VOICES
Interview
went through the CFP process, the next
year I got invited instead. So I think
getting your first few conferences really
gets the ball rolling. Speaking at events
around the world means so much to me.
I’m always really grateful because I’m
more expensive than most speakers,
simply because I’m so far away.”
At the moment Chen is refining a topic
that she presented about at conferences
like CSSconf EU and Pixel Pioneers last
year – learning CSS through DevTools.
“Firefox shipped a Flexbox Inspector,
which made a light bulb go off in my
head,” she enthuses. “Flexbox is my
favourite CSS property to talk about
because it can be very confusing for a lot
of developers. The spec is very well-
written but I didn’t really understand it
myself until I saw the numbers laid out
for me in the DevTools. And DevTools are
with us in the browser all the time. They
can help developers who are trying out
new CSS properties figure out what’s
happening in a more convenient manner,
which also means that they’re less
inclined to give up.”
As many people simply don’t know
about the many different DevTools
available in all browsers, Chen has made
it her mission to stand on a stage and talk
to a few hundred people at a time to spreadthe word, which also helps the CSS
Working Group as well as browser vendors.
“DevTools can potentially serve as a
bridge,” she hopes. “They help developers
understand CSS better, which could
encourage the adoption of newer
properties. The challenge is to get people
to try new features and provide feedback
early on in the process. There are several
ones in particular that really benefit from
having a visual overlay. Grid and Flexbox
naturally but also properties like CSS
Shapes and Firefox now comes with the
Shape Path Editor built into DevTools.”
Seven years into her career, now a
developer advocate for Nexmo, Chen still
really enjoys the process of building
something and then seeing it come to life.
Her fascination with browsers and HTML
and CSS as the foundation of the web is
completely infectious.
“My analogy for the web is that it’s like
a car,” she laughs. “People use it to get
from point A to point B. For them it’s just
a tool to get things done but I want to
know how the car works. I want to know
what goes under the hood and how the
engine is built and how it works. So every
time I meet a browser engineer I get
exceptionally excited! I think it’s a
privilege that a lot of people in this
industry don’t have.”possibilities and then write code that can
adapt. It’s this unique constraint that’s
one of the reasons I really enjoy building
and designing for the web.”
Around the same time Chen was asked
to speak about CSS Grid at the Mozilla
Developer Roadshow in Asia (she believes
Jen Simmons put her name forward) and
about East Asian web typography at
Webconf.asia in Hong Kong. “The
organiser just took a chance on me because
she had seen my articles but I had no real
speaking experience at that point. It was
the first time I spoke at – and even
attended! – an international conference.
I learned that meeting people in person
really does make a difference. A lot of it
is about timing and luck. Vitaly Friedman
from Smashing Magazine was in the
audience and booked me for his conference
the following year.”
Chen had no idea how her talk would
be received and she felt that the topic –
vertical writing modes – was relatively
niche. However, the industry was waking
up to the importance of localisation and
internationalisation and the fact that not
everyone in the world was reading left to
right, so the talk hit a nerve. “Suddenly,
I was offered opportunity after opportunity
to speak at events around the world.
Whereas in my first year of speaking IPhotos: JB Open 2018, photograph by Sarah Chua