Modern Scroll Shadows Using Scroll-Driven Animations

Partly Cloudy/Wind today!

With a high of F and a low of 44F. Currently, it's 60F and Clear outside.

Current wind speeds: 16 from the Southeast

Pollen: 0

Sunrise: May 4, 2025 at 05:49PM

Sunset: May 5, 2025 at 07:48AM

UV index: 0

Humidity: 41%

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May 5, 2025 at 10:02AM

Clear today!

With a high of F and a low of 38F. Currently, it's 56F and Clear outside.

Current wind speeds: 11 from the Southeast

Pollen: 0

Sunrise: May 3, 2025 at 05:50PM

Sunset: May 4, 2025 at 07:47AM

UV index: 0

Humidity: 46%

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May 4, 2025 at 10:02AM

Mostly Clear today!

With a high of F and a low of 34F. Currently, it's 44F and Clear outside.

Current wind speeds: 7 from the Southeast

Pollen: 0

Sunrise: May 2, 2025 at 05:51PM

Sunset: May 3, 2025 at 07:46AM

UV index: 0

Humidity: 46%

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May 3, 2025 at 10:02AM

CSS shape() Commands

The CSS shape() function recently gained support in both Chromium and WebKit browsers. It’s a way of drawing complex shapes when clipping elements with the clip-path property. We’ve had the ability to draw basic shapes for years — think circle, ellipse(), and polygon() — but no “easy” way to draw more complex shapes.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s true there was no “easy” way to draw shapes, but we’ve had the path() function for some time, which we can use to draw shapes using SVG commands directly in the function’s arguments. This is an example of an SVG path pulled straight from WebKit’s blog post linked above:

<svg viewBox="0 0 150 100" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
  <path fill="black" d="M0 0 L 100 0 L 150 50 L 100 100 L 0 100 Q 50 50 0 0 z " />
</svg>

Which means we can yank those <path> coordinates and drop them into the path() function in CSS when clipping a shape out of an element:

.clipped {
  clip-path: path("M0 0 L 100 0 L 150 50 L 100 100 L 0 100 Q 50 50 0 0 z");
}

I totally understand what all of those letters and numbers are doing. Just kidding, I’d have to read up on that somewhere, like Myriam Frisano’s more recent “Useful Recipes For Writing Vectors By Hand” article. There’s a steep learning curve to all that, and not everyone — including me — is going down that nerdy, albeit interesting, road. Writing SVG by hand is a niche specialty, not something you’d expect the average front-ender to know. I doubt I’m alone in saying I’d rather draw those vectors in something like Figma first, export the SVG code, and copy-paste the resulting paths where I need them.

The shape() function is designed to be more, let’s say, CSS-y. We get new commands that tell the browser where to draw lines, arcs, and curves, just like path(), but we get to use plain English and native CSS units rather than unreadable letters and coordinates. That opens us up to even using CSS calc()-ulations in our drawings!

Here’s a fairly simple drawing I made from a couple of elements. You’ll want to view the demo in either Chrome 135+ or Safari 18.4+ to see what’s up.

So, instead of all those wonky coordinates we saw in path(), we get new terminology. This post is really me trying to wrap my head around what those new terms are and how they’re used.

In short, you start by telling shape() where the starting point should be when drawing. For example, we can say “from top left” using directional keywords to set the origin at the top-left corner of the element. We can also use CSS units to set that position, so “from 0 0” works as well. Once we establish that starting point, we get a set of commands we can use for drawing lines, arcs, and curves.

I figured a table would help.

