Maggie explores different ways of visualising journeys on the web, including browser histories:
Perhaps web browsing histories should look more like Git commit histories? Perhaps distinct branches could representing different topics and research avenues?
Cassie pointed me to this very nifty tool (that she plans to use in your SVG animation workshop): choose font from Google Fonts, type some text, and get the glyphs immediately translated into an SVG!
This is a wonderful deep dive into all the parts of a URL:
scheme:[//[user:password@]host[:port]][/]path[?query][#fragment]
There’s a lot of great DNS stuff about the host part:
Root DNS servers operate in safes, inside locked cages. A clock sits on the safe to ensure the camera feed hasn’t been looped. Particularily given how slow DNSSEC implementation has been, an attack on one of those servers could allow an attacker to redirect all of the Internet traffic for a portion of Internet users. This, of course, makes for the most fantastic heist movie to have never been made.
This is superbly in-depth and easy-to-follow article from Cassie—everything you need to know about motion paths in SVG and CSS! It’s worth reading just for the wonderful examples.
I think these are great habit-forming ideas for any web designer or developer: a day without using your mouse; a day with your display set to grayscale; a day spent using a different web browser; a day with your internet connection throttled. I’m going to try these!
Harry takes a look at the performance implications of loading CSS. To be clear, this is not about the performance of CSS selectors or ordering (which really doesn’t make any difference at this point), but rather it’s about the different ways of getting rid of as much render-blocking CSS as possible.
…a good rule of thumb to remember is that your page will only render as quickly as your slowest stylesheet.
I really enjoyed chatting with Mark and Ben on the Relative Paths podcast. We talked about service workers and Going Offline, but we also had a good musical discussion.
This is absolutely brilliant!
Forgive my excitement, but this transcript of Charlie’s talk is so, so good—an equal mix of history and practical advice. Once you’ve read it, share it. I want everyone to have the pleasure of reading this inspiring piece!
It is this flirty declarative nature makes HTML so incredibly robust. Just look at this video. It shows me pulling chunks out of the Amazon homepage as I browse it, while the page continues to run.
Let’s just stop and think about that, because we take it for granted. I’m pulling chunks of code out of a running computer application, AND IT IS STILL WORKING.
Just how… INCREDIBLE is that? Can you imagine pulling random chunks of code out of the memory of your iPhone or Windows laptop, and still expecting it to work? Of course not! But with HTML, it’s a given.
Maybe being able to speak a foreign language is more fun than using a translation software.
Whenever we are about to substitute a laborious activity such as learning a language, cooking a meal, or tending to plants with a — deceptively — simple solution, we might always ask ourselves: Should the technology grow — or the person using it?
See, this is what I’m talking about—seamlessness is not, in my opinion, a desirable goal for its own sake. Every augmentation is also an amputation.
Some questions for us to ask ourselves as we design and build:
- Empowerment: Who’s having the fun?
- Resilience: Does it make us more vulnerable?
- Empathy: What is the impact of simplification on others?
A series of small suggestions that anyone can try so that they can better empathise with people who experience digital products differently.
These prompts are intended to help build empathy, not describe any one person’s experience. These prompts are not intended to tokenize the experience of the individuals experiencing these conditions.
A handy tool with some pre-made CSS clip paths that you can then tweak to your heart’s desire.
I love this recasting of the internet into a fantastical medieval setting. Standards become spells, standards bodies become guilds and orders of a coven, and technologies become instruments of divination. Here, for example, is the retelling of IPv4:
The Unique Rune of the Fourth Order is the original and formative Unique Rune, still commonly in use. All existing Unique Runes of the Fourth Order were created simultaneously in the late 1970’s by the Numberkeepers, at a time when Rough Telepathy was a small and speculative effort tightly affiliated with the Warring Kingdom of the United States. There were then and are now 4.3 billion Unique Runes of the Fourth Order, a number which cannot be increased. The early Numberkeepers believed 4.3 billion would be more than enough. However, this number is no longer sufficient to provision the masses hungry to never disengage from participation in Rough Telepathy, and the Merchants eager to harness Rough Telepathy as a “feature” in new and often unnecessary consumer products. This shortage has caused considerable headache among the Fiefdoms, the Regional Telepathy Registers, and the Coven.
Another dive into the archives of the www-talk mailing list. This time there are some gems about the origins of the input element, triggered by the old isindex element.
Over the years I’ve come to realize that most difficult part of making websites isn’t the code, it’s the “hidden expectations”, the unseen aspects I didn’t know were my responsibility when I started: Accessibility, Security, Performance, and Empathy.
A heartfelt call to web developers to consider the needs of the many and varied people trying to use what we build.
None of this is about Javascript. None of this is about CSS transforms or WebGL. None of this is about technology at all.
It is about making products that serve all users equally. It is about putting ourselves in others’ shoes. It is about trying to imagine the frustration and difficulty of using our products when the conditions aren’t what we’re used to. It is about being human.
Over 3,000 idiots and counting.
This is the intersection of Hanlon’s Razor with Clarke’s third law: any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
This would be funny if it weren’t, in a very literal sense, evil.
A lovely little from Josh that allows you to draw shapes in a canvas element and then copy the resulting code.
Trent proposes a way to avoid implementing dark patterns: take a leaf from the progressive enhancement playbook and assume the worst conditions for your user’s context.
Empathy is for everyone:
No matter how many times I go through this journey, it never stops surprising me how easy it is to lose perspective in the heat of a project and forget that there is no difference between a user, a client and a designer. It shouldn’t be so hard to remember that no matter the title, we’re all just people trying to get things done.
A nice reminder from Viv.
CAPTHCAs are a terrible, terrible solution to a technological problem. But at least these CAPTCHAs acknowledge that the person typing is not only not-a-bot, but a human being.