In 2019, former FBI agent and body language expert Joe Navarro sat down with WIRED to break down the various ways we communicate non-verbally. Today, Joe looks back at his first appearance for WIRED and explains what his body language is communicating.

Entomologist Dr. Sammy Ramsey is back to break down clips from movies and TV about bugs. What happens if a radioactive spider bites you like in Spider-Man? Do butterflies really look like they do in SpongeBob SquarePants? Do swarms of bugs really attack you like in so many Hollywood movies? Dr. Sammy provides answers to all these burning questions, and much more.

In 'Dune,' inhabitants of the desert planet wear full-body stillsuits for their survival. These stillsuits capture moisture and recycle it into drinking water. Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan, costume designers on 'Dune,' explain how they approached designing the suits for the film.

Victor M. Sweeney, a licensed funeral director and mortician, breaks down clips from movies and TV about dead bodies, funerals, and embalming, and explains how accurate they really are. Is the dead body from "Psycho" realistic? Could Donny's ashes from "The Big Lebowski" really be stored in a coffee can? Is there such a thing as a glass casket?

Trauma surgeon Annie Onishi is back with WIRED, this time to go over the Home Alone films (you know, the ones that MATTER). Annie breaks down every injury from the first two films, explaining what would happen if Harry and Marv actually experienced the physical trauma that they sustain in the films.

"Peacemaker" star John Cena talks about a few of the most significant moments of his life. John talks about moments like his match with The Rock at WrestleMania XXVIII, his work with Make-A-Wish, and playing the titular role of Peacemaker.

Aquanaut Fabien Cousteau breaks down clips from movies and tv about ocean exploration, and explains just how accurate they really are. Are submarines really yellow like The Beatles's "Yellow Submarine"? What makes the Titanic shipwreck so legendary? Can sharks be as intelligent as the ones seen in "Deep Blue Sea"? How much was "The Life Aquatic" based on Jacques Cousteau?

Over the past two years, you've likely taken a Covid rapid antigen test. A unique, biochemical reaction involving saline, tiny particles of gold, and paper with antibodies, is helping to give us quick and relatively accurate results. Dr. Kate Biberdorf, a chemist and author, explains the chemical process of the at-home tests (while taking one!) to explain exactly how it works.

The five films nominated for an Academy Award this year for visual effects were each selected for their own unique reasons. Kevin Baillie, a VFX artist who was worked on some of Hollywood's biggest movies, breaks down the visual effects in this year's Oscar nominees.

Scientist and author Kate Biberdorf (perhaps better known as Kate The Chemist), takes a look at some famous chemistry scenes from movies and television and explains how accurate they really are. How true-to-life are Breaking Bad's chemistry scenes? Can you really make oven-less brownies like in Rick & Morty? Is the formula from Spider-Man's web fluid correct? Kate The Chemist has the answers!

Food scientist Rosemary Trout analyzes each and every plant-based milk. From household staples like almond milk and oak milk to the lesser-known hazelnut and banana milk, watch as Rosemary explains not only where these milks are commonly used, but how they're cultivated and bottled.

Professor Neil Price explains the various weapons used in Robert Eggers's new viking movie, The Northman.THE NORTHMAN is in theaters now, https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-northman

In a wok, fire, oil and metal combine in an explosive chemical reaction to create stir-fry. J. Kenji López-Alt literally wrote the book on the wok, and he's here to explain the science behind stir-fry

Dr. Jesse Taylor, MD and Dr. Gregory Heuer, MD, PhD, successfully separated craniopagus twins Erin and Abby Delaney. How did they do it? Jesse and Gregory sit down with WIRED and break down the tools and techniques they used to do what seems impossible, separate twins conjoined at the head.

Former FBI agent and body language expert Joe Navarro sits down with WIRED to talk about the non-verbal language of appearance. The ornate nature of how we attend to our bodies has grand significance throughout humankind. The way we present ourselves, across cultures, continues to be of massive importance. But, just how important is appearance to things like success, money and power? Check out Joe's book "Be Exceptional" https://www.amazon.com/Be-Exceptional-Master-Traits-Extraordinary-ebook/dp/B08K93BLQP/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.jnforensics.com/ Books By Joe Navarro: https://www.jnforensics.com/books Joe Navarro Body Language Academy: https://jnbodylanguageacademy.com

The James Webb Space Telescope has dazzled us with its first batch of images. WIRED got in touch with the one and only Bill Nye to break down some of these astonishing photos, explaining what we're really looking at. Bill analyzes some images of the Carina Nebula, Southern Ring Nebula, Stephan's Quintet and more.

