Typography

The heading scale, the body text and everything the framework sets on bare elements. Headings carry text-wrap: balance and a touch of negative tracking, paragraphs text-wrap: pretty.

Main Colors

These thirteen are the only colors you ever set. Everything else - hover tones, translucent backgrounds, borders, muted text, the card and footer surfaces, the ink variant the dark theme needs - is derived from them at runtime with color-mix() and relative color syntax, so overriding a root token cascades to all of its variants.

Fill or Ink

Every brand and status colour comes in two tokens. --mw-primary-color is the exact colour, for anything it fills - buttons, badges, bars - with --mw-primary-accent-text-color on top. --mw-primary-text-color is the same colour as ink on a theme surface: text, icons, focus rings, accent borders. A colour picked to carry a label is by definition too dark or too light to be read on the page it sits on. The ink token clamps OKLch lightness - at least 0.68 on the dark page, at most 0.55 on the light one - and keeps hue and chroma, so it works for any palette: a dark colour gets lifted, a very light one deepened, and a colour already in range passes through untouched. Toggle the theme and watch the second row.

Label Ink Per Colour

--mw-accent-text-color is the label on every solid coloured surface, and one value for all six only holds while the whole palette sits on the same side of the lightness scale. A neon green primary next to a deep blue secondary needs a dark label on the one and a light label on the other, so every colour carries its own override: --mw-primary-accent-text-color, --mw-secondary-accent-text-color and the same for success, warning, danger and info. Each one defaults to --mw-accent-text-color, so nothing changes until you set one.

:root {
  --mw-primary-color: #39ff14;
  /* the shared label stays light for the rest of the palette ... */
  --mw-accent-text-color: #f2f6fc;
  /* ... only the neon primary gets a dark one */
  --mw-primary-accent-text-color: #0b0f0a;
}

Everything that fills a surface with that colour follows: buttons and mini buttons, the burger button, table and panel headers, card badges and ribbons, segmented and tab items, stepper dots, calendar selection, timeline dates, accordion headers and progress labels. The burger button switches to --mw-secondary-accent-text-color while the drawer is open, because its surface does the same - override --mw-header-burgerbutton-color and --mw-header-burgerbutton-open-color to break out of that.

Tinted surfaces follow one rule as well: --mw-*-background is 20% of the colour, --mw-*-background-hover 45%. Both stay close enough to the surface underneath that --mw-text-color keeps working on top - which is what makes an alert, badge or tag readable in either theme.

The surfaces work the same way. Card, footer and border scale the page background's OKLch lightness and chroma by one factor and keep the hue, so a tinted page hands its tint down instead of graying out. A card always steps away from the text colour - darker than the page in the dark theme, lighter in the light one - so content sits on the cleaner surface. That is also why the dark page background is not near-black: the surfaces below it need somewhere to go.

Each factor is an SCSS knob, so how far a card sits from the page is one number per theme. Below 1 steps toward black, above 1 toward white - read 0.85 as "the card sits at 85% of the page's lightness". Move both card knobs toward 1 for a flat, borderless look, push them apart for cards that read as raised panels. Keep the footer further out than the card in the dark theme and on the other side in the light one, or the band under the page stops reading as chrome.

@use 'maverick-wave/src/scss/main' with (
  $card-surface-dark: 0.85,   // card, dark theme
  $card-surface-light: 1.05,  // card, light theme
  $footer-surface-dark: 0.75, // footer and header chrome
  $footer-surface-light: 0.95
);

Utilities

The classes that do exactly one thing: spacing, flex, display, text, elevation, aspect ratio. Worth checking before writing a rule of your own - most one-off styles in an application turn out to be a utility that already exists.

Split Rows

The most common row in any interface: what it is on the left, the value or the action on the right. mw-row-split wraps, so on a narrow screen the right half drops below instead of squashing the left one. mw-row-split-center switches from baseline to center alignment, for a row that mixes text with a button or an icon.

Numbers

mw-text-numeric gives fixed-width digits and nothing else - for a clock, a counter or an ID that must not jitter while it changes. mw-text-currency adds right alignment and prevents wrapping mid-number, which is what a money column in a table wants.

Screen Reader Only

mw-sr-only hides text visually but keeps it in the accessibility tree - the label an icon-only button still owes its user. display: none would not do: it drops the element out of that tree as well. The two buttons below look identical; only one of them says what it does.

