Workshops » Wait - CSS Can Do That?

An interactive workshop for web developers covering advanced features of modern CSS: colour models, animation, filters, variables, properties, functions, blend modes, and much more.

Most developers know “a bit” of CSS. Borders and backgrounds, fonts and colours, maybe some basic layout using floats, absolute and relative positioning. Some developers know CSS “quite well”: grids and flexbox, z-indexes, transitions and filters.

Let’s take it to the next level. It’s 2026. CSS has functions and variables. We’ve got first-class support for interactive visual effects using keyframe animations, geometric transformations and view transitions - all offloaded to the GPU so it’s lightning-fast and won’t interfere with your JavaScript. We’ve got responsive typography using parameterised fonts, and more composition options and blending modes than Photoshop. We can restyle form inputs, create rich user experiences using focus anchors and validation pseudo-classes - we can even tell if the user’s device has one of those little Apple camera island screen things on it.

Dylan Beattie’s been building web applications since before CSS was invented, and he’s been using CSS in production for nearly thirty years. In this hands-on, interactive workshop, Dylan will show you everything you need to know to make cutting-edge modern CSS a trusted part of your engineering toolkit. We’ll spend the day working through fun interactive exercises and demos, you’ll go away with working code and demos on your laptop, and then you can go into work next week and replace thousands of lines of pointless JavaScript with lightweight, minimal, elegant CSS.

What You’ll Learn:

• How Did We Get Here? The evolution of CSS
• Beyond #ff9900: Using Perceptual Colour Models
• Working with CSS Transforms
• Advanced UX Patterns using CSS Transitions
• Interaction, Keyframes and Animations
• Composition, Filters and Blend Modes

This is a hands-on, interactive workshop: we’ll be sharing code throughout using GitHub and VS LiveShare, you’ll go home with a fully working copy of the sample application, and all the workshop code is published under the MIT license so you can use it for whatever you like.

Testimonials

What people have said about Dylan Beattie’s online workshops:

• “Everything was great, content, presentation, examples, answers to questions. All clear and understandable.”
• “I liked the way the lecturer kept the tempo and captured attention. Everything was well prepared and worked right away or almost right away.”
• “I really enjoyed the humour and that Dylan showed personality throughout the workshop.”
• “Really great organization and preparation. It shows that you have experience with this kind of workshops.”

Target Audience

This is for web developers who have some experience writing HTML and CSS. You’ll need a code editor like VS Code, and ideally you’ll have Chrome and Firefox installed, plus Safari if you’re on macOS, and be comfortable using the dev tools built into modern browsers.

About the Trainer

Dylan Beattie created his first web page in 1992. With nearly 25 years’ experience as a professional developer, he’s worked on everything from static websites to distributed microservice architectures. Dylan is a Microsoft MVP and the creator of the Rockstar esoteric programming language, and he’s presented talks about technology and software development at conferences and events all over the world.

Dylan’s been building web applications since before CSS was invented. He’s online at https://dylanbeattie.net/ and on BlueSky as @dylanbeatt.ie.