Links

GrilloPress - Don’t let your design system seem complete

The level of authority and professionalism in a design system helps sell it so teams use it. But increases the perception things are fixed. Done. And not open to change.

Remote to who? A working letter

The idea that your job should be the primary source of meaning in your life is an elaborately made trap, propped up across industries, designed to make you a loyal worker who uses the bulk of their intellectual and creative capacity to further their own career.

The Layers of the Web - Jeremy Keith - YouTube

Here’s the video of the talk I gave at the Web Stories conference back in February.

The Lords of Midnight

I played a lot Lords of Midnight (and Doomdark’s Revenge) on my Amstrad 464 when I was a kid. Turns out there’s a dedicated labour of love to port the games to modern platforms. I just downloaded the OS X port, so there goes my weekend.

Reflecting on My Own Experience Using the Web to Get the Vaccine - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

I click the link. The page loads fast. I navigate the surprisingly sparse yet clear form inputs. And complete the whole thing in less than thirty seconds.

Oh, how I wish this experience weren’t remarkable!

Simple forms with clear labels. Little to no branding being shoved down my throat. No array of colors, big logos, or overly-customized UI components.

Found Color schemes for web and UI

Accidental colour palettes captured in the wild.

Matthew Somerville on Twitter

Our slippy map works without JavaScript, yet we also have a service worker.

Getting a tattoo. brb

The Healing Power of Javascript | WIRED

I can very much relate to what Craig is saying here.

Web Browser Engineering

It’s heavy on computer science, but this is a fascinating endeavour. It’s a work-in-progress book that not only describes how browsers work, but invites you to code along too. At the end, you get a minimum viable web browser (and more knowledge than you ever wanted about how browsers work).

As a black box, the browser is either magical or frustrating (depending on whether it is working correctly or not!). But that also make a browser a pretty unusual piece of software, with unique challenges, interesting algorithms, and clever optimizations. Browsers are worth studying for the pure pleasure of it.

See how the sausage is made and make your own sausage!

This book explains, building a basic but complete web browser, from networking to JavaScript, in a thousand lines of Python.

Open UI and implicit parent/child relationships in HTML – Eric Bailey

I remember discussing this with Tantek years ago:

There are a few elements who need to be placed inside of another specific element in order to function properly.

If I recall, he was considering writing “HTML: The Good Parts”.

Anyway, I can relate to what Eric is saying here about web components. My take is that web components give developers a power that previous only browser makers had. That’s very liberating, but it should come with a commensurate weight of responsibility. I fear that we will see this power wielded without sufficient responsibility.

Words To Avoid in Educational Writing | CSS-Tricks

This old article from Chris is evergreen. There’s been some recent discussion of calling these words “downplayers”, which I kind of like. Whatever they are, try not to use them in documentation.

Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters: Advances in Derp Learning

A genuinely interesting (and droll) deep dive into derp learning …for typography!

30 Days of HTML

Receive one email a day for 30 days, each featuring at least one HTML element.

Right up my alley!

Swipey image grids.

This is how you write up a technique! Cassie takes an SVG pattern she used on the Clearleft “services” page and explains it in step-by-step detail, complete with explanatory animated diagrams.

Google Is Testing Its Controversial New Ad Targeting Tech in Millions of Browsers. Here’s What We Know. | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Following on from the piece they ran called Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea, the EFF now have the details of the origin trial and it’s even worse than what was originally planned.

I strongly encourage you to use a privacy-preserving browser like Firefox or Safari.

National Security Agency (NSA) security/motivational posters from the 1950s and 1960s [PDF]

This responds to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which was received by this office on 5 February 2016 for “A digital/electronic copy of the NSA old security posters from the 1950s and 1960s.”

The graphic design is …um, mixed.

Guarding Against Disposable Design — Smashing Magazine

Always refreshing to see some long-term thinking applied to the web.

Library: Accessibility resources, guides, communities, and more

A very comprehensive directory of accessibility resources.

Meet Utopia: Designing And Building With Fluid Type And Space Scales — Smashing Magazine

An excellent explainer from Trys and James of their supersmart Utopia approach:

Utopia encourages the curation of a system small enough to be held in short-term memory, rather than one so sprawling it must be constantly referred to.

esoteric.codes

Languages, platforms, and systems that break from the norms of computing.