Links

How to not make a résumé in React | Eric Bailey

Consider what React and other SPA frameworks are good for: stateful, extensible component-driven applications. Now consider what a résumé’s goals are.

The Cuneiform Tablets of 2015 [PDF]

A 2015 paper by Long Tien Nguyen and Alan Kay with a proposal for digital preservation.

We discuss the problem of running today’s software decades,centuries, or even millennia into the future.

getlon.lat

80 geocoding service plans to choose from.

I’m going to squirrel this one away for later—I’ve had to switch geocoding providers in the past, so I have a feeling that this could come in handy.

This Video Has {{ viewcount }} Views - YouTube

Tom’s videos are so good! Did you see his excellent in-depth piece on copyright?

This one is all about APIs and the golden age of Web 2.0 when we were free to create mashups.

It pairs nicely with a piece by another Tom from a couple of years back on the joy of Twitterbots.

The beauty of modern mobile websites · Pushing Pixels

Two observations of websites on mobile devices today:

1. They are beautifully designed, with great typography, clear branding, all optimized for readability.
2. I had to install Firefox, Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin, as well as manually select and remove additional elements such as subscription overlays.

Both observations are the result of conscious design decisions.

6, 95: Barrel aged

Human consciousness is the most astonishing thing, and most of it happened in deep time, beyond the reach of any writing and most legends. Human experience, in general, is prehistoric. And prehistoric experience was just as full as yours and mine: just as deeply felt, just as intelligent, just as real. What we know of it is mostly from durable artifacts and graves. I’m thinking of the woman found near the Snake River, buried at the end of the ice age with a perfectly crafted and unused stone knife tucked under her head. I’m thinking of the huge conical hats, beaten from single pieces of gold and inscribed with calendars, found north of the Alps. I’m thinking of Grave 8 at Vedbæk, where a woman held her premature baby on the spread wing of a swan. These are snapshot that experts can assemble into larger ideas, but what they tell all of us is that we’ve been people, not just humans, for a very long time.

Chromium Blog: Updates to form controls and focus

Chromium browsers—Chrome, Edge, et al.—are getting a much-needed update to some interface elements like the progess element, the meter element, and the range, date, and color input types.

This might encourage more people to use native form controls …but until we can more accurately tweak the styling of these elements, people are still going to reach for more bloated, less accessible JavaScript-driven options. Over-engineering is under-engineering

Performance, security, and ethics: influencing effectively

I wrote something recently about telling the story of performance. Sue Loh emphasis the importance of understanding what makes people tick:

Performance engineers need to be an interesting mix of data-lovers and people-whisperers.

Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud

The cloud gives us collaboration, but old-fashioned apps give us ownership. Can’t we have the best of both worlds?

We would like both the convenient cross-device access and real-time collaboration provided by cloud apps, and also the personal ownership of your own data embodied by “old-fashioned” software.

This is a very in-depth look at the mindset and the challenges involved in building truly local-first software—something that Tantek has also been thinking about.

The Worm is Back! | NASA

The return of NASA’s iconic “worm” logo (for some missions).

Responsive Images the Simple Way - Cloud Four

A nice succint explanation of using the srcset and sizes attributes on the img element—remember, you probably don’t need picture and source elements if your use case is swapping out different sized versions of the same image.

One caveat thought: you do need to know the dimensions of the images. If you’re dealing with unknown or user-generated photos, that can be an issue.

Visual Design Inspiration from Agency Websites–And Other Tangential Observations | Jim Nielsen’s Weblog

Tyring to do make screenshots of agency websites is tricky if the website is empty HTML with everything injected via JavaScript.

Granted, agencies are usually the ones pushing the boundaries. “Pop” and “pizazz” are what sell for many of them (i.e. “look what we can do!”) Many of these sites pushed the boundaries of what you can do in the browser, and that’s cool. I like seeing that kind of stuff.

But if you asked me what agency websites inspired both parts me, I’d point to something like Clearleft or Paravel. To me, they strike a great balance of visual design with the craft of building for an accessible, universal web.

Sight and Sound: The Cinema of Walter Murch on Vimeo

I enjoyed this documentary on legendary sound designer and editor Walter Murch. Kinda makes me want to rewatch The Conversation and The Godfather.

Design Systems Podcast 10. Jeremy Keith: Overcoming Entropy and Turning Chaos Into Order

I enjoyed talking with Chris about design systems (and more). The episode is now available for your huffduffing pleasure.

CSS Architecture for Modern JavaScript Applications - MadeByMike

Mike sees the church of JS-first ignoring the lessons to be learned from the years of experience accumulated by CSS practitioners.

As the responsibilities of front-end developers have become more broad, some might consider the conventions outlined here to be not worth following. I’ve seen teams spend weeks planning the right combination of framework, build tools, workflows and patterns only to give zero consideration to the way they architect UI components. It’s often considered the last step in the process and not worthy of the same level of consideration.

It’s important! I’ve seen well-planned project fail or go well over budget because the UI architecture was poorly planned and became un-maintainable as the project grew.

Ted Chiang Explains the Disaster Novel We All Suddenly Live In - Electric Literature

Ted Chiang’s hot takes are like his short stories—punchy, powerful, and thought-provoking.

Why we are living in JG Ballard’s world

I’m not the only one thinking about J.G. Ballard.

A luxury cruiseliner quarantined in San Francisco bay, its well-heeled passengers confined to their cabins for weeks on end. Holidaymakers on lockdown at a quarantined hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor comes down with coronavirus. A world of isolated individuals rarely leaving their homes, keeping a wary distance from one another in public, communicating with their friends and loved ones via exclusively technological means. These situations are so Ballardian as to be in the realm of copyright infringement.

Home (BBC film of J. G. Ballard’s The Enormous Space) - YouTube

Here’s a BBC adaption of that J.G. Ballard short story I recorded. It certainly feels like a story for our time.

Indoor Voices 🤫🤫🤫

A group blog by a whole bunch of people who are staying at home.

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time where the internet was just full of casual websites posting random stuff. And you’d go to them maybe even multiple times a day to see if they had posted any new stories. It was something we all did when we were bored at our desks, at our jobs. Now there are no more desks. But there are still blogs.

How to build a bad design system | CSS-Tricks

Working in a big organization is shocking to newcomers because of this, as suddenly everyone has to be consulted to make the smallest decision. And the more people you have to consult to get something done, the more bureaucracy exists within that company. In short: design systems cannot be effective in bureaucratic organizations. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Who hurt you, Robin?