Archive: September, 2019

For the offline page on my website, I’ve been using a mixture of the Cache API and the localStorage API. My service worker script uses the Cache API to store copies of pages for offline retrieval. But I used the localStorage API to store metadata about the page—title, description, and so on. Then, my offline page would rifle through the pages stored in a cache, and retreive the corresponding metadata from localStorage.

It all worked fine, but as soon as I read Remy’s post about the forehead-slappingly brilliant technique he’s using, I knew I’d be switching my code over. Instead of using localStorage—or any other browser API—to store and retrieve metadata, he uses the pages themselves! Using the Cache API, you can examine the contents of the pages you’ve stored, and get at whatever information you need:

I realised I didn’t need to store anything. HTML is the API.

Refactoring the code for my offline page felt good for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was able to remove a dependency—localStorage—and simplify the JavaScript. That always feels good. But the other reason for the warm fuzzies is that I was able to use data instead of metadata.

Many years ago, Cory Doctorow wrote a piece called Metacrap. In it, he enumerates the many issues with metadata—data about data. The source of many problems is when the metadata is stored separately from the data it describes. The data may get updated, without a corresponding update happening to the metadata. Metadata tends to rot because it’s invisible—out of sight and out of mind.

In fact, that’s always been at the heart of one of the core principles behind microformats. Instead of duplicating information—once as data and again as metadata—repurpose the visible data; mark it up so its meta-information is directly attached to the information itself.

So if you have a person’s contact details on a web page, rather than repeating that information somewhere else—in the head of the document, say—you could instead attach some kind of marker to indicate which bits of the visible information are contact details. In the case of microformats, that’s done with class attributes. You can mark up a page that already has your contact information with classes from the h-card microformat.

Here on my website, I’ve marked up my blog posts, articles, and links using the h-entry microformat. These classes explicitly mark up the content to say “this is the title”, “this is the content”, and so on. This makes it easier for other people to repurpose my content. If, for example, I reply to a post on someone else’s website, and ping them with a webmention, they can retrieve my post and know which bit is the title, which bit is the content, and so on.

When I read Remy’s post about using the Cache API to retrieve information directly from cached pages, I knew I wouldn’t have to do much work. Because all of my posts are already marked up with h-entry classes, I could use those hooks to create a nice offline page.

The markup for my offline page looks like this:

<h1>Offline</h1>
<p>Sorry. It looks like the network connection isn’t working right now.</p>
<div id="history">
</div>

I’ll populate that “history” div with information from a cache called “pages” that I’ve created using the Cache API in my service worker.

I’m going to use async/await to do this because there are lots of steps that rely on the completion of the step before. “Open this cache, then get the keys of that cache, then loop through the pages, then…” All of those thens would lead to some serious indentation without async/await.

All async functions have to have a name—no anonymous async functions allowed. I’m calling this one listPages, just like Remy is doing. I’m making the listPages function execute immediately:

(async function listPages() {
...
})();

Now for the code to go inside that immediately-invoked function.

I create an array called browsingHistory that I’ll populate with the data I’ll use for that “history” div.

const browsingHistory = [];

I’m going to be parsing web pages later on, so I’m going to need a DOM parser. I give it the imaginative name of …parser.

const parser = new DOMParser();

Time to open up my “pages” cache. This is the first await statement. When the cache is opened, this promise will resolve and I’ll have access to this cache using the variable …cache (again with the imaginative naming).

const cache = await caches.open('pages');

Now I get the keys of the cache—that’s a list of all the page requests in there. This is the second await. Once the keys have been retrieved, I’ll have a variable that’s got a list of all those pages. You’ll never guess what I’m calling the variable that stores the keys of the cache. That’s right …keys!

const keys = await cache.keys();

Time to get looping. I’m getting each request in the list of keys using a for/of loop:

for (const request of keys) {
...
}

Inside the loop, I pull the page out of the cache using the match() method of the Cache API. I’ll store what I get back in a variable called response. As with everything involving the Cache API, this is asynchronous so I need to use the await keyword here.

const response = await cache.match(request);

I’m not interested in the headers of the response. I’m specifically looking for the HTML itself. I can get at that using the text() method. Again, it’s asynchronous and I want this promise to resolve before doing anything else, so I use the await keyword. When the promise resolves, I’ll have a variable called html that contains the body of the response.

const html = await response.text();

Now I can use that DOM parser I created earlier. I’ve got a string of text in the html variable. I can generate a Document Object Model from that string using the parseFromString() method. This isn’t asynchronous so there’s no need for the await keyword.

const dom = parser.parseFromString(html, 'text/html');

Now I’ve got a DOM, which I have creatively stored in a variable called …dom.

I can poke at it using DOM methods like querySelector. I can test to see if this particular page has an h-entry on it by looking for an element with a class attribute containing the value “h-entry”:

if (dom.querySelector('.h-entry h1.p-name') {
...
}

In this particular case, I’m also checking to see if the h1 element of the page is the title of the h-entry. That’s so that index pages (like my home page) won’t get past this if statement.

