709: Slopforking a CMS, Apple Browser Feedback, and Custom Theme CSS

In this episode of ShopTalk, Chris and Dave dive into a mix of tech commentary, speculative futures, and product critiques. They open with a humorous, almost cinematic vision of their future retirement—living off-grid, revered for their old-school web skills in a post-AI world where HTML knowledge is rare. The hosts reflect on the changing moviegoing experience, lamenting the post-COVID decline in blockbuster momentum and sharing personal horror movie boundaries. A key segment features an off-the-record conversation with Apple engineers, where they push for better browser testing tools, especially for Safari on non-Mac systems, and advocate for adopting the Web Install API to simplify PWA setup. They celebrate Safari 26.4’s new grid lanes feature, showing how minimal CSS can create complex, responsive layouts. The episode then shifts to a deep dive on CSS custom properties and style queries, with Dave revealing a clever trick to create inverted themes using container queries and dynamic variables—no JavaScript required. The hosts critique the growing trend of 'slop fork' projects, like Cloudflare's AI-generated Astro-based CMS (mdash), which mimics WordPress but with a different tech stack and security model. They question the long-term sustainability of such clones, especially regarding maintenance and legal risks, while acknowledging the appeal of a modern, deployable CMS that works on Cloudflare’s platform. The episode closes with a call to action: blog about your pain points to influence web standards, and join the ShopTalk Discord to discuss these ideas further.