About
Hi, I’m Dana Kowalski — and I built this site because a shifting button once cost me a client.
A few years back, I was demoing a landing page to a client over a video call. Right as they moved to click the “Get Started” button, an ad loaded above it, the whole page jumped, and they ended up clicking on something else entirely. Awkward silence. Lost momentum. A deal that took an extra two weeks to close.
That one moment sent me down a rabbit hole that turned into a career focus: why do web pages move under our feet, and how do we stop it?
What I do
I’m a front-end developer with 8 years of experience building and optimizing production websites — everything from small marketing sites to e-commerce platforms handling real traffic and real revenue. Along the way, Core Web Vitals became part of my day job, not just a buzzword. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit staring at Lighthouse reports, chasing down layout shifts, and explaining to teammates why that “small” image without dimensions was quietly wrecking their CLS score.
LayoutStability.rocks is where I put all of that down in writing — the fixes, the formulas, the tools I wish existed when I was learning this stuff myself.
Why this site exists
Most performance advice online is either:
- Too abstract — “reduce layout shift” without showing you the actual CSS, or
- Too scattered — buried in changelogs, spec documents, and half-answered Stack Overflow threads
I wanted one place that treats layout stability as its own discipline: practical CSS techniques, real calculators you can plug numbers into, and breakdowns of why something works, not just that it works.
Everything here is built around a simple idea: a fast site that jumps around is still a bad site. Speed and stability aren’t the same thing, and stability is the one most guides skip.
What you’ll find here
- Hands-on CSS techniques — aspect-ratio, containment, container queries, and other tools for building layouts that hold still
- Working calculators — for CLS scoring, aspect ratios, font fallback sizing, and more, so you’re not doing the math by hand
- Real case studies — including my own projects, warts and all, showing before-and-after numbers
- No fluff — every post is something I’ve actually implemented or tested, not a rehash of the same five points you’ve read elsewhere
A quick note on accuracy
I care about getting this right. When I reference a spec, a browser behavior, or a Web Vitals threshold, I check it against current documentation before publishing — browsers change, and so do best practices. If you ever spot something outdated or incorrect, I genuinely want to hear about it. See the Contact page for how to reach me.
Outside of layout shift
When I’m not measuring pixels, I’m usually tinkering with side projects, contributing small fixes to open-source CSS tooling, or trying (and often failing) to keep my own portfolio site’s CLS score at zero.
Thanks for stopping by. Let’s build pages that stay put.
— Dana Kowalski Founder & Editor, LayoutStability.rocks