Bootstrap, Ship, Repeat: Lessons From Polypane Creator Killian Valkhof
On this week’s Commit & Push, host Damien Filiatrault sits down with Dutch developer-turned-founder Killian Valkhof to talk about Polypane, the purpose-built browser that’s quietly shaving hours off front-end workflows. From instant multi-viewport previews to live accessibility overlays, Killian shows us what happens when a browser is designed for developers, not end-users.
A Browser Built by Devs, for Devs
Killian never meant to reinvent the browser. Ten years ago, he hacked together a prototype to speed up his agency work and discovered he was shipping sites 60 % faster. That lightning-bolt metric convinced him to quit agency life and bootstrap Polypane full-time in 2019. Today it’s a solo-run SaaS that thousands of devs swear by.
Instant Responsive Design (Without the Phone Drawer)
Polypane’s signature trick is showing every breakpoint at once. Open a project and you’ll see live, synced “panes” for mobile, tablet, and desktop (or any sizes you choose). Click, scroll, or type in one pane and the action mirrors across the rest. Goodbye, endless browser-resize dance and goodbye, half-charged Android hiding in the drawer.
Accessibility You Can Actually See
Chrome gives us the DOM; Polypane reveals the layers beneath it. Toggle the Heading Outline to spot duplicate H-tags that confuse screen-reader users. Run the Color Contrast checker to highlight text that fails WCAG, then click one suggested swatch to auto-fix it. “If we can point to a single, definitive solution, we do,” Killian says. No AI guesswork, just clear, prescriptive fixes.
Head Meta & Social Previews Before You Hit “Post”
Ever paste a link on X and watch it pull a broken image? Polypane renders social previews for eight major platforms, even on localhost. Tweak your meta tags, refresh, and know exactly how that launch tweet will look before the world does.