Here’s a nifty little service from Zach: pass in a URL and it returns an image of the site’s icon.
Think of it as the indie web alternative to showing Twitter avatars.
This is a really in-depth explanation from Bramus of the upcoming @layer rules in CSS, from the brilliant minds of Miriam, fantasai and Tab.
Basically, you’ll be able to scope styles, and you get to define the context for that scoping. So all those CSS-in-JS folks who don’t appreciate the cascade will have a mechanism to get encapsulated styles.
I can see this being very handy for big complex codebases with lots of people on the team.
There’s a really interesting discussion here, kicked off by Lea, about balancing long-term standards with short-term pragmatism. Specifically, it’s about naming things.
Naming things is hard. Naming things in standards, doubly so.
On the surface this is about the pros and cons of minting a new HTML search element to replace div role="search" but there’s a deeper point which is that, while ARIA exists to the plug the gaps in HTML, the long-term goal is to have no gaps.
ARIA is not meant to replace HTML. If anything, the need to use ARIA as ‘polyfill’ for HTML semantics could be considered as a sign and a constant reminder of the fact that HTML falls short on some semantics that benefit users of assistive technologies.
Applying Postel’s Law to relationships:
I aspire to be conservative in what and how I share (i.e., avoid drama) while understanding that other people will say all sorts of unmindful things.
This is a fascinating deep dive by Léonie on the inner workings of speech synthesis. She has quite a conundrum: she wants fast playback, but she also wants a voice that doesn’t sound robotic. Unfortunately it’s the robotic-sounding voices that work best at speed.
If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend listening to (or reading) the accessibility episode of the Clearleft podcast which featured Léonie as a guest giving demos and explanations.
A nice little collection of very simple—and very lightweight—SVGs to use as background patterns.
It sometimes feels like we end up testing the limitations of our tools rather than the content and design itself.
What Benjamin found—and I heartily agree—is that HTML prototypes give you the most bang for your buck:
At the point of preparing for usability testing, it seemed ludicrous to move to any prototyping material other than the one we were already building in. The bedrock of the web: HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Brad reminisces about the scene ten years ago.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be a part of such an exciting moment in this field again. Of course technology continues to evolve, but the web landscape has settled down a bit. While I’m more than okay with that, I occasionally miss the electric, optimistic feeling of being on the cusp of something new and exciting.
This is a great tutorial—I just love the interactive parts that really help make things click.
I cannot wait for this book (apart) by Jeremy Wagner to arrive—it’s gonna be sooooo good!
Increasing the amount of JavaScript we ship results in poor user experiences, and the iron law of our work is that users must come first. Our preferences and comfort as developers are secondary.
That’s a mission to take to heart while we figure out how we can use JavaScript more responsibly in an industry that relies on it more than ever — and I think that Responsible JavaScript — a carefully written book that the talented people at A Book Apart have worked with me to publish — can help you along the way.
Get out of my head, Robin!
I wish the structure of my days could be more like this though; more haphazard, more jumping from thing to thing with reckless abandon. There’s a punch-in-the-gut feeling I get when my days have too much structure to them. I require that feeling of jumping around whenever I want to, and I think it’s what gives me the energy to be a functional person.
It. Me.
You may not realise that all browsers on iOS are required to use the same rendering engine as Safari. On other platforms, this is not the case.
A terrific in-depth look at the frustrating state of the web on iOS.
So it’s not just one browser that falls behind. It’s all browsers on iOS. The whole web on iOS falls behind. And iOS has become so important that the entire web platform is being held back as a result.
And this damning assessment is mercifully free of conspiracy theories.
The Safari and Chrome team both want to make the web safer and work hard to improve the web. But they do have different views on what the web should be.
Google is focussing on improving the web by making it more capable.
Safari seems to focus on improving the web as it currently is.
Read the whole thing—it’s excellent!
There can only be one proper solution: Apple needs to open up their App Store to browsers with other rendering engines. Scrap rule 2.5.6 and allow other browsers on iOS and let them genuinely compete. Even though Apple has been forced to compromise on some App Store rules, I have little hope for this to happen.
This is a really nice write-up by Sydney of the chat we had on her podcast.
The excellent (and cheap!) State Of The Browser is coming back to Conway Hall this year on Saturday, October 30th. Speakers include Rachel Andrew and Amber Case.
Everyone needs to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test to get into the venue, which is reassuring.
I think I’m gonna go!
I knew that custom properties don’t work in media queries but I had no idea that there was such a thing as custom media queries, which effectively do the same thing.
But this is not implemented in any browser. Boo! This would be so useful! If browser makers can overcame the technical hurdles with container queries, I’m sure they can deliver custom media queries.
Taking the indie web to the next level—self-hosting on your own hardware.
Tired of Big Tech monopolies, a community of hobbyists is taking their digital lives off the cloud and onto DIY hardware that they control.
I really enjoyed talking to Sydney Lai about progressive web apps, resilient web design, and all my other hobby horses.
Alas, there’s no transcript and I can’t find a direct link to the RSS feed or the individual audio file on the podcast website so it’s not huffduffable.
Well, this is rather lovely! A collection of websites from the early days of the web that are still online.
All the HTML pages still work today …and they work in your web browser which didn’t even exist when these websites were built.
Following on from Stuart’s, here’s Bruce’s presentation to the CMA on Apple’s monopolistic practices and hostility to progressive web apps.