In which I embark on a quixotic quest to make a physical book using web rendering technology.
That was an amazing write up and it's awesome that you could do most of that with just HMTL and CSS!
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How do we improve JavaScript usage, teach progressive enhancement and reconcile the community?
Super agree! There was a transition to get here and we have to transition away from it. We can't expect everybody to jump on board, especially when jumping on board means becoming an advocate for your whole team to have to relearn everything they know. We have to get real learning material out there (beyond just basic tutorials, like you say) and help these devs learn the patterns they need to transition their teams toward progressive enhancement.
I’m not sure I’d recommend doing what I did, but I do think RSS is an incredibly powerful, under-appreciated, and under-utilized technology.…
Is the design of other users' webmention displays the only part that confuses you or is there something else? If that's the only thing, it seems like webmentions solve the problem of community building for you. Since it's your site, you get to decide if you display them and how. You could choose not to display likes/reposts but to display replies like a comment thread.
Small communities federated together using the same underlying standards feel obvious to me as the future of social. But I'm neck-deep in it and have
The silos have conditioned everyone to want maximum reach, which is always going to be harder with decentralized services. Interoperability between decentralized services is always piecemeal; see Mastodon's reliance on ActivityPub + WebFinger + other subtle heuristics. That slows any attempt to build a cohesive decentralized platform that works for everyone/every media type.
…and I don’t mean a single-user one for your own personal use. This is happening Hi! I hope you had a great weekend. While you were off, you know, having
This is Mastodon’s moment, and it has a very serious chance of succeeding. The thing that will help it (and the internet, and the concept of actual decent, social social networks) is more, smaller instances.
This is the fediverse's moment. I think the fediverse and the Web would be better served if more people learned about the wider fediverse instead of just mastodon. Just like with web browsers, we need a plurality of software. Chrome being the largest, most dominant browser isn't good for the Web and mastodon being the largest, most dominant fediverse software isn't good for the fediverse.
A simple subscribeable h-card website service
This is something I've always wanted; a more indieweb version of OPML or an upgraded blogroll. This would really help with discovery!
I have gone down a mini rabbit hole. Unlike many rabbit holes, I can map out how I got here. I perused Adactio's blog, saw a link to a blog about writing, and clicked on an article that looked interesting. Then I read a piece of advice about writing more, saw a link to another site, then clicked on another article that looked interesting. I went through three different sites to find the article I found, all the while not seeking any piece of information in particular. Like all things, internet rabbit hole exploration can be fun and teach you a thing or two. Like all things too, moderation is advised.
I've learned that most of the things that English speakers are taught about grammar are pure opinion and have no effect on the language. Starting a sentence with a conjunction, ending a sentence with a preposition, splitting an infinitive, or using a double negative are things that early British writers decided didn't meet their tastes at the time when the language was just beginning to be accepted as a literary language. They don't have any basis in linguistics or comprehension; they're based on morals and classism. For example, they thought double negatives are illogical because, mathematically, the words would cancel out, so people who used double negatives must be less logical. But there are plenty of languages where these features are used or even required, e.g. Spanish makes use of double negation a lot.
Code splitting in JavaScript projects and for Alpine.js
This sounds awesome! I use Alpine on a few personal tools, so I'll definitely check this out.
A fully-public education system would benefit everybody.
100%! I couldn't agree more
Creating an 'attractive' RSS player with vanilla JavaScript, HTML Tags, and SVG
This is really cool. I always like neat SVG decorations
Nice! If you're looking for more IndieWeb places to syndicate, there's also IndieWeb.xzy, which is a reddit-like aggregator minus any handling of comments, and IndieForums, which is a forum that handles comments but everything is a syndicated post.
Mars is only going to get colder and darker for the next 10 weeks as winter deepens.
Wow, this little experiment became important enough to put the entire mission on hold. Sad that this is the beginning of its end, but if this impressive performance was the bare minimum, I imagine NASA will look into sending more advanced designs on future missions. I can't wait to see the next version.