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In our current digital landscape, where a corporate algorithm tells us what to read, watch, drink, eat, wear, smell like, and sound like, human curation of the web is an act of revolution. A simple list of hyperlinks published under a personal domain name is subversive.
Very good writing advice from Dan:
Use plain language. Tell the truth.
Related:
The reason why LLM text for me is bad is that it’s insipid, which is not a plain language word to use, but the secret is to use words like that tactically and sparingly to great effect.
They don’t write plainly because most of the text they’ve been trained on isn’t plain and clear. I’d argue that most of the text that’s ever existed isn’t plain and clear anyway.
Thursday session
So my observation is that 80% of the subject of accessibility consists of fairly simple basics that can probably be learnt in 20% of the time available. The remaining 20% are the difficult situations, edge cases, assistive technology support gaps and corners of specialised knowledge, but these are extrapolated to 100% of the subject, giving it a bad, anxiety-inducing and difficult reputation overall.
I love my feed reader:
Feed readers are an example of user agents: they act on behalf of you when they interact with publishers, representing your interests and preserving your privacy and security. The most well-known user agents these days are Web browsers, but in many ways feed readers do it better – they don’t give nearly as much control to sites about presentation and they don’t allow privacy-invasive technologies like cookies or JavaScript.
Also:
Feed support should be built into browsers, and the user experience should be excellent.
Agreed!
However, convincing the browser vendors that this is in their interest is going to be challenging – especially when some of them have vested interests in keeping users on the non-feed Web.
Perhaps the tide is finally turning against complex web frameworks.
Wednesday session
Saying bye bye to the beach house to head back to Brighton.
Sitting out on the porch playing my mandolin on a sultry and steamy Saint Augustine night.
Reading The Shadow Of Perseus by Claire Heywood.
Feasting on fresh Florida shrimp, corn, and tomatoes. 🦐 🌽 🍅
Formation
Beach day
For many archivists, alarm bells are ringing. Across the world, they are scraping up defunct websites or at-risk data collections to save as much of our digital lives as possible. Others are working on ways to store that data in formats that will last hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.
The show itself was an unbelievable outpouring of energy and love. I couldn’t help but imagine if anyone in the audience had decided to go on a lark, not knowing anything about it. I would think they would have been pretty damn impressed. This wasn’t just a couple of nerds poking around at instruments (except me), these were some serious musicians giving it their all.
Contextual advertising works. Targeted advertising? Who knows!
Let’s see all that proof that 400+ requests for thirsty ass always-running JavaScript is just what we have to do to make advertising good.
These are great!!!
A library of CC-licensed photos.
Next time you’re tempted to use a generative “AI” tool to make an image for a slide deck, use this instead.
I’m sure my on-stage behaviour at Frostapalooza was total cringe, but I don’t care because I was having a great time!
Aw, man, this gets me in the feels!
Just over here sobbing while reading Jeremy’s recount of Frostapalooza.
I want to be a part of a frontend culture that accepts and promotes our responsibilities to others, rather than wallowing in self-centred “DX” puffery. In the hierarchy of priorities, users must come first.
Alex doesn’t pull his punches in this four-part truth-telling:
The React anti-pattern of hugely bloated single-page apps has to stop. And we can stop it.
Success or failure is in your hands, literally. Others in the equation may have authority, but you have power.
Begin to use that power to make noise. Refuse to go along with plans to build YAJSD (Yet Another JavaScript Disaster). Engineering leaders look to their senior engineers for trusted guidance about what technologies to adopt. When someone inevitably proposes the React rewrite, do not be silent. Do not let the bullshit arguments and nonsense justifications pass unchallenged. Make it clear to engineering leadership that this stuff is expensive and is absolutely not “standard”.
Jessica on the beach.
I bet some of the Florida locals are going to be very upset by this blatant propaganda appearing in their sky.
They’re good dogs, Brent.
So Frostapalooza happened on Saturday.
It was joyous!
It all started back in July of last year when I got an email from Brad:
Next summer I’m turning 40, and I’m going to use that milestone as an excuse to play a big concert with and for all of my friends and family. It’ll sorta be like The Last Waltz, but with way more web nerds involved.