Holly Gregory, partner at the international law firm Sidley Austin, knows her corporate law. So, we sat down with Holly and had her look at each and every business deal featured on the hit HBO show Succession. Holly analyzes the deals and applies real-world logic to the TV program's biggest transactions.

Every rocket launch is different and it takes a lot of people and safety checks to ensure that a 5.75 million pound rocket can safely launch into space. Mike Massimino, a former NASA astronaut and spacecraft communicator in the Mission Control Center breaks down what happens from eight hours before liftoff until launch. Director: Katherine Wzorek Director of Photography: Brad Wickham Edito: Joshua Pullar Expert: Mike Massimino Producer: Katherine Wzorek Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas Production Manager: Eric Martinez Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila Camera Operator: Jack Belisle Sound: Jeff Gaumer Production Assistant: Ryan Coppola Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Assistant Editor: Andy Morell

Navy fighter pilot Matthew "Whiz" Buckley breaks down the fighter jets featured in Top Gun: Maverick. Whiz, in incredible detail, explains everything you need to know about the iconic F-14A Tomcat, F/A-18 Hornet, P-51 Mustang, SU-57 and more. He also takes a critical look at the film itself. Just how realistic is Top Gun: Maverick? Director: Maya Dangerfield Director of Photography: Kevin Layne Editor: Louis Lalire Talent: Matthew “Whiz” Buckley Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Samantha Vélez Production Manager: Eric Martinez Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila On-Site Producer: Carolina Sauer Gaffer: Anthony Duckett Audio: Justin Hall Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Assistant Editor: Ben Harowitz

The lottery is hard to win. But, is it possible to make it....less hard to win? We spoke with mathematician Skip Garibaldi about how to increase our odds of winning any kind of lottery. Are there any ways to guarantee a lottery win? What if you play EVERY number combination? Director: Katherine Wzorek Editor: Louville Moore Expert: Skip Garibaldi Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Brandon White Production Manager: Eric Martinez Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Assistant Editors: Andy Morell Special Thanks: Anna O'Donohue, Maya Dangerfield, Lea Donenberg, Ian Bryant, Sean Dacanay, Wendi Jonassen

Famed video game director Todd Howard breaks down his storied career at Bethesda Game Studios. From his first game in 1995, The Terminator: Future Shock, to his newest IP in almost thirty years, Starfield, the Skyrim, Daggerfall, and Fallout creator highlights a timeline of the games he's produced, designed and directed for an ever-developing gaming industry. Director: Sean Dacanay Director of Photography: Benjamin Finkel Editor: Brady Jackson Talent: Todd Howard Creative Producer: Lisandro Perez-Rey Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Brandon White Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila Camera Operator: Larry Greenblatt Sound Mixer: Marianna LaFollette Production Assistant: Sage Ellis Hair & Make-Up: Andrea Hines Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Assistant Editor: Andy Morell Graphics Supervisor: Ross Rackin Designer: Léa Kichler

"Love him or hate him, Napoleon is a figure probably unrivaled in modern history." Today Jonathon Riley, a British General and historian, breaks down French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's most prominent battles and utilized war tactics. From the Battle of the Pyramids to the Battle of Lützen, hear directly from a war expert how Napoleon "weakened" his opponents and led his troops to victory on the battlefield.Director: Anna O'DonohueDirector of Photography: Lloyd WillacyEditor: Louville MooreExpert: Jonathon RileyLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Kameryn HamiltonProduction Manager: D. Eric MartinezProduction Coordinator: Fernando DavilaSound Mixer: Javier CarlesProduction Assistant: Jasmine BrienburgPost Production Supervisor: Alexa DeutschPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAssistant Editor: Andy Morell

Join Contend CEO Steven Amato as he unveils the future of storytelling in a 10-minute journey that transcends traditional theater. From breaking down physical barriers with SMARTStage to harnessing AI for content creation, this presentation explores how technology is reshaping the narrative landscape, making storytelling more immersive, accessible, and sustainable.