Tooltips

Put data-tooltip="..." on any element - pure CSS, no script needed. The bubble sits above the element on hover or keyboard focus and long text wraps instead of running off in one endless line. It reaches outside a card, because cards only clip their content when they carry a ribbon. What does still cut it off: a scroll container, and the edge of the screen.

Text Overflow & Wrapping

The two ways a long string is cut short, and they are not interchangeable: mw-text-truncate is one line ending in an ellipsis, mw-text-clamp-2 through -5 is that many lines ending in one. Truncation carries min-width: 0 with it, which is the reason it "does not work" nine times out of ten inside a flex row.

Elevation

The same five-step ramp every component uses, as classes. Each level is two shadows: a tight contact layer that gives the box weight, and a wide ambient one that says how high it floats. One layer alone reads as a blur behind the box - the pair reads as light. mw-elevation-0 is explicitly flat, for taking something off the page it normally floats above.

Responsive Display

Mobile-first and min-width, like everything else here. mw-d-md-flex means "flex from the md breakpoint up", and the unprefixed class beside it is what applies below that - the pair mw-d-none mw-d-md-flex is hidden on a phone and a row from a tablet on. Variants exist for sm, md, lg and xl.

Aspect Ratio

Reserves the box before the image inside it has loaded, which is the whole point: without it the page reflows when the picture arrives and everything below jumps. The child fills the box and crops rather than stretching. mw-aspect-square, -video, -wide, -portrait, -photo.

Header Utilities

The two controls that live in the bar itself rather than on the page: the theme switch and the login button. Both are real buttons, so they are reachable by keyboard - the switch in particular is the first thing someone with a light-sensitivity need goes looking for.

Coming Soon Banner

A placeholder for a section that is not built yet. Loud on purpose: the whole point is that nobody ships it by accident.

Divider

A rule between two things - horizontal or vertical, solid or dashed, in a brand colour, or with a label sitting in the middle of it.

Buttons

Three emphasis levels: primary fills, outline draws a line, ghost does neither until you point at it. Every variant dips a pixel when pressed - on touch that press is the only feedback there is.

Plain Buttons

mw-btn-plain is for everywhere a <button> is the right element and a button is the wrong look - a calendar day, a time in a request row, a modal backdrop. It brings nothing but the focus ring and the pointer; everything else it inherits. Not the same as mw-btn-link, which is a button dressed as a link with a colour and a control height of its own, nor the same as mw-link, which is the link inside a sentence.

Text Links

mw-link is the link inside a sentence, mw-link-muted the quieter one. Same look as mw-btn-link, without the button: mw-btn carries a control height, and in running text that lifts the one line the link sits on above every line around it - glaring in a footer disclaimer, where the text is a size smaller to begin with. So mw-link in a paragraph, mw-btn mw-btn-link where the link really is one of several buttons and has to line up with them. Both work on an <a> and on a <button>.

Touch Targets

On a coarse pointer or below 768px the compact controls grow to a size a thumb can actually hit: mw-btn-sm, mw-input-sm and mw-select-sm to 2.5rem, a tab to 2.75rem, a calendar day to 44px. WCAG 2.5.8 puts the floor at 24px, and that is a floor, not a goal. mw-btn-mini keeps its 18px circle - it sits in tag rows and table cells where a bigger one would shift the layout - and grows its hit area to 28px instead. Nothing to switch on; resize this page or open it on a phone.

Button Bars

A framed row of actions. Below 576px it stacks and every button takes the full width. The colour variants style whatever is inside them, so a bar of five buttons needs one class rather than five.

Progress Bars

A bar with an optional label and scale. The fill runs up from zero when it scrolls into view, so the number gets read rather than just seen.

Loading Spinners

Three shapes for the same job. Each one needs its shape class: mw-spinner-primary on its own renders nothing at all.

Basic Spinners

Spinner Sizes

Spinner Colors

Spinner in Context

Avatars

A picture or a pair of initials, in five sizes. The colour variants sit on the border, so they still read over a photo; on an initials avatar they fill the circle as well. Inside a group the overlap follows the avatar size.

Avatar Sizes

Avatar Shapes & Colors & Group

Avatar Shapes

Avatar Colors

Avatar Initials

For users without a picture. The color variants tint the surface here instead of the border.