Inside the if statement, I’m going to store the data I retrieve from the DOM. I’ll save the data into an object called …data!

const data = new Object;

Well, the first piece of data isn’t actually in the markup: it’s the URL of the page. I can get that from the request variable in my for loop.

data.url = request.url;

I’m going to store the timestamp for this h-entry. I can get that from the datetime attribute of the time element marked up with a class of dt-published.

data.timestamp = new Date(dom.querySelector('.h-entry .dt-published').getAttribute('datetime'));

While I’m at it, I’m going to grab the human-readable date from the innerText property of that same time.dt-published element.

data.published = dom.querySelector('.h-entry .dt-published').innerText;

The title of the h-entry is in the innerText of the element with a class of p-name.

data.title = dom.querySelector('.h-entry .p-name').innerText;

At this point, I am actually going to use some metacrap instead of the visible h-entry content. I don’t output a description of the post anywhere in the body of the page, but I do put it in the head in a meta element. I’ll grab that now.

data.description = dom.querySelector('meta[name="description"]').getAttribute('content');

Alright. I’ve got a URL, a timestamp, a publication date, a title, and a description, all retrieved from the HTML. I’ll stick all of that data into my browsingHistory array.

browsingHistory.push(data);

My if statement and my for/in loop are finished at this point. Here’s how the whole loop looks:

for (const request of keys) {
  const response = await cache.match(request);
  const html = await response.text();
  const dom = parser.parseFromString(html, 'text/html');
  if (dom.querySelector('.h-entry h1.p-name')) {
    const data = new Object;
    data.url = request.url;
    data.timestamp = new Date(dom.querySelector('.h-entry .dt-published').getAttribute('datetime'));
    data.published = dom.querySelector('.h-entry .dt-published').innerText;
    data.title = dom.querySelector('.h-entry .p-name').innerText;
    data.description = dom.querySelector('meta[name="description"]').getAttribute('content');
    browsingHistory.push(data);
  }
}

That’s the data collection part of the code. Now I’m going to take all that yummy information an output it onto the page.

First of all, I want to make sure that the browsingHistory array isn’t empty. There’s no point going any further if it is.

if (browsingHistory.length) {
...
}

Within this if statement, I can do what I want with the data I’ve put into the browsingHistory array.

I’m going to arrange the data by date published. I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do. Maybe it makes more sense to show the pages in the order in which you last visited them. I may end up removing this at some point, but for now, here’s how I sort the browsingHistory array according to the timestamp property of each item within it:

browsingHistory.sort( (a,b) => {
  return b.timestamp - a.timestamp;
});

Now I’m going to concatenate some strings. This is the string of HTML text that will eventually be put into the “history” div. I’m storing the markup in a string called …markup (my imagination knows no bounds).

let markup = '<p>But you still have something to read:</p>';

I’m going to add a chunk of markup for each item of data.

browsingHistory.forEach( data => {
  markup += `
<h2><a href="${ data.url }">${ data.title }</a></h2>
<p>${ data.description }</p>
<p class="meta">${ data.published }</p>
`;
});

With my markup assembled, I can now insert it into the “history” part of my offline page. I’m using the handy insertAdjacentHTML() method to do this.

document.getElementById('history').insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', markup);

Here’s what my finished JavaScript looks like:

<script>
(async function listPages() {
  const browsingHistory = [];
  const parser = new DOMParser();
  const cache = await caches.open('pages');
  const keys = await cache.keys();
  for (const request of keys) {
    const response = await cache.match(request);
    const html = await response.text();
    const dom = parser.parseFromString(html, 'text/html');
    if (dom.querySelector('.h-entry h1.p-name')) {
      const data = new Object;
      data.url = request.url;
      data.timestamp = new Date(dom.querySelector('.h-entry .dt-published').getAttribute('datetime'));
      data.published = dom.querySelector('.h-entry .dt-published').innerText;
      data.title = dom.querySelector('.h-entry .p-name').innerText;
      data.description = dom.querySelector('meta[name="description"]').getAttribute('content');
      browsingHistory.push(data);
    }
  }
  if (browsingHistory.length) {
    browsingHistory.sort( (a,b) => {
      return b.timestamp - a.timestamp;
    });
    let markup = '<p>But you still have something to read:</p>';
    browsingHistory.forEach( data => {
      markup += `
<h2><a href="${ data.url }">${ data.title }</a></h2>
<p>${ data.description }</p>
<p class="meta">${ data.published }</p>
`;
    });
    document.getElementById('history').insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', markup);
  }
})();
</script>

I’m pretty happy with that. It’s not too long but it’s still quite readable (I hope). It shows that the Cache API and the h-entry microformat are a match made in heaven.

