Link tags: 9

www91.pdf

This is the flyer that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau distributed at the Hypertext 91 Conference—the one where their submission was infamously rejected.

The WWW project merges the techniques of information rerieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.

The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. lt aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.

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.

The Healing Power of Javascript | WIRED

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

Sowing Material’s Future « optional.is/required

Brian and Joschi are considering an interesting approach for their Material conference:

Maybe we should think about a “crop rotation” method for our event? One year in Iceland to help benefit the local community, then the following year move to Germany so it is easier for people to attend, then a third year of rest and change the format to a virtual or remote event. Then repeat on that three year cycle.

One Year Since The #IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club Met In Person And Other Last Times - Tantek

Expect more poignant one-year anniversary memories this March.

We reached our disembarkation stop and stepped off. I put my mask away. We hugged and said our goodbyes. Didn’t think it would be the last time I’d ride MUNI light rail. Or hug a friend without a second thought.

2021 is when lockdown will stop mattering (Interconnected)

First you cope and then you adapt. The kicker: once you adapt, you may not want to go back.

Burnt out? - The Midult

It me.

And yet now, in this moment of semi-stillness, the pause button may have slowed down our geographical dashing, but it has only accelerated our inner flounder. The dull thrum of imprecise apprehension. The gratitude for semi-safety made weird by the ever-blooming realisation that there is little to get excited about.

100words — 🐙 woohooctopus

Well, this is impressive (and brave)—competing a 100 words for 100 days during lockdown …with a baby.

And remember, this isn’t writing and publishing at least 100 words every day; it’s writing and publishing exactly 100 words (that’s the hard part).

90s Festival Generator

I spent far too long hitting refresh and then clicking on the names of some of the Irish bands down near the bottom of the line-up.

The Return of the 90s Web | Max Böck

Everything old is new again (thank goodness!):

• Serverside Rendering
• No-Code Tools
• Personal Websites
• Curated Feeds and Discovery
• Smaller Communities and Web Monetization

Pandemic Time: A Distributed Doomsday Clock - NOEMA

A meditative essay on the nature of time.

The simultaneous dimming of Betelgeuse and the global emergence of COVID-19 were curiously rhyming phenomena: disruptions of familiar, reassuring rhythms, both with latent apocalyptic potential.

Time and distance are out of place here.

We will have left a world governed by Chronos, the Greek god of linear, global, objective time measured by clocks, and arrived into a world governed by Kairos, the Greek god of nonlinear, local, subjective time, measured by the ebb and flow of local patterns of risk and opportunity. The Virus Quadrille is not just the concluding act of pandemic time but the opening act of an entire extended future.

Why I hate the log graph, and you should too - Geek in Sydney

I must admit I’ve been wincing a little every time I see a graph with a logarithmic scale in a news article about COVID-19. It takes quite a bit of cognitive work to translate to a linear scale and get the real story.

Why is this interesting? - The Transmission Edition

Looking at COVID-19 through the lens of pace layers.

…a citizen could actually play a part that was as important as a vaccine, but instead of preventing transmission of the virus into another cell at the ACE receptor level, it’s preventing transmission of the virus at the social network level. So we’re actually adopting a kind of behavioral vaccine policy, by voluntarily or otherwise self-isolating.

It’s OK.

This is for everyone at Clearleft, but I’m sharing it here for you too.

ongoing by Tim Bray · Bye, Amazon

May 1st was my last day as a VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, after five years and five months of rewarding fun. I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.

Fair play, Tim Bray!

The victims weren’t abstract entities but real people; here are some of their names: Courtney Bowden, Gerald Bryson, Maren Costa, Emily Cunningham, Bashir Mohammed, and Chris Smalls.

I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right?

‘The stakes feel higher but, with good practice, it need not be scary’ – NHS.UK design lead on responding to coronavirus | PublicTechnology.net

This isn’t the time to get precious about your favourite design and development tools. Use progressive enhancement as your philosophy. Your service might have to be accessed on old devices in hospitals with outdated tech or unsupported operating systems. HTML+CSS is your best bet to ensure that the service can be accessed in unlikely scenarios you’ve never even considered. Do you want to take that risk at a time like this? Nope, me neither.

Save the React squabbles for another time. Make it accessible and robust from day one.

Prioritizing users in a crisis: Building the California COVID-19 response site

This is a great case study of the excellent California COVID-19 response site. Accessibility and performance are the watchwords here.

Want to know their secret weapon?

A $20 device running Android 9, with no contract commitment has been one of the most useful and effective tools in our effort to be accessible.

Leaner, faster sites benefit everybody, but making sure your applications run smoothly on low-end hardware makes a massive difference for those users.

Looking at coronavirus.data.gov.uk - Matthew Somerville

I worry that more and more nowadays, people jump to JavaScript frameworks because that is what they know or have been taught, even though they are entirely inappropriate for a wide array of things and can often produce poor results.

Last week I wrote about the great work that Matthew did and now he’s written up his process:

The important thing is to have a resilient base layer of HTML and CSS, and then to enhance that with JavaScript.

98.css - A design system for building faithful recreations of old UIs

Well, this is a fun bit of CSS. Instantly transform a web page into a blast from the past (1998, to be precise).

Web Sites as ‘Public Accommodation’ under a Pandemic | Adrian Roselli

If you dodged an accessibility lawsuit because you have physical locations, what does it mean when those physical locations close?

Good question.

As movie theaters, restaurant ordering, college courses, and more move to online-first delivery, the notion of a corresponding brick-and-mortar venue falls away. If the current pandemic physical distancing measures stretch into the next year as many think, then this blip becomes the de facto new normal.