Adactio: Links

Dmitry Baranovskiy’s Web Log: Mermaids & Fishermen

I am a mermaid.

The Man Who Makes the Future: Wired Icon Marc Andreessen | Epicenter | Wired.com

Chris Anderson interviews Mark Andreessen.

Modern Web Development Part 1 – The Webkit Inspector

This is a very in-depth look at how to become a power user of the Web Inspector in Webkit browsers. I’m sitting down with a nice cup of tea to go through all of this.

timoni.org - I love the internet.

This is a beautifully heartfelt post from Timoni:

Every day, I feel things because of the internet, and that’s amazing. Humans have been using abstracted communication for thousands of years, but it’s never been so instantaneous, never so capable of bringing folks of completely different backgrounds together in conversation. This is a huge step. Good job us.

The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic

An excellent longish-zoom article by Alexis Madrigal with an eerily accurate summation of the current state of the web. Although I think that a lack of any fundamentally new paradigms could be seen as a sign of stabilisation as much as stagnation.

Shirky: View Source… Lessons from the Web’s massively parallel development.

An oldie but a goodie: Clay Shirky looks at the design principles underlying HTML in order to figure out what made it so successful. Even though this is fourteen years old, there are plenty of still-relevant insights here.

Content Parity | Brad Frost Web

Yet another great post from Brad:

Whenever I think of the concept of “One Web” and providing universal access to information on the web, I tend to break it down into something much simpler: give people what they ask for.

A Whole Lotta Nothing: My Webstock Talk: Lessons from a 40 year old (now with transcript)

Matt has transcribed the notes from his excellent Webstock talk. I highly recommend giving this a read.

Video, Mobile, and the Open Web | Brendan Eich

Mozilla will be supporting H.264 …but they’re not happy about it.

I won’t sugar-coat this pill. But we must swallow it if we are to succeed in our mobile initiatives. Failure on mobile is too likely to consign Mozilla to decline and irrelevance.

Webstock ‘12: Matt Haughey - Lessons for a 40 year old on Vimeo

I really enjoyed Matt’s talk from Webstock. I know some people thought it might be a bit of a downer but I actually found it very inspiring.

Webstock ‘12: Jeremy Keith - Of Time and the Network on Vimeo

The video of my talk from Webstock, all about wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff like networks and memory.

Apps vs The Web

Some interesting ideas on the commonalities and differences between native apps and the web.

A Whole Lotta Nothing: Webstock: best conference ever

I’m genuinely touched by Matt’s kind words on my Webstock talk. It really means a lot to me, coming from him.

» 24 February 2012, baked by Ben Ward @ The Pastry Box Project

A beautiful reminder from Ben of the scale-free nature of the web.

We must recover our sanity where 100 million users does not represent the goal criteria of every new service. We must recover the mindset where a service used by 10,000 users, or 1,000 users, or 100 users is admired, respected, and praised for its actual success. All of those could be sustainable, profitable ventures. If TechCrunch doesn’t care to write about you, all the better.

If you are fortunate enough to work on your own product, with your own idea, and build it, and ship it, and reach enough people willing to sustain you financially for that immense amount of work, you should be applauded. You have poured in inordinate effort, and succeeded in making something that improved lives.

Webstock: Jeremy Keith | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I love these sketchnotes from my presentation at Webstock.

IMG_8191 - 2012-02-15 at 02-39-26 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I can’t fave this picture enough. One moment of Webstock captured by Michael B. Johnson.

An introduction to Web Intents – an interview with Glenn Jones

Harry interviews Glenn about web intents (web actions). Glenn gives a good clear explanation of what they are.

» 21 January 2012, baked by Ben Ward @ The Pastry Box Project

Some valuable musings from Ben on how browsers could be better — and I don’t mean the usual moaning about performance or device APIs.

Pictos

In an interesting new twist, Pictos now allows you to put together a custom subset of their icons as a font that can be served from their server just like any other webfont service.

Web Intents - Design Push

This looks like it’s going to be a great event on February 25th right here in Brighton: a gathering of minds to brainstorm around web intents. Get there if you can.

Emigre Web Fonts

Emigre’s font library is now available as web fonts that you can self-host (providing you take some protective measures with .htaccess). That means Mrs. Eaves is available for the screen. W00t!

«Once Upon» by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied

What would Google+, YouTube and Facebook have looked like in 1997?

Jeremy Keith: One Web — Update 2011 - YouTube

My short talk from Aral’s Update conference in Brighton last September. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. If I only I had a handheld mic—then I could’ve done a microphone drop at the end.