If you’ve got an offline strategy for your website, and you’re using h-entry to mark up your content, feel free to use that code.

If you don’t have an offline strategy for your website, there’s a book for that.

Back in the late 2000s, I used to go to Copenhagen every for an event called Reboot. It was a fun, eclectic mix of talks and discussions, but alas, the last one was over a decade ago.

It was organised by Thomas Madsen-Mygdal. I hadn’t seen Thomas in years, but then, earlier this year, our paths crossed when I was back at CERN for the 30th anniversary of the web. He got a real kick out of the browser recreation project I was part of.

I few months ago, I got an email from Thomas about the new event he’s running in Copenhagen called Techfestival. He was wondering if there was some way of making the WorldWideWeb project part of the event. We ended up settling on having a stand—a modern computer running a modern web browser running a recreation of the first ever web browser from almost three decades ago.

So I showed up at Techfestival and found that the computer had been set up in a Shoreditchian shipping container. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do, so I just hung around nearby until someone wandering by would pause and start tentatively approaching the stand.

“Would you like to try the time machine?” I asked. Nobody refused the offer. I explained that they were looking at a recreation of the world’s first web browser, and then showed them how they could enter a URL to see how the oldest web browser would render a modern website.

Lots of people entered facebook.com or google.com, but some people had their own websites, either personal or for their business. They enjoyed seeing how well (or not) their pages held up. They’d take photos of the screen.

People asked lots of questions, which I really enjoyed answering. After a while, I was able to spot the themes that came up frequently. Some people were confusing the origin story of the internet with the origin story of the web, so I was more than happy to go into detail on either or both.

The experience helped me clarify in my own mind what was exciting and interesting about the birth of the web—how much has changed, and how much and stayed the same.

All of this very useful fodder for a conference talk I’m putting together. This will be a joint talk with Remy at the Fronteers conference in Amsterdam in a couple of weeks. We’re calling the talk How We Built the World Wide Web in Five Days:

The World Wide Web turned 30 years old this year. To mark the occasion, a motley group of web nerds gathered at CERN, the birthplace of the web, to build a time machine. The first ever web browser was, confusingly, called WorldWideWeb. What if we could recreate the experience of using it …but within a modern browser! Join (Je)Remy on a journey through time and space and code as they excavate the foundations of Tim Berners-Lee’s gloriously ambitious and hacky hypertext system that went on to conquer the world.

Neither of us is under any illusions about the nature of a joint talk. It’s not half as much work; it’s more like twice the work. We’ve both seen enough uneven joint presentations to know what we want to avoid.

We’ve been honing the material and doing some run-throughs at the Clearleft HQ at 68 Middle Street this week. The talk has a somewhat unusual structure with two converging timelines. I think it’s going to work really well, but I won’t know until we actually deliver the talk in Amsterdam. I’m excited—and a bit nervous—about it.

Whether it’s in a shipping container in Copenhagen or on a stage in Amsterdam, I’m starting to realise just how much I enjoy talking about web history.

The Request Map Generator is a terrific tool. It’s made by Simon Hearne and uses the WebPageTest API.

You pop in a URL, it fetches the page and maps out all the subsequent requests in a nifty interactive diagram of circles, showing how many requests third-party scripts are themselves generating. I’ve found it to be a very effective way of showing the impact of third-party scripts to people who aren’t interested in looking at waterfall diagrams.

I was wondering… Wouldn’t it be great if this were built into browsers?

We already have a “Network” tab in our developer tools. The purpose of this tab is to show requests coming in. The browser already has all the information it needs to make a diagram of requests in the same that the request map generator does.

In Firefox, there’s a little clock icon in the bottom left corner of the “Network” tab. Clicking that shows a pie-chart view of requests. That’s useful, but I’d love it if there were the option to also see the connected circles that the request map generator shows.

Just a thought.

I got an email recently from a young person looking to get into web development. They wanted to know what languages they should start with, whether they should a Mac or a Windows PC, and what some places to learn from.

I wrote back, saying this about languages:

For web development, start with HTML, then CSS, then JavaScript (and don’t move on to JavaScript too quickly—really get to grips with HTML and CSS first).

And this is what I said about hardware and software:

It doesn’t matter whether you use a Mac or a Windows PC, as long as you’ve got an internet connection, some web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, for example) and a text editor. There are some very good free text editors available for Mac and PC:

• Visual Studio Code
• Atom

For resources, I had a trawl through links I’ve tagged with “learning” and “html” and sent along some links to free online tutorials:

• Codebar tutorials
• HTML+CSS tutorial
• Marksheet, a free HTML and CSS tutorial
• Learn to code HTML and CSS
• Just starting out with CSS and HTML
• Interneting is hard (but it doesn’t have to be)
• Web design in four minutes
• The front-end developer handbook

After sending that email, I figured that this list might be useful to anyone else looking to start out in web development. If you know of anyone in that situation, I hope this list might help.