Replies: 2021

Ooh, Parable of the Sower almost topped my fiction list this year (great book!):

https://adactio.com/journal/18712

I’ll definitely be reading Parable of the Talents in 2022.

I think that IE10- and Safari6- can’t access The Session anyway because of TLS protocol mismatch, so ditching those polyfills shouldn’t cause any issues.

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=thesession.org

I’ve still got some polyfills in place for IE11 on The Session, but I’d be happy to see ABCJS ditch its polyfills if it makes for a lighter payload.

(Or let me know what the polyfills are and I could add them in myself.)

“Personalized ads pay better, hence tracking exists.”

Citation needed.

Counterpoint: https://adactio.com/journal/17658

I don’t agree with your assertion that “The real problem isn’t that the code comes from a third-party. It is that the third-party can change the code arbitrarily.” A tracking script with subresource integrity is still a tracking script.

But it is a zero-sum game.

https://adactio.com/links/18668

Any money that one person makes from buying low and selling high must come from someone else who bought high and sold low – there are as many losers as winners.

Like, The Beatles are simultaneously actually great, while also feeling like you’re LARPing a specific time period.

Other musical artists give you one or the other, but rarely both.

Dylan feels similar.

I don’t have an answer, but I have a hunch that the appeal of The Beatles is less like other musical artists, and more like the appeal of books like The Great Gatsby or Sherlock Holmes—something evocative of its time and yet timeless.

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

https://adactio.com/notes/reading

Some more details here: https://adactio.com/journal/7698

And here: https://adactio.com/journal/12606

My flow:

I type into a textarea and then submit the form.

My tool stack:

The backend is my own cobbled together pile of old PHP and MySQL.

I cross post to Medium and Twitter using their APIs.

Not very cunning, but I think you can do that DOM traversal in one go:

input.closest(‘fieldset’).querySelector(‘legend’)

Fun times!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/albums/72157594382982224

Get off my lawn, you pesky kids!

(I am flattered by the reference—thank you)

I like it!

Douglas Engelbart beat you to it:

https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/273/

The Imperial Radch series by @Ann_Leckie and the Teixcalaan series by @ArkadyMartine have something of the Hainish about them.

And there’s @Nnedi’s thoroughly enjoyable Binti series too.

Bollocks.

Therein lies the problem. The “web folks”, the “search folks”, and the “advertising folks” are all working for the same company. If that company were broken up it would be better for all three products.

I got a response. I wouldn’t say I got an answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNecNY6vDek&t=4261s

Thank you so much!

As an Irish type nerd, I’m offended on two levels.

The best movie that’s a cautionary tale about founding a startup with a friend is Primer.

Thanks!

I’ve blogged some stuff over the years: https://adactio.com/journal/tags/huffduffer

I concur.

https://adactio.com/journal/18046

I’m not sure that Google Chrome can be considered a user agent.

Growing up in Ireland, I remember the parking rules being very clear:

• A yellow line means you can’t park there at all.
• A double yellow line means you can’t park there at all, at all.

Ah, Galway! That was the last place I went before Covid shut everything down:

https://adactio.com/journal/16518

Thanks! I highly recommend Learning Web Design by @Jenville

https://learningwebdesign.com/

Here are some more resources I’ve gathered:

https://adactio.com/tags/learning,beginner

Some of my faves:

• CSS shadows https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/designing-shadows/ by @JoshWComeau
• CSS cascade https://wattenberger.com/blog/css-cascade by @Wattenberger
• Anything by @BCiechanowski https://ciechanow.ski/archives/

This Bandcamp page: https://aidanconnolly.bandcamp.com/

…is scraped for the image on this page: https://thesession.org/recordings/7413

Here’s a gist: https://gist.github.com/adactio/aa46506fc7c28f18f0feeffe0276a4a7

I scrape Bandcamp artist pages to get images and links for pages like this: https://thesession.org/recordings/7413

(Bandcamp has an API but not for public data.)

Yes!!!

JavaScript should only do what only JavaScript can do.

https://adactio.com/journal/15559

I’m writing a whole bunch about responsive design at the moment so that’s where my head is at right now. Happy to chat over video anytime.

(if you’d like to chat, my email is jeremy at clearleft dot com)

Welcome to Brighton!!!

I think you might like the most recent episode of the @Clearleft podcast. 🙂

https://podcast.clearleft.com/season03/episode05/

Maybe @BenBrignell’s https://principles.design/?