Move could help India play down anti-China sentiments, increase economic engagement, say experts

“We hope that India’s worst foreign policy setback in decades is being honourably resolved,” says Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh

A pick of video ads — past and present — that raised the bar during the festival of lights 

A study from QUOTED reveals the average time spent on social media in North America is 2 hours and 6 minutes. Adults spend 2 hours and 55 minutes on their cell phones a day. It goes without saying that if you are not utilizing social media platforms for your business, there is major leverage that is being missed out on.

Harness the power of social media
Below is a breakdown of each of the major five social media platforms.

Instagram
YouTube
TikTok
Twitter
LinkedIn

Bruhat Soma, a 12-year-old seventh-grader from Tampa, Florida, beat Faizan Zaki by ninewords, to win the title

Having got to the finals without losing a match, India were the deserved winners of the T20 World Cup

Brent crude oil was trading at ₹94.91 per barrel on August 18

Following the pandemic, organisations have scaled new heights of empathy in their engagement with employees

Researchers at IISER Tirupati developed an innovative method using nickel catalysts to advance the ‘Hydrogen economy’ by enabling COx-free hydrogen generation, contributing to sustainable energy solutions

This innovation has the potential to revolutionise data encryption and security, offering enhanced protection for sensitive information in digital interactions.

First shipment of vaccines expected to arrive in Congo within days: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

Safari is holding back the web. It is the new IE, after all. In contrast, Chrome is pushing the web forward so hard that it’s starting to break. Meanwhile web developers do nothing except moan and complain. The only thing left to do is to pick our poison.

Safari is the new IE

Recently there was yet another round of “Safari is the new IE” stories. Once Jeremy’s summary and a short discussion cleared my mind I finally figured out that Safari is not IE, and that Safari’s IE-or-not-IE is not the worst problem the web is facing.

Perry Sun argues that for developers, Safari is crap and outdated, emulating the old IE of fifteen years ago in this respect. He also repeats the theory that Apple is deliberately starving Safari of features in order to protect the app store, and thus its bottom line. We’ll get back to that.

The allegation that Safari is holding back web development by its lack of support for key features is not new, but it’s not true, either. Back fifteen years ago IE held back the web because web developers had to cater to its outdated technology stack. “Best viewed with IE” and all that. But do you ever see a “Best viewed with Safari” notice? No, you don’t. Another browser takes that special place in web developers’ hearts and minds.

Chrome is the new IE, but in reverse

Jorge Arango fears we’re going back to the bad old days with “Best viewed in Chrome.” Chris Krycho reinforces this by pointing out that, even though Chrome is not the standard, it’s treated as such by many web developers.

“Best viewed in Chrome” squares very badly with “Safari is the new IE.” Safari’s sad state does not force web developers to restrict themselves to Safari-supported features, so it does not hold the same position as IE.

So I propose to lay this tired old meme to rest. Safari is not the new IE. If anything it’s the new Netscape 4.

Meanwhile it is Chrome that is the new IE, but in reverse.

Break the web forward

Back in the day, IE was accused of an embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy. After IE6 Microsoft did nothing for ages, assuming it had won the web. Thanks to web developers taking action in their own name for the first (and only) time, IE was updated once more and the web moved forward again.

Google learned from Microsoft’s mistakes and follows a novel embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy by breaking the web and stomping on the bits. Who cares if it breaks as long as we go forward. And to hell with backward compatibility.

Back in 2015 I proposed to stop pushing the web forward, and as expected the Chrome devrels were especially outraged at this idea. It never went anywhere. (Truth to tell: I hadn’t expected it to.)

I still think we should stop pushing the web forward for a while until we figure out where we want to push the web forward to — but as long as Google is in charge that won’t happen. It will only get worse.

On alert

A blog storm broke out over the decision to remove alert(), confirm() and prompt(), first only the cross-origin variants, but eventually all of them. Jeremy and Chris Coyier already summarised the situation, while Rich Harris discusses the uses of the three ancient modals, especially when it comes to learning JavaScript.

With all these articles already written I will only note that, if the three ancient modals are truly as horrendous a security issue as Google says they are it took everyone a bloody long time to figure that out. I mean, they turn 25 this year.

Although it appears Firefox and Safari are on board with at least the cross-origin part of the proposal, there is no doubt that it’s Google that leads the charge.