MW

AB

CD

EF

GH

IJ

KL

MN

Avatar Group

Tags

A label with a soft surface that names something - a topic, a state, a category - and sits in a row of its own kind. For a count or a status marker reach for a badge instead.

Badges

A badge is not a tag. A tag names something and sits in a row of its own kind; a badge carries a count or a status and usually sits on something - the number on a bell, the dot on an avatar. That is why it fills its colour instead of tinting it, and why it comes with an anchor.

Dropdown

Built on <details> and <summary> rather than a div and a click handler. That buys the whole keyboard contract for free: the trigger is focusable, Enter and Space toggle it, the open state lives in the DOM where a screen reader can see it, and the menu still opens with JavaScript switched off. The framework script only adds what markup cannot express - closing on Esc and on a click elsewhere.

Keyboard Keys

Anything that tells someone which key to press should look like the key. <kbd> is styled directly, so a shortcut in prose needs no class at all; mw-kbd is there for a span when the markup is not yours to change.

Ratings

Change the data-rating attribute (0-5) to see how many thumbs-up light up. You can also determine the icon flexibly.

Info Badges & Counters

A small solid marker for a status, a label or a count, down to a mini form that fits inside a table cell. A tag names something; this one flags it.

Pill Badges

Color Badges (with Border)

Counters

Mini Info Badges (Sizes)

Mini Info Badges (Colors)

Alerts System

A message that belongs to the page it sits on. The colour carries the severity and the left rule repeats it, so the meaning survives where the tint does not. The same markup inside a mw-toast-stack becomes a toast.

Toast Stack

Alerts become toasts by putting them in a fixed, stacked container. Positions: mw-toast-stack-top-right (default), mw-toast-stack-top-center, mw-toast-stack-bottom-right. Auto-dismiss stays the application's job.

<div class="mw-toast-stack mw-toast-stack-top-right">
  <div class="mw-alert mw-alert-success">
    <div class="mw-alert-icon"><i class="fas fa-check-circle"></i></div>
    <div class="mw-alert-content">Entry saved.</div>
  </div>
</div>

Code

Inline code gets a surface of its own so it reads as a quoted thing; blocks get a filename bar and a terminal variant. The syntax colours are a fixed pair of themes rather than brand tokens - code is easier to read in the colours an editor already uses.

// A simple greeting function
function greet(name) {
  return `Hello, ${name}!`;
}

// Display greeting in console
console.log(greet('Developer'));

// A simple React counter component
import { useState } from 'react';

function Counter() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);
  return (
    ......
  );
}

const greet = (name) => {
  // Simple greeting
  return `Hello, ${name}!`;
};

<p>Use the <code>mw-btn</code> class.</p>

<div class="mw-code-container">
  <pre><code>your_code_here();
    more_code();</code></pre>
</div>

<div class="mw-code-block"> <!-- Note: .mw-code-block wraps header + container -->
  <div class="mw-code-block-header">
    <span class="mw-code-block-filename">script.js</span>
    <span class="mw-code-block-language">JavaScript</span>
  </div>
  <div class="mw-code-container">
    <pre><code>your_code_here();</code></pre>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="mw-terminal">
  <span class="mw-terminal-line">npm install maverick-wave</span>
  <span class="mw-terminal-line mw-terminal-output">+ maverick-wave added</span>
</div>

Skeleton Loader

The shape of the content before the content arrives. Match it to what is actually loading - a skeleton in the wrong shape is worse than a spinner, because the page then moves twice.

Empty State

What a list shows when it holds nothing. An icon, a line saying what is missing and, ideally, the action that fills it. The parts are -icon, -title and -desc.

Page Header

The start of a content page: title and subtitle on the left, actions on the right, wrapping when it gets tight. The counterpart to mw-section-title, which is centered and decorated and belongs on a landing page.

Meta Info

The line of small facts that sits with a heading - author, date, reading time, status. One wrapping row, with the separators drawn by CSS rather than typed into the markup.

Tables

Rows for data that has columns. On a phone a wide table either scrolls inside its own frame or turns each row into a card - mw-table-responsive for the first, mw-table-cards for the second. The compact variant is for the tables that hold a screenful at a time.

Kanban

A board is a mw-kanban with one mw-kanban-column per status, a ticket a plain mw-card with mw-kanban-card on top. The priority is the regular mw-card-ribbon and brings its colour along on its own.