That’s the same thought process I’ve used in the past and I came to the same conclusions. Reassuring to hear it’s not just me!

Here are some I’ve linked to in the past:

https://adactio.com/links/tags/sci-fi,short,story

Here’s what I’m reading right now:

https://grist.org/fix/series/imagine-2200-climate-fiction/

I use https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ for testing the robustness of the HTTPS connection, and I use https://securityheaders.com/ for testing how well HTTP headers are set up.

Welcome to Brighton!

You picked a nice day for it!

Ooh, yeah, that was fun!

https://adactio.com/journal/1546

👋

Good times!

Yes, but the selection is very limited:

• https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/resilient-web-design/id1183700985
• https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/web-history/id1535003098

As a member of The Long Now Foundation, I am absolutely disgusted by this. The environmental disaster of this “NFT-based crowdfunding model” is the antithesis of long-term thinking.

That makes sense—svg isn’t a replaced element.

My gut feeling is that the download attribute would be handy on the img element (and other replaced elements too?) but I don’t have a use case to hand.

I shall ponder further.

I know this isn’t the use case you’re asking about, but if download were available on the img element, would it makes sense to also make it available on inline SVGs? (I do have a use case I can share for that.)

An alt-history space kick, you say? Are you reading @MaryRobinette’s Lady Astronaut series?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/262962547/

Thanks so much, Jared!

Maybe I could cajole you into being interviewed for the podcast sometime? 😉

Lovely!

That flip-book of Powers of Ten you mentioned—is that the one made by @KelliAnderson?

https://www.kellianderson.com/remixed/

Hi, Matt!

Good to see you again—I’ve missed you!

Golden retriever kind …but red golden retriever, so not so golden. Looks quite similar to an Irish red setter, doesn’t he?

Thanks for the tip!

(Though I have my suspicions that you may be biased towards those noodles because they named them after you. Twice.)

Child-ren …chiiiiiild-ren

No, you’re characteristically thoughtful!

Seriously, I just linked to your post and used the adjective “thoughtful” to describe it: https://adactio.com/links/18352

Beautiful!

(But saying “Might turn this series into my first NFT!” on the same day that the IPCC climate change report came out …yikes! NFTs are quite literally fuel for that fire.)

Thanks for the heads-up: should be fixed now!

That’s not what happened!

…it was currywurst and beer:

https://adactio.com/notes/15158

😋

I’m intrigued by the philosophy and approach of astro.build

I think open-ui.org is doing great work too.

I looked into some alternatives back in 2018:

https://adactio.com/journal/13853

https://adactio.com/articles/10887

That would be the brilliant @dhuntrods talking about workplace topology:

https://clearleft.com/posts/workplace-topology

— The next Bill’n’Ted movie is going to be set in Scandinavia.

— Norway?

— Yes, way!

I have a dedicated /notes section (just like I have a dedicated /links section) but on the homepage everything is in one stream.

(Except for replies—like this one—which don’t appear on the home page, just in /notes.)

This is so good, Diana—the responsiveness is great!

And welcome to the indie web—having your own website is so much fun!

That was discussed, but the problem there is that the web app manifest is fetched asynchronously and you kinda need that colour to kick in at the same time the page is rendered.

Same! I’ll probably write a blog post about this question too.

And thanks for the great talk (as always)!

Here’s what I’ve written to guardian.readers@theguardian.com:

https://adactio.com/journal/18246

Here’s one:

https://clearleft.com/about/jobs/midweight-design-engineer

Wow! My brother not only won the race, but he set a new record!

It’s the lovely Marvin Visions:

https://www.readvisions.com/marvin

Try aria-label (or aria-labelledby if there’s an ID you can point to).

As I understand it, an aria-label (or aria-labelledby) value gives an item an “accessible name” in much the same way an alt attribute does on images.

Perhaps the Doherty threshold (<400ms) applies here?

https://lawsofux.com/doherty-threshold/

When I give talks about progressive web apps, my one-slide TL/DR is:

HTTPS + service worker + web app manifest = progressive web app

https://adactio.com/journal/13884

Agreed! I wrote about how I found the whole process to be beautiful:

https://adactio.com/journal/17943

Right‽ @TheUniverse has such a great writing style!

Ooo, thank you for sharing that, Johanna!

Now I really want to rearrange those letters.

Thank you! I’d much prefer to be compared to @RobynHitchcock than the usual comparison I get …Julian Assange.