From Google’s perspective the ancient modals have one crucial flaw quite apart from their security model: they weren’t invented there. That’s why they have to be replaced by — I don’t know what, but it will likely be a very complicated API.

Complex systems and arrogant priests rule the web

Thus the new embrace, extend, and extinguish is breaking backward compatibility in order to make the web more complicated. Nolan Lawson puts it like this:

we end up with convoluted specs like Service Worker that you need a PhD to understand, and yet we still don't have a working <dialog> element.

In addition, Google can be pretty arrogant and condescending, as Chris Ferdinandi points out.

The condescending “did you actually read it, it’s so clear” refrain is patronizing AF. It’s the equivalent of “just” or “simply” in developer documentation.

I read it. I didn’t understand it. That’s why I asked someone whose literal job is communicating with developers about changes Chrome makes to the platform.

This is not isolated to one developer at Chrome. The entire message thread where this change was surfaced is filled with folks begging Chrome not to move forward with this proposal because it will break all-the-things.

If you write documentation or a technical article and nobody understands it, you’ve done a crappy job. I should know; I’ve been writing this stuff for twenty years.

Extend, embrace, extinguish. And use lots of difficult words.

Patience is a virtue

As a reaction to web dev outcry Google temporarily halted the breaking of the web. That sounds great but really isn’t. It’s just a clever tactical move.

I saw this tactic in action before. Back in early 2016 Google tried to break the de-facto standard for the mobile visual viewport that I worked very hard to establish. I wrote a piece that resonated with web developers, whose complaints made Google abandon the plan — temporarily. They tried again in late 2017, and I again wrote an article, but this time around nobody cared and the changes took effect and backward compatibility was broken.

So the three ancient modals still have about 12 to 18 months to live. Somewhere in late 2022 to early 2023 Google will try again, web developers will be silent, and the modals will be gone.

The pursuit of appiness

But why is Google breaking the web forward at such a pace? And why is Apple holding it back?

Safari is kept dumb to protect the app store and thus revenue. In contrast, the Chrome team is pushing very hard to port every single app functionality to the browser. Ages ago I argued we should give up on this, but of course no one listened.

When performing Valley Kremlinology, it is useful to see Google policies as stemming from a conflict between internal pro-web and anti-web factions. We web developers mainly deal with the pro-web faction, the Chrome devrel and browser teams. On the other hand, the Android team is squarely in the anti-web camp.

When seen in this light the pro-web camp’s insistence on copying everything appy makes excellent sense: if they didn’t Chrome would lag behind apps and the Android anti-web camp would gain too much power. While I prefer the pro-web over the anti-web camp, I would even more prefer the web not to be a pawn in an internal Google power struggle. But it has come to that, no doubt about it.

Solutions?

Is there any good solution? Not really.

Jim Nielsen feels that part of the issue is the lack of representation of web developers in the standardization process. That sounds great but is proven not to work.

Three years ago Fronteers and I attempted to get web developers represented and were met with absolute disinterest. Nobody else cared even one shit, and the initiative sank like a stone.

So a hypothetical web dev representative in W3C is not going to work. Also, the organisational work would involve a lot of unpaid labour, and I, for one, am not willing to do it again. Neither is anyone else. So this is not the solution.

And what about Firefox? Well, what about it? Ten years ago it made a disastrous mistake by ignoring the mobile web for way too long, then it attempted an arrogant and uninformed come-back with Firefox OS that failed, and its history from that point on is one long slide into obscurity. That’s what you get with shitty management.

Pick your poison

So Safari is trying to slow the web down. With Google’s move-fast-break-absofuckinglutely-everything axiom in mind, is Safari’s approach so bad?

Regardless of where you feel the web should be on this spectrum between Google and Apple, there is a fundamental difference between the two.

We have the tools and procedures to manage Safari’s disinterest. They’re essentially the same as the ones we deployed against Microsoft back in the day — though a fundamental difference is that Microsoft was willing to talk while Apple remains its old haughty self, and its “devrels” aren’t actually allowed to do devrelly things such as managing relations with web developers. (Don’t blame them, by the way. If something would ever change they’re going to be our most valuable internal allies — just as the IE team was back in the day.)