On lucky breaks and saying yes « this is rachelandrew.co.uk

Rachel tells the tale of how she came to be the splendid web worker she is and finishes with some advice for up-and-coming workers of the web:

Make 2012 the year you go out and do it.

12412 - Experience and learn 12 new web technologies in 12 months

Here’s a challenge for the new year: use each month as an opportunity to try out a new web technology.

Set yourself small, achievable projects to work on and use 12412.org as a support group. We will all help to motivate each other and join in to offer help where we can.

The maker makes: on design, community, and personal empowerment – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

This. This is why I love the web.

Not only does the web make publishers of those willing to put in the work, it also makes most of us free sharers of our hard-won trade, craft, and business secrets. The minute we grab hold of a new angle on design, interaction, code, or content, we share it with a friend — or with friends we haven’t met yet.

Is the web dead?

View source.

Where do Websites go to Die? « dpr-barcelona

Burying physical copies of dead websites in a Croatian cave.

How To Build a Modern Website in 2011 - Tom Milway - Blog

A good round-up of what web development means today …and what web developers need to do to keep pace.

inessential.com: Apps and web apps and the future

Brent Simmons follows up on that Dave Winer post with some future-friendly thoughts:

If I had to choose one or the other — if I had some crazy power but I had to wipe out either native apps or web apps — I’d wipe out native apps. (While somehow excluding browsers, text editors, outliners, web servers, and all those apps we need to make web apps.)

That’s not the case, though. Nothing has to get wiped out.

I think instead that we’ll see a more tangled future. Native apps will use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript more. Web apps will appear more often on smart phones as launchable apps.

Scripting News: Why apps are not the future

Spot. On.

The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. It would be as silly as saying that you don’t need oceans because you have a bathtub.

iOS scale bug stays (mostly) « « David Goss David Goss

Well, this is very intriguing: it turns out that the infamous orientation/scale bug in Mobile Safari isn’t present in in-app browsers (UIWebView). Most odd.

Rhizome | She Was A Camera

Remembering the camgirl community.

LukeW | The Web OS is Already Here…

Luke points out that the web is everywhere: it’s accessible through the browser but also through many native applications. This is the real Web Operating System.

The Web (browser) is inside of every application instead of every application being inside the Web (browser).

Elena Font Family | Process Type Foundry

A lovely new typeface from Nicole Dotin that’s available to purchase as a web font under the very reasonable terms of the Process license agreement.

#816: Revert mobile-first media queries and remove respond.js - Issues - h5bp/html5-boilerplate - GitHub

This thread on whether HTML5 Boilerplate should include Respond.js by default (and whether the CSS should take a small-screen first approach) nicely summarises the current landscape for web devs: chaotic, confusing …and very, very exciting.

What We Don’t Know | CSS-Tricks

This is a great encapsulation of what I’ve been banging on about at conferences for a while now: let’s stop pretending we know the capabilities, network speed or viewport size of a site visitor’s browser.

Understand The Web · Ben Ward

Given some recent hand-wringing about the web as a “platform,” it seems appropriate to revisit this superb article from Ben. The specifics of the companies and technologies may have changed in the past year but the fundamental point remains the same:

Everything about web architecture; HTTP, HTML, CSS, is designed to serve and render content, but most importantly the web is formed where all of that content is linked together. That is what makes it amazing, and that is what defines it. This purpose and killer application of the web is not even comparable to the application frameworks of any particular operating system.

Why are you fighting me? - Blog | Andy Hume

Andy responds to Joe Hewitt’s recent despondent posts about the web. I tend to agree with Andy: I think comparing the web to other “platforms” is missing the point of what the web is.

See also: http://benward.me/blog/understand-the-web

The Next 6 Billion | Web Directions

John reinforces the importance of universal access above the desire to build only for the newest shiniest devices:

Universality is a founding principle of the web. It is the manifesto the web has been built on, and I believe one of the key drivers of the almost unimaginable success of the web over these last two decades. We ignore that at the web’s peril.

One Hundred Percent : Jonathan Stark

An excellent point from Jonathan: both native apps and web apps require an internet connection …and both native apps and web apps can be made to work without an internet connection.

This might sound obvious, but the myth that “only native apps can work without an internet connection” is surprisingly widespread.

Steve Jobs and the actually usable computer - W3C Blog

While others recall Steve Jobs’s legacy with Apple, Tim Berners-Lee recounts the importance of NeXT.

Choosing the Right Words – Web Intents — Glenn Jones

Glenn has written up the discussion that followed his UXCampBrighton talk on web actions.

