(optional.is) Link Rot
Following on from my recently-lost long bet, this is a timely bit of data spelunking from Brian analysing the linkrot of 1400 links over 18 years of time.
Link tags: urls
99
How Websites Die ⁑ Wesley’s Notebook
This is like the Gashlycrumb Tinies but for websites:
It’s been interesting to see how websites die — from domain parking pages to timeouts to blank pages to outdated TLS cipher errors, there are a multitude of different ways.
A Long Bet on Link Rot is Resolved, but Questions About the Durability of the Web Still Remain - Long Now
The Long Now foundation has a write-up on my recently-lost long bet:
On February 22, 02011, Jeremy Keith made a prediction that he hoped would be proven wrong.
A Long Bet Pays Off - Internet Archive Blogs
The bet was been won (not by me, thankfully) and Jason has some thoughts.
On a long bet – A Whole Lotta Nothing
Matt’s thoughts on that bet. Not long now…
11ty/api-indieweb-avatar: Return an optimized avatar image from a domain name input.
Here’s a nifty little service from Zach: pass in a URL and it returns an image of the site’s icon.
Think of it as the indie web alternative to showing Twitter avatars.
marcus.io · Making RSS more visible again with a /feeds page
Personal website owners – what do you think about collecting all of the feeds you are producing in one way or the other on a
/feedspage?
Sounds like a good idea! I’ll get on that.
window.location Cheatsheet - DEV Community 👩💻👨💻
Everything you ever wanted to know about window.location in JavaScript, clearly explained.
The History of the URL
This is a wonderful deep dive into all the parts of a URL:
scheme:[//[user:password@]host[:port]][/]path[?query][#fragment]
There’s a lot of great DNS stuff about the host part:
Root DNS servers operate in safes, inside locked cages. A clock sits on the safe to ensure the camera feed hasn’t been looped. Particularily given how slow DNSSEC implementation has been, an attack on one of those servers could allow an attacker to redirect all of the Internet traffic for a portion of Internet users. This, of course, makes for the most fantastic heist movie to have never been made.
This Page is Designed to Last | CSS-Tricks
I feel there is something beyond the technological that is the real trick to a site that lasts: you need to have some stake in the game. You don’t let your URLs die because you don’t want them to. They matter to you. You’ll tend to them if you have to. They benefit you in some way, so you’re incentivized to keep them around. That’s what makes a page last.
WICG/ScrollToTextFragment: Proposal to allow specifying a text snippet in a URL fragment
It looks (a more complex version of) fragmention might be coming to Chrome.
Slashed URI
This is my kind of URL nerdery. Remy ponders all the permutations of URLs ending with slashes, ending without slashes, ending with with a file extension…
Four Cool URLs - Alex Pounds’ Blog
A fellow URL fetishest!
I love me a well-designed URL scheme—here’s four interesting approaches.
URLs are consumed by machines, but they should be designed for humans. If your URL thinking stops at “uniquely identifies a page” and “good for SEO”, you’re missing out.
“Killing the URL” | CSS-Tricks
URLs are the single greatest feature of the web.
881410 - Incorrect transforms when stripping subdomains
The latest version of Chrome is removing seams by messing with the display of the URL.
This is a bug.
The mysterious case of missing URLs and Google’s AMP | sonniesedge.co.uk
My reaction to that somewhat sensentionalist Wired article was much the same as Charlie’s—seeing it on the same day at the latest AMP sneakiness has me worried.
The hiding of URLs fits perfectly with AMPs preferred method of making sites fast, which is to host them directly on Google’s servers, and to serve them from a Google domain. Hiding the URL from the user then makes a Google AMP site indistinguishable from an ordinary site.
As well as sharing Charlie’s concern, I also share her hope:
I really hope that the people who are part of Google can stop something awful like this from happening.
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.
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.
StyleURL - share CSS tweaks instantly
This is an interesting tool: mess around with styles on any site inside Chrome’s dev tools, and then hit a button to have the updated styles saved to a URL (a Gist on Github).
Let’s make the grimy architecture of the web visible again by Russell Davies
Beneath the URL shorteners, the web!
It’s increasingly apparent that a more digitally literate citizenry would be good for a thousand different reasons. A great way to start would be to make URLs visible again, to let people see the infrastructure they’re living in.