WebPageTest’s Guiding Principles - WebPageTest Blog
- Make the right thing easy
- Always answer “so what”?
- Close the gap between “something is wrong” to “we fixed it”
- Make the right thing easy
- Always answer “so what”?
- Close the gap between “something is wrong” to “we fixed it”
So much ink spilled supposedly explaining what “the web platform” is …when the truth is you can just swap in the “the web” every time that phrase is used here or anywhere else.
Anyway, the gist of this piece is: the web is good, actually.
The past, present and future of blogs.
Especially if you are a designer, an artist, a photographer, a writer, a blogger, a creator of any kind, owning your work is as important as ever. Social media platforms might be great for distributing your content and creating a network of like-minded people around you. But they will always be ephemeral, transient, and impermanent – not the best place to preserve your thoughts, words, and brushstrokes.
The more I look at this “issue” the more I’m convinced the solution is already right there and it’s called the web. Want to have an unblockable, unbannable user profile? Buy yourself a domain and get a personal website. Want to have a space where you can say and do whatever the fuck you want? Get a webspace and put up a blog.
Every time I’ve thought “this is a niche subject or random thought, no one will be interested but I’ll publish anyway” someone will let me know that it was the EXACT train of thought they were thinking or thing they were looking for.
It gives me warm fuzzies to see an indie web building block like rel="me"
getting coverage like this.
Mastodon is not a platform. Mastodon is just a tiny part of a concept many have been dreaming about and working on for years. Social media started on the wrong foot. The idea for the read/write web has always been different. Our digital identities weren’t supposed to end up in something like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.
Decentralisation, Federation, The Indie Web: There were many groups silently working on solving the broken architecture of our digital social networks and communication channels – long, long before the “web 3” dudes tried to reframe it as their genius new idea.
I’ve been a part of this for many years until I gave up hope. How would you compete against the VC money, the technical and economical benefits of centralised platforms? It was a fight between David and Gloiath. But now Mastodon could be the stone.
Paul’s indie web project is live!
Meet the little Node.js server with all the parts needed to publish content to your personal website and share it on social networks.
You can read the accompanying blog post.
But you can’t have a web app without a web-app-compatible browser, and you can’t get a web-app-compatible browser in Apple’s App Store. The only browsers permitted in the App Store are those based on WebKit, the browser engine behind Safari. This means that every browser on iOS, from Firefox to Edge to Chrome, is just a reskinned version of Safari.
All along, from the frothy 1990s to the percolating 2000s to the frozen 2010s to today, the web has been the sure thing. All along, it’s been growing and maturing, sprouting new capabilities. From my vantage point, that growth has seemed to accelerate in the past five years; CSS, in particular, has become incredibly flexible and expressive. Maybe even a bit overstuffed — but I’ll take it.
For people who care about creating worlds together, rather than getting rich, the web is the past and the web is the future. What luck, that this decentralized, permissionless system claimed a position at the heart of the internet, and stuck there. It’s limited, of course; frustrating; sometimes maddening. But that’s every creative medium. That’s life.
Frameworks come and go. They are transient. Web standards, on the other hand, are the reason the Web is good now and it will become even better in the future.
If you’re thinking of signing up to Hive or Post:
If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can be linked to and viewed in an unauthenticated browser, or if there is no way to make a new post from a browser, then that program is not a part of the World Wide Web in any meaningful way.
Consign that app to oblivion.
I don’t like making unpaid contributions to a for-profit publisher whose proprietor is an alt-right troll.
Same.
I can see no good arguments for redirecting my voice into anyone else’s for-profit venture-funded algorithm-driven engagement-maximizing wet dream.
I’ve been very guilty of putting all my eggs in the Twitter basket over the last couple of years, especially, and all of that has been destroyed by one bellend billionaire. I’m determined not to make that mistake again and even more determined to make my little home on the internet—this website—as lovely and sustainable as I can make it.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to keep you doomscrolling in a state of fear and anger, or is essentially spyware for governments and/or corporations? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have ads shoved in your face every time you open an app to see what your friends are up to? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that when your friends post something, you’ll actually see it without a social media platform deciding whether to shove it down your feed and pump that feed full of stuff you didn’t ask for?
Wouldn’t that be great?
A directory of blogs, all nicely categorised:
ooh.directory is a place to find good blogs that interest you.
Phil gave me a sneak peek at this when he was putting it together and asked me what I thought of it. My response was basically “This is great!”
And of course you can suggest a site to add to the directory.
A personal website is a lovely thing. Nobody will buy this platform and use it as their personal plaything. No advertisers will boycott and send me scrambling to produce different content. No seed funding will run out overnight.
Pour a foundation for your own silo or home.
This resonates with me.