Of Web Apps and HTML Apps : Jonathan Stark

A real-world anecdote from Jonathan illustrates some of the misconceptions around using HTML instead of going native. A lot of people don’t realise that web apps can store data offline.

Is the app economy killing online publishers? — Mobile Technology News

An excellent article that examines the supposed benefits of publishing through someone else’s app store instead of the web.

It’s the end of the web as we know it « Adrian Short

A truly excellent article outlining the difference between share-cropping and self-hosting. It may seem that the convenience of using a third-party service outweighs the hassle of owning your own URLs but this puts everything into perspective.

Mobile Apps Must Die | Blog | design mind

Scott writes up some of the things he talked about at the Breaking Development conference: the just-in-time interactions that are inevitable in a heavily-instrumented world.

The web is a different problem | Web Directions

John pushes back against the idea that browser innovation is moving too slow.

Test page for -webkit-font-smoothing | Christoph Zillgens

This handy matrix shows the effect of different -webkit-font-smoothing setting on various text combinations (serif/san-serif light/dark, etc.).

Mobile Web: Taiwan, Opera and WebOS

An eye-opening insight into web usage on mobile devices in Asia from Paul Rouget.

Of Sites and Apps « James Pearce

James attempts to tackle the thorny question of what makes something a web “app” (rather than a web “site”). It reminds of the infamous definition of obscenity:

I know it when I see it.

In short, the answer to the question “what is a web app?” is “fuck knows.”

The One Web: don’t write for devices, write for people | Opinion | .net magazine

A great opinion piece from Addy Osmani prompted by the panel discussion I took part in at the Update conference.

via Frank : Designers vs Coding

Good design and good markup provide structure to content. Good markup is a fundamental part of good design: beautiful on the inside, beautiful on the outside. HTML and CSS give another venue to provide structure to content in the native language of the web, and learning these guides decisions by surfacing the affordances of the medium.

History, our future - Preoccupations

A superb post by David that ties together multiple strands of personal digital preservation through homesteading instead of sharecropping.

Jeremy Keith - One Web on Vimeo

The video of my talk/rant at the DIBI conference in Newcastle/Gateshead earlier this year, for your viewing pleasure.

Hyphenation arrives in Firefox and Safari | Fontdeck Blog

Finally. Hyphenation on the web.

Pretty much the only forms of Western literature that don’t use hyphenation are children’s books and websites. Until now.

Web Actions: Identifying A New Building Block For The Web - Tantek

Tantek’s braindump of research he and Erin have been doing on web actions—verbs for the web, specifically interactions across sites: sharing, liking, and so on. I agree with him that this terminology feels better than “web intents.”

Button Sluts and Web Actions

Erin documents the next step after web intents.

http://humanweb.ipq.co/

This is wonderful. A web server powered by people. Change the URL and a person will manually fetch the corresponding resource.

You can be part of the server team too.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site : HTML5, hollow demos and forgetting the basics

A great reminder from Bruce that we need to remember to use cutting-edge web technology responsibly.

Chromium Blog: Connecting Web Apps with Web Intents

A quick overview and explanation of web intents.

Karl Dubost - 3 rules of thumb for Web development

Can I bookmark this information? (stable URIs)
Can I go from here to there with a click? (hyperlinks)
Can I save the content locally? (open accessible formats)

Full Fucking Service, Reckless web development practices are encouraging idiots

I wholeheartedly agree with this summation of what professional web design and development entails.

CreativeJS | The very best of creative JavaScript and HTML5

This is your one-stop shop for envelope-pushing in the browser:

The very best of creative JavaScript and HTML5.

How to fail at mobile web [Legends of the Sun Pig - Martin Sutherland’s Blog]

It’s a provocative title but I certainly agree with this post’s premise. And the situation it describes is all too familiar.

Mobile-First Responsive Web Design | Brad Frost Web

A nice round-up of responsible responsive web design techniques, ‘though I would go a bit further and suggest that the rallying cry is not so much about Mobile First but Content First.

Responsive by default - Blog | Andy Hume

A superb long-zoom view of responsive design from Andy. He also talks about the pragmatism required from any front-end developer.

Pretenders: Why mobile Web apps should stop trying to act like native apps « cvil.ly

I agree with this. I like it. I plus one it. So to speak.

Book of Speed

An online book about website performance by Stoyan Steganov, released into the public domain. Excellent!

Two Years — Paul Robert Lloyd

On the two-year anniversary of his arrival at Clearleft, Paul takes a look at where the craft of web design is today and where it’s heading tomorrow.

