Link archive: September, 2022

Indiepeople

I believe strongly in the indieweb principles of distributed ownership, control, and independence. For me, the important thing is that this is how we get to a diverse web. A web where everyone can define not just what they write but how they present is by definition far more expressive, diverse, and interesting than one where most online content and identities must be squished into templates created by a handful of companies based on their financial needs. In other words, the open web is far superior to a medium controlled by corporations in order to sell ads. The former encourages expression; the latter encourages consumerist conformity.

The Future History of the Nuclear Renaissance With Isabelle Boemeke

I really like the format of this bit of journo-fiction. An interview from the future looking back at the turning point of today.

It probably helps that I’m into nuclearpunk just as much as solarpunk, so I approve this message.

Atomkraft? Ja, bitte!

Fermented Code: Modelling the Microbial Through Miso - Serpentine Galleries

Y’know, I started reading this great piece by Claire L. Evans thinking about its connections to systems thinking, but I ended up thinking more about prototyping. And microbes.

Malleable Systems Collective

Modern computing is far too rigid. Applications can only function in preset ways determined by some far away team. Software is trapped in hermetically sealed silos and is rewritten many times over rather than recomposed.

This community catalogs and experiments with malleable software and systems that reset the balance of power via several essential principles…

I’ll be adding those principles to my collection.

Data Design Language

I like this approach to offering a design system. It seems less prescriptive than many:

Designed not as a rule set, but rather a toolbox, the Data Design Language includes a chart library, design guidelines, colour and typographic style specifications with usability guidance for internationalization (i18n) and accessibility (a11y), all reflecting our data design principles.

Your design system contribution practice is doomed to fail by Amy Hupe, content designer.

This is a great analysis by Amy of the conflicting priorities tugging at design systems.

No matter how hard we work to foster these socialist ideals, like community, collaboration, and contribution, it feels as though we’re always being dragged to a default culture of individualism.

Will Serving Real HTML Content Make A Website Faster? Let’s Experiment! - WebPageTest Blog

Spoiler: the answer to the question in the title is a resounding “hell yeah!”

Scott brings receipts.

Remix Icon - Open source icon library

I love how easy it is to use these icons: you can copy and paste the SVG or even get it encoded as a data URL.

Have I reached the Douglas Adams Inflection point (or is modern tech just a bit rubbish)? – Terence Eden’s Blog

This chimes with something I’ve been pondering: we anticipate big breakthoughs in software—AI!, blockchain!, metaverse! chatbots!—but in reality the field is relatively stagnant. Meanwhile in areas like biology, there’s been unexpected advances. Or maybe, as Terence indicates, it’s all about the hype.

Web UI Engineering Book - toheeb.com

I like the way this work-in-progress is organised—it’s both a book and a personal website that’ll grow over time.

W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles (slides)

The slides from Tess’s presentation on the W3C’s ethical web principles—there’s a transcript too.

CSS { In Real Life } | Web Sustainability and the Ethical Dilemma

But is it always the case that faster websites are greener websites? We reluctantly have to consider another facet: if making a website for a car manufacturer faster leads to an increase in the number of cars sold, can we really say that our website is greener?

This is very timely for me, given that Clearleft is currently engaged on a project that’s making me decidedly queasy for this exact reason—the success metrics of the project would be net negative for the world.

dConstruct: The final chapter! | Sally Lait

I love the thoughtfulness that Sally put into her personal write-up of dConstruct.

A long-term plan for logical properties? | Miriam Eric Suzanne

Well, now I’m really glad I wrote that post about logical properties!

We’re not there yet. So how do we get there?

Well, I don’t know for sure – but articles like this are very helpful as we try to work it out!

Reflections on Dconstruct 2022 – Bill Tribble

Wow, what a day. A really diverse selection of talks that went all over the map. From building vast world-changing health systems, to scaling and archiving global online communities, to the beauty and joy of calligraphy. And lasers. I enjoyed the lot, which is rare for me at an event like this.

A rather lovely write-up of the final dConstruct!

Above all it was nice to see the diversity of approaches and reasons for doing ‘design’ / art / whatever. Some of us are solving the hard problems, some of us are thinking philosophically or creating new tools, and some of us are just having fun – and all approaches are valid and useful.

DOC • The aesthetics of our new fictions

As designers, with every new project we tend to leverage existing symbols and reinforce their meaning to be able to benefit from mental associations people will naturally make. But we also have the power to modify and repurpose those symbols, should that be our intention.

Quality Is Systemic - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Software quality is more the result of a system designed to produce quality, and not so much the result of individual performance. That is: a group of mediocre programmers working with a structure designed to produce quality will produce better software than a group of fantastic programmers working in a system designed with other goals.

This talks about development, but I believe it applies equally—if not more—to design.

And this is very insightful:

Instead of spending tons of time and effort on hiring because you believe that you can “only hire the best”, direct some of that effort towards building a system that produces great results out of a wider spectrum of individual performance.

