A good overview of the unfair playing field of web browsers, dominated by the monopolistic practices by Google and Apple.
Mozilla is no longer fighting for market share of its browser: it is fighting for the future of the web.
What a lovely way to walk through the design system underpinning the Guardian website.
Bonus points for using the term “tweak points”!
Every one of these is chef’s kiss.
A profile of Codebar Brighton, with words of wisdom from Alice and Cassie.
Backlash backlash:
The nature of human nature is that it changes. It can not, therefore, serve as a stable basis for evaluating the impact of technology. Yet the assumption that it doesn’t change serves a useful purpose. Treating human nature as something static, pure and essential elevates the speaker into a position of power. Claiming to tell us who we are, they tell us how we should be.
Kim Stanley Robinson explores the practicalities of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth proposal.
There is no alternative way; there is no planet B. We have only this planet, and have to fit our species into the energy flows of its biosphere. That’s our project now. That’s the meaning of life, in case you were looking for a meaning.
Three authors pick their favourite book by Philip K Dick:
Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written.
Rebecca Solnit’s piece reminded me of something I mentioned a couple of year’s back when I referred to Margaret Atwood’s phrase “judicious hope”:
Hope sounds like such a wishy-washy word, like “faith” or “belief”, but it carries with it a seed of resistance. Hope, faith, and belief all carry connotations of optimism, but where faith and belief sound passive, even downright complacent, hope carries the promise of action.
Building a planet-sized telescope suggests all sorts of practical difficulties.
Details of The Guardian’s switch to HTTPS.
The devs at The Guardian walk through the process of building a progressive web app for the Olympics. There were some gotchas with the life cycle of service workers, but the pay-off was worth it:
Once you get there though, it’s quite magical when you load the page on a phone, switch it to airplane mode, reload, and continue using the app as though nothing was wrong.
I lived in Freiburg for years but I never knew of this story.
Two weeks ago, writer and artist Dennis Cooper was checking his Gmail when something peculiar happened: the page was refreshed and he was notified that his account had been deactivated – along with the blog that he’d maintained for 14 years.
This is why the Indie Web exists.
His advice to other artists who work predominantly online is to maintain your own domain and back everything up.
The history of Facebook’s attempt to steamroll over net neutrality in India …and how they failed in that attempt, thanks to a grassroots campaign.
Crucially, Facebook itself would decide which sites were included on the platform. The company had positioned Internet.org as a philanthropic endeavour — backed by Zuckerberg’s lofty pronouncements that “connectivity is a human right” — but retained total control of the platform.
The Guardian have hit the big red button and made their responsive site the default. Great stuff!
(top tip: don’t read the comments)
Steve Albini’s barnstorming keynote address at Melbourne’s Face the Music conference.
Watch the skies: James Bridle’s balloon will be hovering above London distributing wifi.
A peek behind the scenes of an interesting new navigation pattern on the Guardian’s still-in-beta responsive site.
You can try it out here
This is what Oliver was talking about Responsive Day Out 2 — a new approach to information architecture.
Cast off your sidebars! You have nothing to lose but your grids!
A great write-up of the design process behind The Guardian’s responsive site. It’s really gratifying to see UX designers talking about performance.