Originally it was slated for July of 2024, which was kind of awkward for me because it would clash with Belfast Trad Fest but I said to mark me down as interested. Then when the date got moved to August of 2024, it became more doable. I knew that Jessica and I would be making a transatlantic trip at some point anyway to see her parents, so we could try to combine the two.
In fact, the tentative plans we had to travel to the States in April of 2024 for the total solar eclipse ended up getting scrapped in favour of Brad’s shindig. That’s right—we chose rock’n’roll over the cosmic ballet.
Over the course of the last year, things began to shape up. There were playlists. There were spreadsheets. Dot voting was involved.
Anyone with any experience of playing live music was getting nervous. It’s hard enough to rehearse and soundcheck for a four piece, but Brad was planning to have over 40 musicians taking part!
We did what we could from afar, choosing which songs to play on, recording our parts and sending them onto Brad. Meanwhile Brad was practicing like hell with the core band. With Brad on bass and his brother Ian on drums for the whole night, we knew that the rhythm section would be tight.
A few months ago we booked our flights. We’d fly into to Boston first to hang out with Ethan and Liz (it had been too long!), then head down to Pittsburgh for Frostapalooza before heading on to Florida to meet up with Jessica’s parents.
When we got to Pittsburgh, we immediately met up with Chris and together we headed over to Brad’s for a rehearsal. We’d end up spending a lot of time playing music with Chris over the next couple of days. I loved every minute of it.
The evening before Frostapalooza, Brad threw a party at his place. It was great to meet so many of the other musicians he’d roped into this.
Then it was time for the big day. We had a whole afternoon to soundcheck, but we needed it. Drums, a percussion station, a horn section …not to mention all the people coming and going on different songs. Fortunately the tech folks at the venue were fantastic and handled it all with aplomb.
We finished soundchecking around 5:30pm. Doors were at 7pm. Time to change into our rock’n’roll outfits and hang out backstage getting nervous and excited.
Right before showtime, Brad gave a heartfelt little speech.
Then the fun really began.
I wasn’t playing on the first few songs so I got to watch the audience’s reaction as they realised what was in store. Maybe they thought this would be a cute gathering of Brad and his buddies jamming through some stuff. What they got was an incredibly tight powerhouse of energy from a seriously awesome collection of musicians.
I had the honour of playing on five songs over the course of the night. I had an absolute blast! But to be honest, I had just as much fun being in the audience dancing my ass off.
Oh, I was playing mandolin. I probably should’ve mentioned that.
The first song I played on was The Weight by The Band. There was a real Last Waltz vibe as Brad’s extended family joined him on stage, along with me and and Chris.
I’ve loved this song since the first time I heard it. In the dot-voting rounds to figure out the set list, this was my super vote.
You know the way it starts with that single note tremelo on the guitar? I figured that would work on the mandolin. And I know how to tremelo.
Jessica was on bass. Jessi Hall was on vocals. It. Rocked.
I stayed on stage for Radiohead’s The National Anthem complete with horns, musical saw, and two basses played by Brad and Jessica absolutely killing it. I added a little texture over the singing with some picked notes on the mandolin.
Then it got truly epic. We played Wake Up by Arcade Fire. So. Much. Fun! Again, I laid down some tremelo over the rousing chorus. I’m sure no one could hear it but it didn’t matter. Everyone was just lifted along by the sheer scale of the thing.
That was supposed to be it for me. But during the rehearsal the day before, I played a little bit on Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain and Brad said, “You should do that!”
So I did. I think it worked. I certainly enjoyed it!
With that, my musical duties were done and I just danced and danced, singing along to everything.
At the end of the night, everyone got back on stage. It was a tight fit. We then attempted to sing Bohemian Rhapsody together. It was a recipe for disaster …but amazingly, it worked!
That could describe the whole evening. It shouldn’t have worked. It was far too ambitious. But not only did it work, it absolutely rocked!
What really stood out for me was how nice and kind everyone was. There was nary an ego to be found. I had never met most of these people before but we all came together and bonded over this shared creation. It was genuinely special.
Days later I’m still buzzing from it all. I’m so, so grateful to Brad and Melissa for pulling off this incredible feat, and for allowing me to be a part of it.
