Link archive: September 5th, 2018

How do you mark up an accordion? — Sara Soueidan

I love this deep dive that Sara takes into the question of marking up content for progressive disclosure. It reminds me Dan’s SimpleQuiz from back in the day.

Then there’s this gem, which I think is a terrificly succinct explanation of the importance of meaningful markup:

It’s always necessary, in my opinion, to consider what content would render and look like in foreign environments, or in environments that are not controlled by our own styles and scripts. Writing semantic HTML is the first step in achieving truly resilient Web sites and applications.

The principles behind Bulb’s design – Making Bulb – Medium

This is a great piece by Alla, ostensibly about Bulb’s design principles, but it’s really about what makes for effective design principles in general. It’s packed full of great advice, like these design principles for design principles:

• Good principles are genuine
• Good principles have a point of view
• Good principles are memorable

The Font Loading Checklist—zachleat.com

This checklist came in very handy during a performance-related workshop I was running today (I may have said the sentence “Always ask yourself What Would Zach Do?”).

1. Start Important Font Downloads Earlier (Start a Web Font load)
2. Prioritize Readable Text (Behavior while a Web Font is loading)
3. Make Fonts Smaller (Reduce Web Font load time)
4. Reduce Movement during Page Load (Behavior after a Web Font has loaded)

The first two are really straightforward to implement (with rel="preload" and font-display). The second two take more work (with subsetting and the font loading API).

Google Wants to Kill the URL | WIRED

Change will be controversial whatever form it takes. But it’s important we do something, because everyone is unsatisfied by URLs. They kind of suck.

Citation very fucking needed.

I’m trying very hard to give Google the benefit of the doubt here, but coming as it does on top of all the AMP shit they’re pulling, it sure seems like Google are trying to remake the web in their image.

Oh, and if you want to talk about URLs confusing people, AMP is a great example.

Google AMP Can Go To Hell | Polemic Digital

Harsh but fair words about Google AMP.

Google has built their entire empire on the backs of other people’s effort. People use Google to find content on the web. Google is just a doorman, not the destination. Yet the search engine has epic delusions of grandeur and has started to believe they are the destination, that they are the gatekeepers of the web, that they should dictate how the web evolves.

Take your dirty paws off our web, Google. It’s not your plaything, it belongs to everyone.

Daring Fireball: Medium Deprecates Custom Domains Service

I know many people love Medium’s editing interface, but I just can’t believe that so many writers and publications have turned toward a single centralized commercial entity as a proposed solution to what ails the publishing industry. There is tremendous strength in independence and decentralization.