finally seeing native random() roll out in safari and chrome 156. saw some demos with splayed cards and organic typography that looked alright but i can't see myself using it for anything besides a total mess.
> If a card suddenly jumps 20 pixels to the left on a refresh, it's not creative expression; it's a bugpretty much exactly what my pm would say if i tried to implement this for a real client. we spend all our time locking down color tokens and spacing scales just to have some random property value ruin the entire grid layout. probably fine for a punk fanzine or something but i'm not adding unpredictability to a production design system. it's basically just a way to break alignment on purpose which is a nightmare for accessibility anyway. tbh i'll stick to my predictable flexbox layouts and leave the 'playful imperfection' to the hobbyists
link:
https://smashingmagazine.com/2026/10/embracing-playful-imperfection-css-random-function/