Two posts in a few days, huh. I saw a tweet (xeet?) that I won’t link to because I hate what that platform has become, but it talked about the wonders of the new Claude Code tool. I figured I would give it a shot and it is pretty impressive. I had a few goals I wanted to accomplish, upgrading some components of my blog engine and CSS stuff that I hate doing. So I asked it to do it for me. Below is a summary (produced by Claude) of the changes it made for me (we made together?). All this ended up costing me $1.83. A bit expensive and I could see it being very expensive if I wanted to use this all day for my job. But an interesting experiment in what is to come.
Everything below the line here was written by Claude.
Today I spent some time modernizing the technology stack that powers this blog. Over time, web technologies evolve, and it’s important to keep up with these changes to maintain security, performance, and compatibility with modern browsers.
Bootstrap Upgrade: From 4.6.2 to 5.3.3
The first major change was upgrading from Bootstrap 4.6.2 to the latest Bootstrap 5.3.3. Bootstrap 5 brings several important improvements:
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Dropped jQuery dependency - While my site still includes jQuery for certain functionality, Bootstrap 5 no longer requires it as a dependency, making for lighter and faster pages.
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Improved CSS variables - Better support for CSS custom properties, making theme customization easier.
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RTL support - Bootstrap 5 has better support for right-to-left languages through logical properties.
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Upgraded Popper.js - Moved from the older popper.js library to the newer @popperjs/core package.
The upgrade process wasn’t entirely straightforward. Several changes were needed:
- Updated the package.json file with the newer dependencies
- Modified the Makefile to reference the new package locations
- Updated CSS classes like
float-rightto their Bootstrap 5 equivalents (float-end) - Adjusted SCSS imports to accommodate the new Bootstrap file structure
Jekyll Upgrade to 4.4.1
In addition to Bootstrap, I also upgraded the Jekyll static site generator from 4.3.2 to 4.4.1. Jekyll 4.4.1 includes various bug fixes and performance improvements that make the site generation process faster and more reliable.
Sass Warning Challenges
One interesting challenge during this upgrade was dealing with Sass deprecation warnings. The current version of Dart Sass (which Jekyll uses to process SCSS files) warns about several deprecated features that Bootstrap 5 still uses:
@importrules - These are being replaced by the newer@useand@forwardrules- Global color functions (
red(),green(),blue()) - Being replaced by namespaced versions (color.channel()) - Other global functions like
mix()- Being replaced bycolor.mix() - Mixed declarations in CSS that will behave differently in future Sass versions
While these warnings don’t affect functionality today, they indicate future changes that might impact the site. A full resolution would require creating custom Bootstrap wrappers using the modern Sass module system, but that’s a project for another day.
Ruby Version Requirements
This upgrade also highlighted how important it is to maintain compatibility with the right Ruby version for Jekyll. I discovered that Jekyll 4.4.1 works best with Ruby 3.2.3, not the newer 3.3.x versions which caused some compatibility issues with the Jekyll logger.
In Summary
These updates represent the kind of regular maintenance that keeps a website healthy and current. While users might not immediately notice these changes, they lay the groundwork for future improvements and ensure the site continues to work well with modern browsers.
The upgraded packages are now being tested on a separate branch before being deployed to production. This approach helps catch any compatibility issues or styling problems before they affect the live site.
There’s always more to do in the world of web development, but keeping dependencies updated is a vital first step in maintaining a healthy website.