The self-fulfilling prophecy of React - Josh Collinsworth blog

Matcalfe’s Law in action:

Companies keep choosing React because they know there’s a massive pool of candidates who know it; candidates keep learning React because they know companies are hiring for it. It’s a self-sustaining cycle.

But the problem is:

React isn’t great at anything except being popular.

Spotify – dConstruct 2022

If you were at dConstruct on Friday and you enjoyed the mood music during the breaks, this is what you were listening to.

This Is What I Want To Do – Trailer 3 - YouTube

I can’t wait to see this documentary about Marc and Beyond Tellerrand!

Take Care of Your Blog

Blog!

Blog your heart! Blog about something you’ve learned, blog about something you’re interested in.

Excellent advice from Robin:

There are no rules to blogging except this one: always self-host your website because your URL, your own private domain, is the most valuable thing you can own. Your career will thank you for it later and no-one can take it away.

dConstruct 2022 – Photos by Marc Thiele

Marc very kindly took loads of pictures at dConstruct on Friday—lovely!

The last dConstruct | hidde.blog

A great write-up from Hidde on dConstruct 2022 and how the speakers tackled the theme of design transformation:

They talked about turning a series of penstrokes into art, lasers into fireworks, human experiences into novels and patient data collection into a minimal effort task.

A lot of our work in web design and technology has a power to transform and that is wonderful, especially when we manage to be intentional about the how and why.

Giving your future self a little credit with progressive enhancement - Blog - Pixo | Apps, websites, and software development

We often talk about technical debt — the costs we’ll need to pay in the future when we make short-term compromises. Progressive enhancement is the opposite of that — a sort of technical credit that will make things easier for us in the future.

A good explanation of how progressive enhancement works perfectly with the idea of a minimal viable product:

We focus first on a core experience that delivers what your users are looking for, and then we start adding enhancements that will delight them.

How To Improve Largest Contentful Paint for Faster Load Times - Calibre

A no-nonsense checklist of good performance advice from Karolina.

Modern alternatives to BEM - daverupert.com

Dave rounds up some of the acronymtastic ways of scoping your CSS now that we’ve got a whole new toolkit at our disposal.

If your goal is to reduce specificity, new native CSS tools make reducing specificity a lot easier. You can author your CSS with near-zero specificity and even control the order in which your rules cascade.

as days pass by — Farmbound, or how I built an app in 2022

Stuart writes up the process up making a mobile game as a web app—not a native app. The Wordle effect reverberates.

It’s a web app. Works for everyone. And I thought it would be useful to explain why it is, why I think that’s the way to do things, and some of the interesting parts of building an app for everyone to play which is delivered over the web rather than via app stores and downloads.

What it’s like working with an editor

This piece by Giles is a spot-on description of what I do in my role as content buddy at Clearleft. Especially this bit:

Your editor will explain why things need changing

As a writer, it’s really helpful to understand the why of each edit. It’s easier to re-write if you know precisely what the problem is. And often, it’s less bruising to the ego. It’s not that you’re a bad writer, but just that one particular thing could be expressed more simply, or more clearly, than your first effort.

Worse than LaserDiscs?

Kevin takes my eleven-year old remark literally and points out at least you can emulate LaserDiscs:

So LaserDiscs aren’t the worst things to archive, networks of servers running code that isn’t available or archivable are, and we are building a lot more of those these days, whether on the web or in apps.

TIL: You Can Access A User’s Camera with Just HTML

The capture attribute is pretty nifty—and I just love that you get so much power in a declarative way:

<input type="file" accept="image/*" capture="environment">

“Writing an app is like coding for LaserDisc” – Terence Eden’s Blog

I love this: Terence takes eleven years to reflect on a comment I made on stage at an event here in Brighton. It’s all about the longevity of the web compared to native apps:

If you wrote an app for an early version of iOS or Android, it simply won’t run on modern hardware or software. APIs have changed, SDKs weren’t designed with forward compatibility, and app store requirements have evolved.

The web has none of that. The earliest websites are viewable on modern browsers.

As wrote at the time, I may have been juicing things up for entertainment:

Now here’s the thing when it comes to any discussion about mobile or the web or anything else of any complexity: an honest discussion would result in every single question being answered with “it depends”. A more entertaining discussion, on the other hand, would consist of deliberately polarised opinions. We went for the more entertaining discussion.

But I think this still holds true for me today:

The truth is that the whole “web vs. native” thing doesn’t interest me that much. I’m as interested in native iOS development as I am in native Windows development or native CD-ROM development. On a timescale measured in years, they are all fleeting, transient things. The web abides.

Ancient Web Browsers | tweedy

This is an archive of the very earliest Web browsers — the true pioneers, the Old Gods, the Ancients:

WorldWideWeb, LineMode, Viola, Erwise, Midas, TkWWW, Samba, Lynx, w3, FineWWW

Why your website should work without Javascript. | endtimes.dev

The obvious answer to why you should build a website that doesn’t need js is… because some people don’t use js. But how many?!

Complex conditional width using flex-basis with clamp: Every Layout

Okay, combining flex-basis and clamp() is pretty cool!