Web standards can seem intimidating to outsiders, as there are many avenues, and it’s easy to feel like an imposter or not experienced enough when there tends to be so many browser developers around.

In this talk, I’ll explain where and how to usefully contribute, and how to do so comfortably.

One of the interesting and under-explored avenues CSS-in-JS opens up is the ability to experiment with wholly new styling constructs, rather than simply transferring ideas & techniques from CSS to a new ecosystem.

I’ve been tinkering with the idea of “traits” – a kind of “subatomic” styling – for several years, but never really shared it beyond colleagues. I’ve experimented with versions of it in Sass, CSS modules, Styled Components & React Native, and while the implementations are all a little different, the concept seems to be working well.

I’ll be talking about the concept, how it’s evolved, how it relates to popular CSS-native techniques like Tachyons/Tailwind, and how you can try it out yourself!