On the other hand, we have no process for countering Google’s reverse embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy, since a section of web devs will be enthusiastic about whatever the newest API is. Also, Google devrels talk. And talk. And talk. And provide gigs of data that are hard to make sense of. And refer to their proprietary algorithms that “clearly” show X is in the best interest of the web — and don’t ask questions! And make everything so fucking complicated that we eventually give up and give in.

So pick your poison. Shall we push the web forward until it’s broken, or shall we break it by inaction? What will it be? Privately, my money is on Google. So we should say goodbye to the old web while we still can.

Believed to have been named after a mythical demon, ‘Bem’ who ruled the river banks ‘tota’, a portion of this coastal town, once a fishing/farming village, and now popular with tourists, is sandwiched between the river and the sea

At Ronil Goa, India’s first JdV by Hyatt five-star resort, the old and the new blend in seamlessly, making space for high energy party seekers as well as guests in search of a quiet holiday

Hitesh Harisinghani and Afsar Dayatar bring back moments from Ghoomer's trailer launch in Mumbai.

A look at state-wise data shows that states with larger numbers of fatalities are also those with less successful public health infrastructure as a whole

In spite of a massive dip in 2020 due to the pandemic and lockdown, 2021 saw the launch of nearly 2.37 lakh units in this segment, which significantly powers the country’s economic growth

CSS is about styling boxes. In fact, the whole web is made of boxes, from the browser viewport to elements on a page. But every once in a while a new feature comes along that makes us rethink our design approach.

Round displays, for example, make it fun to play with circular clip areas. Mobile screen notches and virtual keyboards offer challenges to best organize content that stays clear of them. And dual screen or foldable devices make us rethink how to best use available space in a number of different device postures.

These recent evolutions of the web platform made it both more challenging and more interesting to design products. They’re great opportunities for us to break out of our rectangular boxes.

I’d like to talk about a new feature similar to the above: the Window Controls Overlay for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).

Progressive Web Apps are blurring the lines between apps and websites. They combine the best of both worlds. On one hand, they’re stable, linkable, searchable, and responsive just like websites. On the other hand, they provide additional powerful capabilities, work offline, and read files just like native apps.

As a design surface, PWAs are really interesting because they challenge us to think about what mixing web and device-native user interfaces can be. On desktop devices in particular, we have more than 40 years of history telling us what applications should look like, and it can be hard to break out of this mental model.

At the end of the day though, PWAs on desktop are constrained to the window they appear in: a rectangle with a title bar at the top.

Here’s what a typical desktop PWA app looks like:

Sure, as the author of a PWA, you get to choose the color of the title bar (using the Web Application Manifest theme_color property), but that’s about it.

What if we could think outside this box, and reclaim the real estate of the app’s entire window? Doing so would give us a chance to make our apps more beautiful and feel more integrated in the operating system.

This is exactly what the Window Controls Overlay offers. This new PWA functionality makes it possible to take advantage of the full surface area of the app, including where the title bar normally appears.

About the title bar and window controls

Let’s start with an explanation of what the title bar and window controls are.

The title bar is the area displayed at the top of an app window, which usually contains the app’s name. Window controls are the affordances, or buttons, that make it possible to minimize, maximize, or close the app’s window, and are also displayed at the top.

Window Controls Overlay removes the physical constraint of the title bar and window controls areas. It frees up the full height of the app window, enabling the title bar and window control buttons to be overlaid on top of the application’s web content. 

If you are reading this article on a desktop computer, take a quick look at other apps. Chances are they’re already doing something similar to this. In fact, the very web browser you are using to read this uses the top area to display tabs.

Spotify displays album artwork all the way to the top edge of the application window.

Microsoft Word uses the available title bar space to display the auto-save and search functionalities, and more.

The whole point of this feature is to allow you to make use of this space with your own content while providing a way to account for the window control buttons. And it enables you to offer this modified experience on a range of platforms while not adversely affecting the experience on browsers or devices that don’t support Window Controls Overlay. After all, PWAs are all about progressive enhancement, so this feature is a chance to enhance your app to use this extra space when it’s available.

Let’s use the feature

For the rest of this article, we’ll be working on a demo app to learn more about using the feature.

The demo app is called 1DIV. It’s a simple CSS playground where users can create designs using CSS and a single HTML element.

