The platform keeps handing us things I used to reach for JavaScript to do. This little cluster is me catching up on what modern CSS can express on its own, plus a couple of lightweight tools.
Scrubbable Staggered Animation with CSS @function
Instead of thinking of a stagger as a pile of independently animation-delay-ed objects, this reframes the whole effect as one progress value you can drive from anything: keyframes, scroll, whatever. The author builds a “stagger formula” from first principles (clamp + lerp over a per-item offset) and ports it to the new CSS @function rule, with sibling-index(), if(), and custom easing on top. It’s math-heavy but the payoff is a reusable, scrubbable, JS-free stagger. Chrome/Edge only for now, so treat it as forward-looking.
Scroll-Driven, Scroll-Triggered, Scroll States, and View Transitions
Geoff Graham distinguishes four concepts I constantly mix up: scroll-driven animation tied to scroll position, scroll-triggered animation that runs after crossing a threshold, container-query scroll-state styling such as stuck: top, and same- or cross-document view transitions unrelated to scrolling. I will keep the compact summary table at the end.
date-light A zero-dependency, fully typed TypeScript date utility with 39 functions in roughly 2.18KB minzipped. It fits the common case where I need a few date helpers without adding a heavyweight dependency.
Brightlight: a SaaS theme for Astro & Tailwind CSS A polished Astro and Tailwind SaaS template with a warm palette, clean grid, and pages for landing, about, contact, authentication, blog, changelog, help, integrations, and team content. SEO, sitemap, RSS, and Fuse.js search are included. It also ships AGENTS.md, SKILLS.md, and Cursor rules, reflecting how template authors now expect developers to extend their work. This can provide a credible marketing-site base without starting from a blank design.