Well, that’s very handy for me! I may just be there to cheer him over the finish line.

Wait …Julian Gough as in Galway band Toasted Heretic Julian Gough!? 🤯

I’m also reading (and enjoying) A Memory Called Empire.

Other recent good SF reads: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, Rosewater by Tade Thompson (both first contact/alien invasion books set in Nigeria).

Never has choosing an appropriate typeface been so straightforward.

I see all you Marvin folks subfaving this, @MathieuLoutre, @ReadVisions, @djrrb. 😉🤖

(Thank you for the gorgeous font!)

I would never recommend any film in which the dog dies!

Good serious sci-fi:

• Stowaway,
• Archive.

Good fun sci-fi:

• Love and Monsters,
• Palm Springs.

Dr. Branhattan:

https://adactio.com/journal/15355

Added!

https://principles.adactio.com/#gds

Thanks for the heads-up.

Just the other night I said that I would pay good money for a recut of the new remake of Das Boot but with just the submarine scenes …y’know, the thing that made the original version work.

+1

It violates a fundamental principle of the web: GET requests shouldn’t have side effects …and it should be safe to visit a web page:

https://adactio.com/journal/17768

Didn’t Steve Krug write a book about the Firefox UI?

…

Don’t Make Me Think In Russian

Using TranslateY for the eyelid animation is brilliant!

You’re a terrific programmer, Diana!

“Would you like to add navigation transitions to your site without making your site an SPA?”

Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!

And I know @ChrisCoyier feels the same:

https://css-tricks.com/still-hoping-for-better-native-page-transitions/

Thanks for the heads-up: should be fixed now.

It is very good, but be warned that it has the same kind of mood as Never Let Me Go—something of a downer.

…although with a bit of searching, it doesn’t take long to figure out what all the initialisms stand for:

• CFP = Certified Financial Planner
• CLS = Community Legal Services
• FID = Flame Ionization Detector
• CWV = Catholic War Veterans

Genuine question: why is it that, in web performance circles in general, whenever three words are put into a sequence, they are instantly replaced by their initial letters?

It seems very exlusionary to anyone without the decoder ring.

Hey Sophia, I would be honoured! Drop me a line: jeremy at adactio dot com.

And thanks so much for reading Resilient Web Design!

Here’s more on that topic:

https://adactio.com/journal/17838

I think it was @Brad_Frost who first coined those front and back terms:

https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/front-of-the-front-end-and-back-of-the-front-end-web-development/

The Battery Status API doesn’t require permission (which shocked me when I found out):

https://w3c.github.io/battery/

Chrome shipped it anyway:

https://caniuse.com/battery-status

Grist for the fingerprinting mill.

Let’s make it happen!

https://github.com/adactio/share-button-type/blob/gh-pages/explainer.md

I’m gathering existing usage here:

https://github.com/adactio/share-button-type/issues/1

Such a perfect fit!

All of @Clearleft is cheering you on from the sidelines!

“Nothing is stopping you from doing the same.”

…if you’re also a white man.

(Otherwise it’s hard enough making a career out of doings things you are totally qualified for.)

Aw, that’s so kind of you—thank you so much, Jen!

Here’s an invaluable tool for HTML emails:

https://github.com/apparition47/MailTrackerBlocker

(for users, that is)

Me: [chanting] horse, horse-

Other devs: horse, HORSE

Pit stop crew: [pounding their clipboard] HORSE, HORSE, HORSE!

Two principles I’ve found to be univerally useful (to design, development, writing) are the robustness principle and the principle of least power:

https://adactio.com/journal/14327

Have you seen this?

https://twitter.com/generoom/status/1376084811421454337

The occassional non-Irish tune is okay but you should balance it out with four of five trad Irish submissions.

A good rule of thumb is: would I play this in an Irish session?

Actually, I meant fix that ship stuck in the Suez canal. Just ’cause my mind had allocated equal importance to that and The Minecraft Situation.

Very happy that one of them has been resolved!

Yay!

Now do the ship.

Personally I prefer code previews to code reviews:

https://adactio.com/journal/12071

Can we talk about their deductive reasoning skills (or lack thereof)?

For example: “Tonight there’s going to be a jailbreak …somewhere in this town.”

Somewhere in this town‽

Like, maybe, oh, I don’t know …the jail perhaps?

Our two talks are going to be very on-message. I’m looking forward to the one-two punch!