The app has two pages. The first lists the existing CSS designs you’ve created:

The second page enables you to create and edit CSS designs:

Since I’ve added a simple web manifest and service worker, we can install the app as a PWA on desktop. Here is what it looks like on macOS:

And on Windows:

Our app is looking good, but the white title bar in the first page is wasted space. In the second page, it would be really nice if the design area went all the way to the top of the app window.

Let’s use the Window Controls Overlay feature to improve this.

Enabling Window Controls Overlay

The feature is still experimental at the moment. To try it, you need to enable it in one of the supported browsers.

As of now, it has been implemented in Chromium, as a collaboration between Microsoft and Google. We can therefore use it in Chrome or Edge by going to the internal about://flags page, and enabling the Desktop PWA Window Controls Overlay flag.

Using Window Controls Overlay

To use the feature, we need to add the following display_override member to our web app’s manifest file:

{
  "name": "1DIV",
  "description": "1DIV is a mini CSS playground",
  "lang": "en-US",
  "start_url": "/",
  "theme_color": "#ffffff",
  "background_color": "#ffffff",
  "display_override": [
    "window-controls-overlay"
  ],
  "icons": [
    ...
  ]
}

On the surface, the feature is really simple to use. This manifest change is the only thing we need to make the title bar disappear and turn the window controls into an overlay.

However, to provide a great experience for all users regardless of what device or browser they use, and to make the most of the title bar area in our design, we’ll need a bit of CSS and JavaScript code.

Here is what the app looks like now:

The title bar is gone, which is what we wanted, but our logo, search field, and NEW button are partially covered by the window controls because now our layout starts at the top of the window.

It’s similar on Windows, with the difference that the close, maximize, and minimize buttons appear on the right side, grouped together with the PWA control buttons:

Using CSS to keep clear of the window controls

Along with the feature, new CSS environment variables have been introduced:

• titlebar-area-x
• titlebar-area-y
• titlebar-area-width
• titlebar-area-height

You use these variables with the CSS env() function to position your content where the title bar would have been while ensuring it won’t overlap with the window controls. In our case, we’ll use two of the variables to position our header, which contains the logo, search bar, and NEW button. 

header {
  position: absolute;
  left: env(titlebar-area-x, 0);
  width: env(titlebar-area-width, 100%);
  height: var(--toolbar-height);
}

The titlebar-area-x variable gives us the distance from the left of the viewport to where the title bar would appear, and titlebar-area-width is its width. (Remember, this is not equivalent to the width of the entire viewport, just the title bar portion, which as noted earlier, doesn’t include the window controls.)

By doing this, we make sure our content remains fully visible. We’re also defining fallback values (the second parameter in the env() function) for when the variables are not defined (such as on non-supporting browsers, or when the Windows Control Overlay feature is disabled).

Now our header adapts to its surroundings, and it doesn’t feel like the window control buttons have been added as an afterthought. The app looks a lot more like a native app.

Changing the window controls background color so it blends in

Now let’s take a closer look at our second page: the CSS playground editor.

Not great. Our CSS demo area does go all the way to the top, which is what we wanted, but the way the window controls appear as white rectangles on top of it is quite jarring.

We can fix this by changing the app’s theme color. There are a couple of ways to define it:

• PWAs can define a theme color in the web app manifest file using the theme_color manifest member. This color is then used by the OS in different ways. On desktop platforms, it is used to provide a background color to the title bar and window controls.
• Websites can use the theme-color meta tag as well. It’s used by browsers to customize the color of the UI around the web page. For PWAs, this color can override the manifest theme_color.

In our case, we can set the manifest theme_color to white to provide the right default color for our app. The OS will read this color value when the app is installed and use it to make the window controls background color white. This color works great for our main page with the list of demos.

The theme-color meta tag can be changed at runtime, using JavaScript. So we can do that to override the white with the right demo background color when one is opened.

Here is the function we’ll use:

function themeWindow(bgColor) {
  document.querySelector("meta[name=theme-color]").setAttribute('content', bgColor);
}

With this in place, we can imagine how using color and CSS transitions can produce a smooth change from the list page to the demo page, and enable the window control buttons to blend in with the rest of the app’s interface.

Dragging the window

Now, getting rid of the title bar entirely does have an important accessibility consequence: it’s much more difficult to move the application window around.