Default Board

Compact Board

mw-kanban-compact tightens the padding and clamps the description to two lines instead of four - for boards with many lanes or a sidebar next to them. Same markup otherwise.

Calendar

Month, compact and week share every class - a week is seven cells instead of forty-two, mw-calendar-compact drops the dots and a third of the height. The status dots come in as data-calendar-markers='{"2026-08-19": ["success", "warning"]}'.

What a dot means belongs to the caller: the same calendar reads “request pending / booked / time offered” in a scheduling app and something else entirely on a public booking page. So the colour is a property, --mw-calendar-dot, settable per dot or inherited from the cell - mw-calendar-dot-success and friends are named presets for it, not the only way in.

Simple Pagination

The same frame as a calendar - an arrow on each side of the title, content below - but the body is yours. Not a page-number list; the paging itself is your job, mw-pagination-loading dims the body while the next page is on its way.

Timelines

Big Timeline

You can use every card within the timeline content wrapper.

Simple Timeline

Here you can also use every card within the timeline content wrapper.

Image Gallery

A slider for photos: swipe, arrows, dots and a caption read off the slide itself. The dots are real buttons, so the fourth picture is reachable without a mouse.

❮

❯

Beautiful Mountain

Technology Stack Bucket

The Techstack component allows you to showcase toolsets and skills in a clean, organized bucket layout. Each item can feature a logo, optional labels, and a direct link to the technology's homepage.

Large Items with Description

Angular Frontend

SCSS Styles

TypeScript Strict Typing

Small Items (Logos Only)

Small Items with Name

React

Vue.js

Tailwind

Dashed Variant (Mixed Content)

Rust

Python

Content Slider

Image Slider

Base View Lake Forest Field Trees

Blog Posts

A long-form article rather than a card: title, meta line, body and the way back out. The gradient rule down the left edge is what makes it read as a page instead of a panel.

Just a dummy blog post (markdown generated)

April 10, 2025

By Sarah Johnson

8 min read

The landscape of web development continues to evolve at a rapid pace. In this article, we explore the latest frameworks, tools, and methodologies that are shaping the industry in 2025.

The Rise of AI-Assisted Development

Artificial intelligence has transformed how we approach coding. Modern IDEs now come equipped with sophisticated AI assistants that can generate entire components, optimize performance, and even identify potential bugs before they manifest.

The most significant advancement has been in the realm of natural language programming, where developers can describe functionality in plain English and have the AI generate the corresponding code.

"AI hasn't replaced developers; it has elevated them. We now spend more time on architecture and problem-solving rather than writing boilerplate code." - Elena Vega, Lead Developer at TechFront

Serverless Architecture: Beyond the Basics

Serverless computing has matured significantly, moving beyond simple function execution to comprehensive application architectures. The new generation of serverless platforms offers:

• Stateful serverless functions with built-in memory persistence
• Edge-optimized execution for global performance
• Integrated database connections with automatic scaling
• Real-time monitoring and debugging capabilities

Code Example: Modern Serverless Function

// Modern serverless function with state management
export async function handler(event, context) {
  // Access persistent state across invocations
  const state = await context.getState();

  // Process the incoming request
  const result = processRequest(event, state);

  // Update the state for future invocations
  await context.setState({
    lastProcessed: new Date(),
    counter: (state.counter || 0) + 1,
    recentRequests: [...(state.recentRequests || []), event.id].slice(-10)
  });

  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    body: JSON.stringify(result)
  };
}

Web Components and Micro-Frontends

The component-based architecture has evolved into a more standardized approach with Web Components becoming the foundation of modern frontend development. This has enabled true interoperability between different frameworks and libraries.

Micro-frontends have also gained widespread adoption, allowing teams to develop, test, and deploy parts of a frontend independently, using different technologies if necessary.

• DOP is not anti-OOP - it's a refinement for clearer thinking and modeling.
• With record, sealed interface, and Pattern Matching, Java is finally ready for this style.
• You’ll get:
  • Transparent and predictable models
  • Easier testing and logging
  • Less coupling and fewer side effects
• This approach can make your domain models sharper and your codebase easier to reason about.

Conclusion

As we move further into 2025, the web development landscape continues to prioritize developer experience, performance, and scalability. By embracing these modern techniques, developers can create more robust, efficient, and maintainable applications.

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