Note archive: October, 2020

No, no, that was totally down to me reading in haste.

Ah, right, I see now that you said replacing with an actual button is better than adding a role of “button” to a link—that makes sense! So if JavaScript replaces the links with buttons, I may be on my way to covering both scenarios.

Yes, better for screen reader support where the JavaScript executes, but not so good for any situations—screen reader or otherwise—where JavaScript is unavailable (a link would still work as link).

I wish I could handle both scenarios.

If JavaScript add a role of “button” to the link, would that deal with the expectation issue?

(That would still allow the link to be a fallback for non-JS scenarios.)

Yes! As soon as you add preventDefault() to an event listener, you’re signing up to handle all the responsibilities that the browser would usually take care of.

Then make them real pages.

Completely agree with you there!

Big modals that are basically fake web pages—even if coded accessibly—feel deceptive, lacking in material honesty.

If it’s true that screen reader users expect all links to go to a new page, then are regular internal page links (that use IDs) an anti-pattern to be avoided?

e.g. Wikipedia articles with a table of contents. Fragment identifier URLs.

There’s the story of T.E. Lawrence losing the first manuscript of The Seven Pillars Of Wisdom on a train …though it’s more likely that the story is his version of “the dog ate my homework” because he didn’t like what he’d written.

Well, this is a weird example but look at the output of this XML https://thesession.org/tunes/new?format=xml with and without the extension enabled. With the extension, you can see the JavaScript dumped to the screen.

Ah, interesting! I had that installed until very recently too: I had to disable it when I discovered it was inserting JavaScript into every response (making debugging very difficult). We should tell the good folks at @DuckDuckGo.

It loads for me: Firefox 82.0.1 on Mac.

Do you think maybe a browser extension might be the culprit? (I speak from bitter hair-pulling experience.)

I brainstormed that for a bit:

https://github.com/w3c/web-share/issues/176#issuecomment-694090749

I’m going to apologise to Roy Fielding for even thinking it.

Can’t beat a good vinaigrette:

https://principiagastronomica.com/post/24

I like the fallback you get with a link (assuming it’s using a valid fragment identifier)—if anything goes screwy with the JavaScript, the link still works.

I’d be interested in getting your take on the logic I’m using here: https://adactio.com/journal/17546

…generally you can’t go wrong with a button. … That said, I think that links can also make sense in certain situations.

Eating toast (with marmite).

Yeah, that’s fair—if I had a time machine, I’d love to go back and make cookies same-origin only.

And JavaScript!

https://adactio.com/journal/16099

Yeah …spicy!

It’s that emphasis on “between origins” that gets me (though I understand the security concerns, of course). Jake’s original proposal seemed more focused on same-origin page-level transitions …which is most single page apps today.

You’re right. I don’t have any in-depth knowledge here. I was trying to describe a proposal being incubated. I used an example. It was a bad example, I guess.

From now on I’ll just describe portals as “spicy iframes” and leave it at that.

Jake, I’m not saying that if a technology is useful for AMP then it must be bad—see rel=”prerender”, as you say.

I was honestly, genuinely trying to give an example of where portals could be used based on the description in the explainer.

Note that I didn’t say that portals came from AMP; I said they would help the AMP use case.

But I think I must be misunderstanding portals because it sounds to me like it would work great for the AMP top stories carousel.

Apologies. I thought the use-case sounded a lot like AMP’s top stories:

…show another page as an inset, and then activate it to perform a seamless transition to a new state, where the formerly-inset page becomes the top-level document.

Google reCAPTCHAs that will help power their new border wall contract:

“Please select all the squares containing children we’re going to separate from their families and put in cages.”

https://twitter.com/beep/status/1319261552189542400

Don’t get me wrong: it would be great if portals led to navigation transitions, but right now it looks like the focus is more on “like making an iframe go full page” e.g. an item in a news carousel on a search engine.

My description of portals was genuine. I gave a use case (AMP) and a comparison (iframes). I didn’t pass any judgement (although I can see how just mentioning AMP implies ickiness by association).

Portals are a proposal from Google that would help their AMP use case (it would allow a web page to be pre-rendered, kind of like an iframe).

https://github.com/wicg/portals

Most single page apps are just giant carousels.

Their bucketloads of JavaScript wouldn’t be needed if navigation transitions were available in browsers:

https://github.com/jakearchibald/navigation-transitions

(not portals)

Are you saying he should grow a pair of test articles?

Fnarr, and indeed, fnarr.

Yay! Welcome to the indie web!

I feel like there should be a website equivalent of a housewarming party—a homepage-warming party or something!

Playing Rip The Calico (reel) on mandolin:

https://thesession.org/tunes/719

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emX4frK4Szo

Oh, that looks soooo goooood!

I can’t remember the last time I saw somebody using a hashtag on Twitter.

It’s like when the bees started disappearing. There’s some kind of hashtag collapse disorder.

Reading A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit.

❤️

Sounds like you need more roughage in your diet. Or you could try drinking prune juice.

When it finally happens, just imagine how satisfying that blog post is going to be!

Fellow front-end developers, are you using the Web Share API? If so, would you mind taking a moment to briefly document (or link to) how you’re using it here:

https://github.com/adactio/share-button-type/issues/1

Thank you muchly!

I’m just saying what everyone else is thinking, Ethan.

First they tell us to “eat out to help out.” Now they’re asking if we want to cyber.

This government is horny on main is what I’m saying.

Now that I own a company… https://adactio.com/journal/17506 …I’m going to get myself a monocle, a top hat, and a cane.

crashes through wall

Tagliatelle al ragù alla bolognese!

https://principiagastronomica.com/post/72

I don’t know anymore. What are words, even?

Playing The Chapel Bell (jig) on mandolin:

https://thesession.org/tunes/5405

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEq4DogfGHA

Of course Finland exists!… But birds, on the other hand …well, everyone knows that birds aren’t real.

https://birdsarentreal.com/

Do the research!!!

Playing The Foxhunters (reel) on mandolin:

https://thesession.org/tunes/511

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUMlzwUfppE

Playing The Kid On The Mountain (slip jig) on mandolin:

https://thesession.org/tunes/52

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mkOeQP34-U

Do you mean copy to clipboard? It doesn’t look like that’s an option on MacOS no matter what fields you supply.

Playing Dinkey’s (reel) on mandolin:

https://thesession.org/tunes/24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da42gGh-984

AS A user, I WANT TO take it to the bridge SO THAT I CAN get down and do my thang.

Really? A dystopian future where the survival of democracy and civilisation itself depends on maintaining the postal serv… Oh. Wait.

H1: 18px H2: 14px H3: 14px H4: 12px H5: 12px H6: 12px

https://github.com/cynthia/WorldWideWeb/blob/master/NextStep/Implementation/WorldWideWeb.app/default.style

Explanation here: https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/code/