The title bar provides a sizable area for users to click and drag, but by using the Window Controls Overlay feature, this area becomes limited to where the control buttons are, and users have to very precisely aim between these buttons to move the window.

Fortunately, this can be fixed using CSS with the app-region property. This property is, for now, only supported in Chromium-based browsers and needs the -webkit- vendor prefix. 

To make any element of the app become a dragging target for the window, we can use the following: 

-webkit-app-region: drag;

It is also possible to explicitly make an element non-draggable: 

-webkit-app-region: no-drag; 

These options can be useful for us. We can make the entire header a dragging target, but make the search field and NEW button within it non-draggable so they can still be used as normal.

However, because the editor page doesn’t display the header, users wouldn’t be able to drag the window while editing code. So let's use a different approach. We’ll create another element before our header, also absolutely positioned, and dedicated to dragging the window.

<div class="drag"></div>
<header>...</header>

.drag {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  width: 100%;
  height: env(titlebar-area-height, 0);
  -webkit-app-region: drag;
}

With the above code, we’re making the draggable area span the entire viewport width, and using the titlebar-area-height variable to make it as tall as what the title bar would have been. This way, our draggable area is aligned with the window control buttons as shown below.

And, now, to make sure our search field and button remain usable:

header .search,
header .new {
  -webkit-app-region: no-drag;
}

With the above code, users can click and drag where the title bar used to be. It is an area that users expect to be able to use to move windows on desktop, and we’re not breaking this expectation, which is good.

Adapting to window resize

It may be useful for an app to know both whether the window controls overlay is visible and when its size changes. In our case, if the user made the window very narrow, there wouldn’t be enough space for the search field, logo, and button to fit, so we’d want to push them down a bit.

The Window Controls Overlay feature comes with a JavaScript API we can use to do this: navigator.windowControlsOverlay.

The API provides three interesting things:

• navigator.windowControlsOverlay.visible lets us know whether the overlay is visible.
• navigator.windowControlsOverlay.getBoundingClientRect() lets us know the position and size of the title bar area.
• navigator.windowControlsOverlay.ongeometrychange lets us know when the size or visibility changes.

Let’s use this to be aware of the size of the title bar area and move the header down if it’s too narrow.

if (navigator.windowControlsOverlay) {
  navigator.windowControlsOverlay.addEventListener('geometrychange', () => {
    const { width } = navigator.windowControlsOverlay.getBoundingClientRect();
    document.body.classList.toggle('narrow', width < 250);
  });
}

In the example above, we set the narrow class on the body of the app if the title bar area is narrower than 250px. We could do something similar with a media query, but using the windowControlsOverlay API has two advantages for our use case:

• It’s only fired when the feature is supported and used; we don’t want to adapt the design otherwise.
• We get the size of the title bar area across operating systems, which is great because the size of the window controls is different on Mac and Windows. Using a media query wouldn’t make it possible for us to know exactly how much space remains.

.narrow header {
  top: env(titlebar-area-height, 0);
  left: 0;
  width: 100%;
}

Using the above CSS code, we can move our header down to stay clear of the window control buttons when the window is too narrow, and move the thumbnails down accordingly.

Thirty pixels of exciting design opportunities

Using the Window Controls Overlay feature, we were able to take our simple demo app and turn it into something that feels so much more integrated on desktop devices. Something that reaches out of the usual window constraints and provides a custom experience for its users.

In reality, this feature only gives us about 30 pixels of extra room and comes with challenges on how to deal with the window controls. And yet, this extra room and those challenges can be turned into exciting design opportunities.

More devices of all shapes and forms get invented all the time, and the web keeps on evolving to adapt to them. New features get added to the web platform to allow us, web authors, to integrate more and more deeply with those devices. From watches or foldable devices to desktop computers, we need to evolve our design approach for the web. Building for the web now lets us think outside the rectangular box.

So let’s embrace this. Let’s use the standard technologies already at our disposal, and experiment with new ideas to provide tailored experiences for all devices, all from a single codebase!

If you get a chance to try the Window Controls Overlay feature and have feedback about it, you can open issues on the spec’s repository. It’s still early in the development of this feature, and you can help make it even better. Or, you can take a look at the feature’s existing documentation, or this demo app and its source code. 

The political space for Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People’s Power also flows from the impact of the 2022 ‘Aragalaya’ or the citizens’ protest movement