Designing the Wider Web

The dominance of the desktop browser is over – the web has become wider. After so long painting in a tiny corner of the canvas, it’s time to broaden our approach.

It’s understandable that the community is somewhat nervous about the changes ahead. So far, we’ve mostly responded by scratching around for device-specific tips, but this isn’t sustainable or scalable. We should transcend “platformism” and instead learn to design for diverse contexts, displays, connectivity, and inputs by breaking devices down into first principles. Instead of the defective dichotomy of the “desktop” and “mobile” web, designers should aim to create great user experiences using the truly fluid nature of the web.

Tips, Tricks and Best Practices for Responsive Design | Webmonkey | Wired.com

A nice round-up of responsive design techniques, with a particular focus on content first.

danwebb.net - It’s About The Hashbangs

A superb post by Dan on the bigger picture of what’s wrong with hashbang URLs. Well written and well reasoned.

JoshEmerson.co.uk · Blog · Base64 and the tiling background

Josh explains the pros and cons of embedding background images in your CSS using base 64 encoding.

Links Don’t Open Apps « Cloud Four

A timely reminder from Jason of the killer feature of the web: hyperlinks.

susan jean robertson » Assumptions

Susan pushes back on the notion of the mythical mobile user.

FFFFALLBACK - A simple tool for bulletproof web typography.

A useful bookmarklet that suggests font stacks to match up with the web fonts on whatever page you happen to be viewing.

BBC News - Are you experienced? Business and the web user experience

A nice overview of the increasing importance of UX on the web, written by Bobbie with soundbites from Andy.

Madmanimation

Andy just debuted this at An Event Apart—lovely stuff.

A Richer Canvas: Mark Boulton

An excellent statement of intent from Mark. You can either read this now and start creating websites the right way, or you can scrabble to catch up further down the line; I recommend reading this now.

Embrace the fluidity of the web. Design layouts and systems that can cope to whatever environment they may find themselves in. But the only way we can do any of this is to shed ways of thinking that have been shackles around our necks. They’re holding us back.

Start designing from the content out, rather than the canvas in.

Geek Ninja Battle Night | Stuff and Nonsense

Andy hammers home the benefit of a long-term format like HTML compared to the brittle, fleeting shininess of an ephemeral platform-specific app.

finding baby sciences and new moons (17 Mar., 2011, at Interconnected)

Matt casts around for new areas of scientific research.

mezzoblue § Serendipity

The web demonstrates its loosely-joined nature yet again; a photo of mine from a science hack/design fiction exhibit results in Dave discovering his family crest.

HTML5 — Edition for Web Developers

A beautifully readable subset of the HTML spec, with an emphasis on writing web apps (and with information intended for browser makers has been removed). Very handy indeed!

ongoing by Tim Bray · Broken Links

Tim Bray calmly explains why hash-bang URLs are a very bad idea.

This is what we call “tight coupling” and I thought that anyone with a Computer Science degree ought to have been taught to avoid it.

isolani - Javascript: Breaking the Web with hash-bangs

Excellent, excellent analysis of how URLs based on fragment identifier (a la Twitter/Gawker/Lifehawker) expose an unstable tottering edifice that crumbles at the first JavaScript error.

So why use a hash-bang if it’s an artificial URL, and a URL that needs to be reformatted before it points to a proper URL that actually returns content?

Out of all the reasons, the strongest one is “Because it’s cool”. I said strongest not strong.

LONDON WEB - Sept 2010 - The Progressive Web - Andy Hume on Vimeo

A great presentation by Andy on the use of progressive enhancement at Clearleft.

Media Queries

A curated collection of responsive web designs.

LukeW | Device Classes

Luke points to the sweet spot between creating endpoints for classes of devices, and using responsive design to allow them to adapt.

This W3C/HTML5 logo reminds me of something… | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The new HTML5 logo is quite versatile.

HTML5 Gains Logo, Loses Meaning | Webmonkey | Wired.com

Lumping everything together is as silly as a carpenter referring to every tool in their toolkit as “a hammer.”

There is no Mobile Web | The Haystack.

Steven nails exactly why I’m so excited about the increasing diversity of devices accessing the web; not so that we can build more silos, but so that we can sure our content is robust enough for the multitude of different devices:

To be honest, I can think of a few, but not many use cases of web sites or apps which are or should be exclusively mobile. It seems like the Mobile Web allows us to revisit all of the talk of inclusion, progressive enhancement and accessibility from years ago.

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