Here’s @AliceBartlett talking about implementing a design system at the Financial Times—this was at Patterns Day in 2017:

https://adactio.com/links/12637

Hope that helps!

Herzlichen Glückwunsch! Sieht sehr schön aus!

This is like the Pluto-Goofy paradox all over again.

I quoted you on this topic in this episode of the Clearleft podcast:

https://podcast.clearleft.com/season02/episode01/

It’s fascinating to imagine the alternate universes of possibilities that might have formed out of the early discussions around the topology of the web:

https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Topology.html

Nein, wir kümmern uns nicht an solche Kleinigkeiten, Herr Haarspalter.

Thanks so much for filing that bug—much appreciated!

Oh, interesting! Image requests shouldn’t make a difference to that bit of the service worker. Thanks for spotting that!

Web components are spicy iframes.

Frames and iframes are different things.

toast…

toast.

Toast.

Toast!

TOAST!

TOAST! TOAST! TOAST! TOAST! TOAST! TOAST!

TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAASSSSSTTTTT!!!!!

Yes! This!

If I’ve written some JavaScript I want to share but it doesn’t fit in a single gist, I take it as a signal that I’ve got some dependency problems.

Done!

I found (and updated) just one other instance: https://adactio.com/journal/10000

And nary a word on the unconscionable profligate waste of energy that is Proof of Work.

e.g. Arcade Machine Dreams: Tractor Beam http://cryptoart.wtf/#address=0xc9d673008b8f08103e7a3e096b6fdd56fc575d49

It was an honour for me to be there for such a bittersweet momentous finale!

George?

Then it can be both a witty literary reference and a nice short name to go with Bert.

Though I did once do a karaoke duet of Jackson with @grigs—he was Johnny; I was June.

Witchita Lineman.

Speaking of his novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut said it was the only story of his whose moral he knew:

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

I was wondering the same thing a while back:

https://adactio.com/journal/17480

Still haven’t got an answer though.

Remember when we met for the first time? It was in an airport! Dallas, if I recall.

It’s got to the point where I think I miss Dallas airport.

Welcome, neighbour!

I’ll think of you while I devour my birthday T-bone.

We’ll always have Chicago!

Yes! …but only if you bring Cider.

(Oh, and my birthday request is for more pictures of Cider please!)

Jon, you tell yourself whatever you need to hear to sleep at night.

The Star card:

http://cryptoart.wtf/#address=0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:159878:0x70015edd52ae84bb3dfd26711d7562218132e268

For six cards, you used enough energy to:

• fly for 36 hours,
• drive for 18,000 kilometres,
• boil a kettle 72,000 times, or
• use a laptop for 48 years.

I’ve spent a decade successfully lulling you into a false sense of victory.

steeples fingers

Soon.

Sooooooon.

₿utton, ₿utton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button,_Button_(The_Twilight_Zone)

It’s incontraverible. Proof of work deliberately wastes copious amounts of energy …by design.

It’s like someone heard about the trolley problem and thought “yeah, that’s let’s do this!”

Imagine how architects feel about the David Brents going around calling themselves “solutions architects.”

Yup! It’s like flypaper, but for building a blocklist.

This quote by Ira glass: https://quiteaquote.in/2017/09/29/ira-glass-taste-is-killer/

This film by Charles and Ray Eames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

This chili recipe: https://principiagastronomica.com/post/5

Ugly bags of mostly water.

It’s all about the puns, baby!

Is Wikipedia a website up until the point that I start editing an article?

https://adactio.com/journal/6246

Responsive Web Typography by @JPamental: https://rwt.io/

Adentures in Typography by @RobinRendle: https://buttondown.email/robinrendle/

Coffee Table Typography by @Magalhini: https://coffeetabletypography.com/

It is a coincidence! But I like it!

Yes! Robert Cailliau is very interested in the history of the Mundaneum—a precursor to the memex, in a way.

The regular bookmarklet does it.

Yes! Just the other day I said:

I feel sorry for anyone trying to get into the field of web performance … there’s a veritable alphabet soup of initialisms to memorise.

https://adactio.com/journal/17770

For your consideration:

https://resilientwebdesign.com/chapter5/ https://resilientwebdesign.com/chapter6/

The Marvel movies in timeline order.

And if you change your mind about Star Wars… https://adactio.com/journal/16826

Cool URIs don’t change.

The list was at http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html

I’ll update my collection: https://principles.adactio.com/#google

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I call dibs on Conservative Web Apps.

Congratulations! Well deserved!