Tags: bbb

I was supposed to be in Plymouth yesterday, giving the opening talk at this year’s Future Sync conference. Obviously, that train journey never happened, but the conference did.

The organisers gave us speakers the option of pre-recording our talks, which I jumped on. It meant that I wouldn’t be reliant on a good internet connection at the crucial moment. It also meant that I was available to provide additional context—mostly in the form of a deluge of hyperlinks—in the chat window that accompanied the livestream.

The whole thing went very smoothly indeed. Here’s the video of my talk. It was The Layers Of The Web, which I’ve only given once before, at Beyond Tellerrand Berlin last November (in the Before Times).

As well as answering questions in the chat room, people were also asking questions in Sli.do. But rather than answering those questions there, I was supposed to respond in a social medium of my choosing. I chose my own website, with copies syndicated to Twitter.

Here are those questions and answers…

The first few questions were about last years’s CERN project, which opens the talk:

Based on what you now know from the CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild project—what would you have done differently if you had been part of the original 1989 Team?

I responded:

Actually, I think the original WWW project got things mostly right. If anything, I’d correct what came later: cookies and JavaScript—those two technologies (which didn’t exist on the web originally) are the source of tracking & surveillance.

The one thing I wish had been done differently is I wish that JavaScript were a same-origin technology from day one:

https://adactio.com/journal/16099

Next question:

How excited were you when you initially got the call for such an amazing project?

My predictable response:

It was an unbelievable privilege! I was so excited the whole time—I still can hardly believe it really happened!

https://adactio.com/journal/14803

https://adactio.com/journal/14821

Later in the presentation, I talked about service workers and progressive web apps. I got a technical question about that:

Is there a limit to the amount of local storage a PWA can use?

I answered:

Great question! Yes, there are limits, but we’re generally talking megabytes here. It varies from browser to browser and depends on the available space on the device.

But files stored using the Cache API are less likely to be deleted than files stored in the browser cache.

More worrying is the announcement from Apple to only store files for a week of browser use:

https://adactio.com/journal/16619

Finally, there was a question about the over-arching theme of the talk…

Great talk, Jeremy. Do you encounter push-back when using the term “Progressive Enhancement”?

My response:

Yes! …And that’s why I never once used the phrase “progressive enhancement” in my talk. 🙂

There’s a lot of misunderstanding of the term. Rather than correct it, I now avoid it:

https://adactio.com/journal/9195

Instead of using the phrase “progressive enhancement”, I now talk about the benefits and effects of the technique: resilience, universality, etc.

Spring sprung last weekend. Saturday was an unseasonably nice and sunny day, so Jessica and I decided to make the most of it with a walk in the countryside.

Our route took us from Woodingdean to Lewes. Woodingdean isn’t too far away from where we live, but the walk there would’ve been beside a busy road so we just took the bus for that portion.

Being on the bus means we didn’t stop to take note of an interesting location. Just outside the Nuffield hospital is the unassuming opening of the Woodingdean Water Well. This is the deepest hand-dug well in the world—deeper than the Empire State Building is tall—dug over the course of four years in the mid nineteenth century. I didn’t even know of its existence until Brian told me about it.

From Woodingdean, we walked along Juggs Road. Originally a Roman ridgeway, it was named for the fishwives travelling from Brighton to Lewes with their marine wares. This route took us over Newmarket Hill, the site of many mock battles in the 18th century, for the amusement of the royals on a day out from the Pavilion.

Walking through Kingston, we came to the Ashcombe Windmill, where I pet a nice horsey.

Then it was on into Lewes, where we could admire the handsome architecture of Lewes Cathedral …the local wags’ name for Harveys Brewery. Thanks to Ben’s connections, Clearleft managed to get a behind-the-scenes tour of this Victorian marvel a few months ago.

This time round, there would be no brewery tour, but that’s okay—there’s a shop right outside. We chose an appropriate ale to accompany a picnic of pork pie and apple.

Having walked all the way to Lewes, it would’ve been a shame to return empty-handed, so before getting the bus back to Brighton, we popped into Mays Farm Cart and purchased a magnificent forerib of beef straight from the farm.

‘Twas a most worthwhile day out.

It all started with some silliness at The Highland Fling. With the shwag preparation complete, the volunteers created a wall of cardboard boxes and we filmed Brian’s head-on assault.

Fast forward to dConstruct 2007. The bag stuffing and schwag prep was all wrapped up the day before the conference. There were packing boxes aplenty. Said boxes were quickly stacked into an edifice of cardboard and cameras were unsheathed.

Here are three angles (more will probably follow):

• Josh’s view from the side (beginning with a walk-on cameo of C3PO as played by Ribot),
• My view from behind,
• Natalie’s dramatic direct view.