Command	What it means	Usage	Examples
line	A line that is drawn using a coordinate pair	The by keyword sets a coordinate pair used to determine the length of the line.	line by -2px 3px
vline	Vertical line	The to keyword indicates where the line should end, based on the current starting point. The by keyword sets a coordinate pair used to determine the length of the line.	vline to 50px
hline	Horizontal line	The to keyword indicates where the line should end, based on the current starting point. The by keyword sets a coordinate pair used to determine the length of the line.	hline to 95%
arc	An arc (oh, really?!). An elliptical one, that is, sort of like the rounded edges of a heart shape.	The to keyword indicates where the arc should end. The with keyword sets a pair of coordinates that tells the arc how far right and down the arc should slope. The of keyword specifies the size of the ellipse that the arc is taken from. The first value provides the horizontal radius of the ellipse, and the second provides the vertical radius. I’m a little unclear on this one, even after playing with it.	arc to 10% 50% of 1%
curve	A curved line	The to keyword indicates where the curved line should end. The with keyword sets “control points” that affect the shape of the curve, making it deep or shallow.	curve to 0% 100% with 50% 0%
smooth	Adds a smooth Bézier curve command to the list of path data commands	The to keyword indicates where the curve should end. The by keyword sets a coordinate pair used to determine the length of the curve. The with keyword specifies control points for the curve.	I have yet to see any examples of this in the wild, but let me know if you do, and I can add it here.

The spec is dense, as you might expect with a lot of moving pieces like this. Again, these are just my notes, but let me know if there’s additional nuance you think would be handy to include in the table.

Oh, another fun thing: you can adjust the shape() on hover/focus. The only thing is that I was unable to transition or animate it, at least in the current implementation.

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CSS shape() Commands originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Rain Early today!

With a high of F and a low of 33F. Currently, it's 46F and Light Rain/Wind outside.

Current wind speeds: 20 from the North

Pollen: 0

Sunrise: May 1, 2025 at 05:52PM

Sunset: May 2, 2025 at 07:45AM

UV index: 0

Humidity: 73%

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May 2, 2025 at 10:02AM

State of Devs: A Survey for Every Developer

I don’t know if I should say this on a website devoted to programming, but I sometimes feel like *lowers voice* coding is actually the least interesting part of our lives.

After all, last time I got excited meeting someone at a conference it was because we were both into bouldering, not because we both use React. And The Social Network won an Oscar for the way it displayed interpersonal drama, not for its depiction of Mark Zuckerberg’s PHP code. 

Yet for the past couple years, I’ve been running developer surveys (such as the State of JS and State of CSS) that only ask about code. It was time to fix that. 

A new kind of survey

The State of Devs survey is now open to participation, and unlike previous surveys it covers everything except code: career, workplace, but also health, hobbies, and more. 

I’m hoping to answer questions such as:

• What are developers’ favorite recent movies and video games?
• What kind of physical activity do developers practice?
• How much sleep are we all getting?

But also address more serious topics, including:

• What do developers like about their workplace?
• What factors lead to workplace discrimination?
• What global issues are developers most concerned with?

Reaching out to new audiences

Another benefit from branching out into new topics is the chance to reach out to new audiences.

It’s no secret that people who don’t fit the mold of the average developer (whether because of their gender, race, age, disabilities, or a myriad of other factors) often have a harder time getting involved in the community, and this also shows up in our data. 

In the past, we’ve tried various outreach strategies to help address these imbalances in survey participation, but the results haven’t always been as effective as we’d hoped. 

So this time, I thought I’d try something different and have the survey itself include more questions relevant to under-represented groups, asking about workplace discrimination:

As well as actions taken in response to said discrimination:

Yet while obtaining a more representative data sample as a result of this new focus would be ideal, it isn’t the only benefit. 

The most vulnerable among us are often the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, suffering first from issues or policies that will eventually affect the rest of the community as well, if left unchecked. 

So, facing these issues head-on is especially valuable now, at a time when “DEI” is becoming a new taboo, and a lot of the important work that has been done to make things slightly better over the past decade is at risk of being reversed.

The big questions

Finally, the survey also tries to go beyond work and daily life to address the broader questions that keep us up at night:

There’s been talk in recent years about keeping the workplace free of politics. And why I can certainly see the appeal in that, in 2025, it feels harder than ever to achieve that ideal. At a time when people are losing rights and governments are sliding towards authoritarianism, should we still pretend that everything is fine? Especially when you factor in the fact that the tech community is now a major political player in its own right…

So while I didn’t push too far in that direction for this first edition of the survey, one of my goals for the future is to get a better grasp of where exactly developers stand in terms of ideology and worldview. Is this a good idea, or should I keep my distance from any hot-button issues? Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think, or suggest any other topic I should be asking about next time. 

In the meantime, go take the survey, and help us get a better picture of who exactly we all are!

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State of Devs: A Survey for Every Developer originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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