Adactio: Links

Web Publications for the Open Web Platform: Vision And Technical Challenges

Given my experience publishing Resilient Web Design as a web book, I think I should take a good look at this nascent spec.

What we envision for Packaged Web Publications is similar to the goals and techniques of Progressive Web Apps: breaking the boundaries between web sites and mobile apps, an emphasis on “offline” paradigms, and so on. The time is right to broaden the scope and power of the web to include publications.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Eulogy for Flash

Web developers aren’t going to shed many tears for Flash, but as Bruce rightly points out, it led the way for many standards that followed. Flash was the kick up the arse that the web needed.

He also brings up this very important question:

I’m also nervous; one of the central tenets of HTML is to be backwards-compatible and not to break the web. It would be a huge loss if millions of Flash movies become unplayable. How can we preserve this part of our digital heritage?

This is true of the extinction of any format. Perhaps this is an opportunity for us to tackle this problem head on.

Reflections on Two Years of Indieweb

Alex Kearney looks back on two years of owning her own data.

With a fully functional site up and running, I focused on my own needs and developed features to support how I wanted to use my site. In hind-sight, that’s probably the most indie thing I could’ve done, and how I should’ve started my indieweb adventure.

This really resonates with me.

One of the motivating features for joining the indieweb was the ability to keep and curate the content I create over time.

Terrific post!

Here’s to two more years.

Microformats : Meaningful HTML

A great one-page intro to microformats (h-card in particular), complete with a parser that exports JSON. Bookmark this for future reference.

The Analog Web | Jim Nielsen’s Blog

This is wonderful meditation on the history of older technologies that degrade in varied conditions versus newer formats that fall of a “digital cliff”, all tied in to working on the web.

When digital TV fails, it fails completely. Analog TV, to use parlance of the web, degrades gracefully. The web could be similar, if we choose to make it so. It could be “the analog” web in contrast to “the digital” platforms. Perhaps in our hurry to replicate and mirror native platforms, we’re forgetting the killer strength of the web: universal accessibility.

Amber Wilson: Markup-Masterclass

Yesterday was a good day with Amber. She’s been marking up her CV and it was the perfect opportunity to take a deep dive into HTML.

WebPonize - webponize.github.io

A Mac app for converting PNGs and JPEGs to WebP.

From Tape Drives to Memory Orbs, the Data Formats of Star Wars Suck (Spoilers) | Motherboard

As always with sci-fi interfaces, the important part is telling the story, not realism or accuracy. Personally, I liked the way that the World War II trappings of Rogue One extended to communications and networking technologies.

Data on the Web Best Practices

This document provides Best Practices related to the publication and usage of data on the Web designed to help support a self-sustaining ecosystem. Data should be discoverable and understandable by humans and machines.

From WordPress to Apple News, Instant Articles, and AMP - The Media Temple Blog

Chris runs through the process and pitfalls of POSSEing a site (like CSS Tricks) to Apple’s News app, Facebook’s Instant Articles, and Google’s AMP.

Hey, whatever you want. As long as…

It’s not very much work

The content’s canonical home is my website.

I just want people to read and like CSS-Tricks.

The Typekit Blog | Variable fonts, a new kind of font for flexible design

This is what Nick Sherman has been banging on about for years, and now the time has come for variable fonts …as long as typographers, browser makers, and standards bodies get behind it.

More details on Ev’s blog.

The Long, Remarkable History of the GIF

The history of the GIF—a tale of licensing, compression, and standards.

.generation on Vimeo

A cautionary tale of digital preservation.

.generation is a short film that intimately documents three millennials in the year 2054 - uncovering their relationships with technology in the aftermath of the information age.

Standardizing the Social Web

The slides from Aaron’s talk at OS Bridge in Portland, looking at the formats and protocols powering the indie web.

PURL: A Portable Content Store - Not Enough Neon

I need to wrap my head around the details of this approach, but it sounds like it might be something I could do here on my site (where I feel nervous about my current dependency on a database).

Archiving a Website for Ten Thousand Years - The Atlantic

Prompted by the way Craig is handling the shutdown of hi.co, Glenn Fleishman takes a look at other digital preservation efforts and talk to Laura Welcher at the Long Now Foundation.

A time capsule is bottled optimism. It makes material the belief that human beings will survive long enough to retrieve and decode artifacts of the distant past.

Tags: formats

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