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Write Alt Text Like You’re Talking To A Friend – Cloud Four

This is good advice:

Write alternative text as if you’re describing the image to a friend.

a view source web

As a self-initiated learner, being able to view source brought to mind the experience of a slow walk through someone else’s map.

This ability to “observe” software makes HTML special to work with.

Can you feel the rhythm‽ · 13 March 2024

Adam makes a very good point here: the term “vertical rhythm” is quite chauvanistic, unconciously defaulting to top-to-bottom writing modes; the term “logical rhythm” is more universal (and scalable).

The Subversive Hyperlink - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Subvert the status quo. Own a website. Make and share links.

Beyond the Frame | Untangling Non-Linearity

A fascinating look at the connections between hypertext and film editing. I’m a sucker for any article that cites both Ted Nelson and Walter Murch.

How independent writers are turning to AI

I missed this article when it was first published, but I have to say this is some truly web-native art direction: bravo!

Utopia WCAG warnings | Trys Mudford

Wouldn’t it be great if all web tools gave warnings like this?

As you generate and tweak your type scale, Utopia will now warn you if any steps fail WCAG SC 1.4.4, and tell you between which viewports the problem lies.

CSS Text balancing with text-wrap:balance - Ahmad Shadeed

Ahmad runs through some of the scenarios where text-wrap: balance could be handy.

Even though it’s not well-supported yet in browsers, there’s no reason not to start adding it to sites now; it’s classic progressive enhancement.

The perfect link - The A11Y Collective

How do we write, design, and code a link that works for everyone on every device? Let’s dive into the world of creating the perfect link, without making a pig’s breakfast of it.

Preventing too-short final lines of blocks | Clagnut by Richard Rutter

Check out the demo that Rich has put together to go with Amelia’s proposed syntax.

www91.pdf

This is the flyer that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau distributed at the Hypertext 91 Conference—the one where their submission was infamously rejected.

The WWW project merges the techniques of information rerieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.

The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. lt aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.

An end to typographic widows on the web | Clagnut by Richard Rutter

Rich explains what text-wrap:balance does …and what it doesn’t.

ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web | The New Yorker

A very astute framing by Ted Chiang—large language models as a form of lossy compression for text.

When we’re dealing with sequences of words, lossy compression looks smarter than lossless compression.

A lot of uses have been proposed for large language models. Thinking about them as blurry JPEGs offers a way to evaluate what they might or might not be well suited for.

A CSS challenge: skewed highlight — Vadim Makeev

I did not know about box-decoration-break—sounds like a game-changer for text effects that wrap onto multiple lines.

How We Verified Ourselves on Mastodon — and How You Can Too – The Markup

It gives me warm fuzzies to see an indie web building block like rel="me" getting coverage like this.

Word Persons and Web Persons · roytang.net

This resonates with me.

You don’t need HTML!

View source on this bit of tongue-in-cheek fun from Terence.

Nutshell: make expandable explanations

Nicky Case has made an implementation of Ted Nelson’s StretchText that works across different domains.

A Well-Known Links Resource - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

I really like this experiment that Jim is conducting on his own site. I might try to replicate it sometime!

Balisage: Metaphors We Code By

My talk, Building, was about the metaphors we use to talk about the work we do on the web. So I’m interested in this analysis of the metaphors used to talk about markup: