Daily puzzles worth thinking about” and that’s a great tagline. Right now they offer two daily puzzles: Stars and Fields. Both are enjoyable but I rank Stars as a bit above Fields but as I get better at...
Clues By Sam is a daily puzzle game where you get to uncover a criminal conspiracy by following the clues… made by Sam… err… Johannes. It’s a little if-this-then-that logic puzzle where Pam implicates Bob as a criminal and because Bob is...
Above the clouds in the Peruvian Andes there is a town named La Rinconada. It holds the title of being the highest year-round settlement in the world. At one point swelling to 30,000 people, the population has dwindled some now near...
In high school I had the weird, cyclical circumstance of reading Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at least once a year at every grade level. Like Groundhog’s day but set in fictionalized 17th century Salem. While I appreciated the easy grade...
The same people behind Project Kamp also run a project called Precious Plastic which is an open source plastic recycling platform. As most are well aware, plastic is a major problem polluting our land, our beaches, our rivers, our...
I’m a sucker for off-grid DIY content. And a double-sucker for commune documentaries. And this post is about a project that scratches both those itches. Project Kamp is a sustainable living community in the hills of central Portugal. The...
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