They’ve had a shitty few years. I know we all had a shitty time over the past few years, but the shit kept on coming for them:
And then in the middle of this traumatic medical emergency, our mentally-unstable neighbor across the street began accosting my family, flipping off our toddler and nanny, racially harassing my wife, and making violent threats. We fled our home for fear of our safety because he was out in the street exposing himself, shouting belligerence, and threatening violence.
After that, Brad started working with Project Healthy Minds. In fact, all the proceeds from Frostapalooza go to that organisation along with NextStep Pittsburgh.
Just think about that. Confronted with intimidation and racism, Brad and Melissa still managed to see the underlying systemic inequality, and work towards making things better for the person who drove them out of their home.
Good people, man. Good people.
I sincererly hope they got some catharsis from Frostapalooza. I can tell you that I felt frickin’ great after being part of an incredible event filled with joy and love and some of the best music I’ve ever heard.
There’s a write-up of Frostapalooza on CSS Tricks and Will Browar has posted his incredible photographs from the night—some seriously superb photography!
I love how into it everyone is here, both on stage and in the audience—just look at Jina rocking out!
Wow! The photos that Will took at Frostapalooza (and in the run-up) are absolutely fantastic!
He also shares the technical details for all you camera nerds.
On a Florida beach under Florida skies.
This was truly epic (and lots of fun!):
I can’t say I would have ever expected to see Jeremy Keith performing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song “Maps”, but then again, I don’t know what I expected to happen at Frostapalooza.
I’ll be here all week.
Checked in at Beachcomber. with Jessica
I wasn’t even supposed to play on this song but Brad said “do it!”
Going to Saint Augustine. brb
Right before #Frostapalooza kicked off, the team got a pep talk from coach Brad.
I had an absolutely amazing time dancing and playing at Frostapalooza — it was pure joy! 💖
Soundchecking for Frostapolooza!
Playing tunes and songs with @chriscoyier@front-end.social and @wordridden@sunny.garden
Reading Europe In Winter by Dave Hutchinson.
Going to Pittsburgh. brb
Wednesday session in Boston
Manicule
Checked in at Harvard Yard. Parkin the cah* in the Hahvahd Yahd (* butt) — with Jessica
Checked in at 3 Little Figs. Breakfast — with Jessica
Going to Boston. brb
This is an interesting thought from Scott: using Shadow DOM in HTML web components but only as a way of providing sort-of user-agent styles:
providing some default, low-specificity styles for our slotted light-dom HTML elements while allowing them to be easily overridden.
The human desire to connect with others is very profound, and the desire of technology companies to interject themselves even more into that desire—either by communicating on behalf of humans, or by pretending to be human—works in the opposite direction. These technologies don’t seem to be encouraging connection as much as commoditizing it.
Back in Brighton
Suka and Serena, my mother’s two good doggos.
Three great examples of HTML web components:
What I hope is that you now have the same sort of epiphany that I had when reading Jeremy Keith’s post: HTML Web Components are an HTML-first feature.
Dan and Sue travelled from Baltimore, Maryland to Baltimore, West Cork.
Baltimore beacon
Foliage
Woods and water
I met a friendly robin this morning.
Back in Cork, like
Jessica on Garinish island.
Exploring Glengarriff
Benjamín Labatut draws a line from the Vedas to George Boole and Claude Shannon onward to Geoffrey Hinton and Frank Herbert’s Butlerian Jihad.
In the coming years, as people armed with AI continue making the world faster, stranger, and more chaotic, we should do all we can to prevent these systems from giving more and more power to the few who can build them.
This is disgusting, if unsurprising: Google aren’t going to deprecate third-party cookies after all.
Make no mistake, Chrome is not a user agent. It is an agent for the behavioural advertising industry.
After the last decade, where platforms have emerged as a core constituent of the web on which many rely, it may feel like things cannot change. That the giants are so big that there is no other way. Yet, to give into this feeling – that things can’t change – is not necessary. It is the way it is is not true on the web. We can make change. It’s your web.
Sunday session in Cork
Going to Cork. brb
Reading House Of Odysseus by Claire North.
Thursday session
