Building light out of black
This is example content shipped with the theme. The baseline you are reading is the no-JavaScript version; JavaScript only adds the live countdown, the wider-compatibility progress bar, section highlighting, and a theme that remembers itself.
The glow
The neon edge is a two-pixel border. The light seeping inward is an inset shadow tinted with the accent colour, blurred wide and pulled back with a negative spread so it fades to the background well before it reaches the text. The wide space between border and words is the room the glow needs to fall off in.
The colour only bleeds inward. Depth between panels is a separate black shadow — a dark shadow on a dark ground reads as distance, with no coloured halo escaping into the page.
Stacked windows
Header, article, and the faint pixel lattice are three layers, each casting a soft black shadow on what sits beneath it. On a landing page this window stretches nearly edge to edge; in an article it collapses to a readable column.
.bar { display: none; } /* never render broken */
@supports (animation-timeline: scroll()) { /* css path, no js */
.no-js .bar { display: block; }
}
.js .bar { display: block; } /* js path, any browser */
The type
Three families, three jobs: a chunky pixel face for the logo and headline, a lighter terminal face for the interface, and a quiet sans for prose. Code is monospace. The rule: pixel type for chrome, ordinary sans for prose.