By @edent · microsoft privacy web · 14 comments · 500 words · read ~493 times.
Microsoft loves you and wants to protect you. So every time you receive an email with a link in it, Microsoft Outlook helpfully rewrites it so that it goes through their "safelinks" system. Safelinks allow your administrator, or someone at Microsoft, to stop you visiting a link which is malicious or suspicious. Rather than going […]
Continue reading →By @edent · accessibility HTML5 web · 14 comments · 300 words · read ~6,810 times.
Yesterday I was on a train. I clicked on a link and my browser loaded a long article for me to read. Halfway through reading it, the train went into a tunnel and I lost signal. That meant I couldn't see the images on the other half of the page for the rest of the […]
Continue reading →By @edent · internet predictions web · 7 comments · 700 words · read ~1,435 times.
Way back in 2011, I contributed to an article on The Next Web called "What will the Web be like in 20 years?". Foolishly, I missed the 10 year anniversary, but let's see how we're doing against those predictions a little over halfway through. My prediction for the Web? The same speed. Faster pipes & […]
Continue reading →By @edent · google Satire (Probably) web · 11 comments · 400 words · read ~3,579 times.
Many gallons of digital ink spilled at Google's plans for "Web Environment Integrity" which - depending on who you believe - is either an entirely reasonable proposal to protect users or a devious plan to add DRM to the entire web. (It's the latter, obviously.) We'll never know exactly whether users want this because Google […]
Continue reading →By @edent · guardian hyperlinks newspapers url web · 13 comments · 400 words · read ~6,394 times.
The Guardian launched its online adventures back in 1999. At some point, they started using the name "Guardian Unlimited". Hey, the dot com boom made us all do crazy things! As part of that branding, they proudly used the domain GU.com Over time, the branding faded and GU.com became a URL shortening service. Tiny URls […]
Continue reading →By @edent · BBC NaBloPoMo web · 13 comments · 1,500 words · read ~3,059 times.
Back in 2007 - an eternity in web years - the BBC published a document showing their 15 Web Principles. I thought I'd take a look at how they stack up today. And investigate whether the BBC is still living up to them. Here are the slides if you want to play along at home: […]
Continue reading →By @edent · HTML5 web · 5 comments · 800 words · read ~288 times.
This is quite the epitome of yak-shaving! Suppose you have an article written in HTML. The basic layout might be something like: <body> <main> <article> The content of your article ... Pretty standard. Now suppose you let users add comments to the article. […]
Continue reading →By @edent · search web · 11 comments · 200 words · read ~18,385 times.
Computers would be so much better if they never had to deal with users, amirite?!!? I remember, years ago, working on a mobile web service which had a URl bar - so users could tap in bbc.co.uk on their T9 keypads - and a separate search bar. I thought that was pretty nifty. But it […]
Continue reading →By @edent · rant tech web · 4 comments · 250 words · read ~328 times.
My laptop ran out of space yesterday. Why? Useless ZIP files! I needed to download a Windows Virtual Machine in order to upgrade the firmware on a device (long story). The official Windows 10 VM is 20GB TWENTY GIGA-FUCKING-BYTES!!! It downloaded reasonably quickly - yay fibre! But I had to wait almost as long to […]
Continue reading →By @edent · HTML5 web WeekNotes work · 53 comments · 650 words · read ~62,976 times.
I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here. A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for people fleeing domestic violence. […]
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