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About

Who writes Cleared and why

I’m Yann. I run minimal design (opens in a new tab), a web design studio, and I’ve been building for the web for more than twenty years. I write code every week, so when I tell you a deletion is safe, I’ve usually done it myself. Cleared is the newsletter I wanted and could not find.

Why this exists

Why a newsletter about deleting code

Every publication covering the web platform is additive. Here is what’s new, here is another thing to learn, here is a feature you should be using. All useful, all pointing one direction. Almost nobody covers the other direction. A platform that keeps maturing means your codebase can get smaller. Fewer polyfills. Fewer fallbacks. Fewer scripts doing what CSS now does natively. (And yes, my studio is called minimal design. The bias toward taking things away predates the newsletter.)

Baseline tells you what browsers have shipped. That is a fact about the platform, not advice about your codebase. Whether a feature is worth your afternoon is a separate question, and nobody with a vendor’s megaphone can answer it, because they can’t write “skip it” about their own features. It takes one person willing to print a verdict and be wrong in public now and then. That is the job here.

When :has() became newly available, the question worth answering was whether it was ready or merely available. When clip-path passed 30 months, the question was whether the fallback could finally come out, and whether taking it out was safe. The second one changes a codebase this week, and nobody was sending that email.

The deal

What you’re signing up for

Every issue

  • Under five minutes to read.
  • Five verdicts at most, and fewer when the month is thin.
  • Cleared, Hold, or Skip on every one, with the test data behind it and every figure sourced.
  • Anything you can delete comes first, because it is the most useful thing an issue can bring you.
  • One a month, always on a Monday. A quiet month still gets an issue, and the issue says it was quiet.

Never

  • You’ll never get a sponsor email, a course pitch, a webinar invitation, or a second list to join. There is nothing here to buy.
  • Your address is never shared, sold, or moved anywhere else. My studio’s client inquiries and this list never mix, in either direction.
  • There is no tracking-based follow-up. I ignore open rates, so you’ll never get a “just checking you saw this.”
  • Nothing is behind an email gate. Every issue is on this site, free, forever.
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