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This Web of Ours, Revisited

ONE MONTH and 24 years ago, in “Where Have All the Designers Gone?” (my HTMHell design column for Adobe of March 20, 2000), I discussed the deepening rift between aesthetically focused web designers and those primarily concerned with creating good experiences online: More and more web designers seem less and less interested in web design. Over the past 18 months or so, many of the best…

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Don’t bring venture capital to a knife fight: why you can’t build another Apple with VC bucks.

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Touch me, babe

Cute and fun: a toggle switch with feelings. By Jon Kantner at CodePen, ℅ @codepo8@toot.cafe.

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Both Sides, No

There’s no situation so awful our news media can’t make it worse.

There’s no situation so awful our news media can’t make it worse. In a cowardly, doomed, and deeply misguided effort to appear “balanced” during an emergency that requires plain speaking, our news editors tie headlines into fantastic pretzels of spurious equivalence. In today’s edition of her subscriber-only newsletter, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tears into an especially egregious…

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For love of pixels

Sure, that tell you when you’re walking unsteadily and pocket computer phones that show you the closest pizzeria are swell, but were you around for ResEdit?

Sure, watches that tell you when you’re walking unsteadily and pocket computer phones that show you the closest pizzeria are swell, but were you around for ResEdit? That humble yet supremely capable Macintosh resource editing tool is what we used to design pixel art back in the day. (And what day was that? Come August, it will be 30 years since the final release of ResEdit 2.1.3.) Stroll with us…

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Akismet means never having to say you’re sorry

The wizards behind AI have been busy lately providing meaningful employment for digital nonpersons.

The wizards behind AI have been busy lately providing meaningful employment for digital nonpersons. One of the hottest jobs for non-humans is crafting and deploying website guestbook spam. This market’s on fire! If you thought the guestbook spam of yore was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The new, AI-assisted comment spam has improved keyword stuffing, fewer grammatical mistakes, and,…

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My Glamorous Life: Roman Holiday

While honeymooning in Rome, we spotted an Italian translation of my second book in the display window of a quaint old shop two blocks from the Colosseum. The ancient amphitheatre was our destination; we had been walking toward it excitedly, with greater and greater speed. But the bizarre sight of Designing With Web Standards in this strange location halted our progress. For my book, my name, my…

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The More Things Change… (or: What’s in a Job Title?)

What’s in a job title? @elly@front-end.social explains why good old “web design” is the best way to understand what she does—and maybe what you do, too. #webdesign #frontend #webstandards #design #stateoftheweb

I’m not a “[full-stack] developer,” regardless of what my last job title says. I’m not even a front-end developer, thanks to the JavaScript–industrial complex. I’m a front-of-the-front-end developer, but that’s too long. So, I’m a web designer. And I also specialise in accessibility, design systems, and design. …Why do I think that this is the best title? Here’s why. I’m designing for the…

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Our Lady of Perpetual Profit

Corporations that take investors make an impossible promise to increase profits forever. Accordingly, they hire MBAs whose role is to juggle numbers to create ongoing, short-term profit. This juggling is frequently labeled “leadership.” The juggling methods—abusing data, diminishing the primacy of the customer relationship, repeating what worked last year as if the demand for it will never end,…

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The Valley of Hidden Sorrows

To all who struggle in these times, be kind to others and gentle with yourself.

I have this friend. A mountain of unexpected medical debt buried his family at the start of last year. At the very same time, unfortunately, the closing of his business stuck him with six figures of personal debt. Liquidating a retirement account and maxing out credit cards bought him short-term breathing room, sure. Mostly, though, it merely added interest charges and tax penalties to what he…

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AI Roundup: The Bad, the Ugly, and the Pretty Cool

Useful links to pieces of the web that make differing and complementary sense of the threat and promise of AI.

Ay, ay, AI! Hype, fear, and strongly voiced opinions—the traditional currency of internet conversation—are unequal to this moment, where the Fate of Everything™ dangles from a single gossamer thread. So here are four useful links to pieces of the web that make differing and complementary sense of the threat and promise of AI. Of course AI is a bubble. It has all the hallmarks of a classic tech…

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CAPTCHA excludes disabled web users

The W3C explains how CAPTCHA excludes disabled users, and suggests alternatives which may be kinder and more reliable. Tip o’ the beanie to Adrian Roselli.

What’s widely used, no longer particularly effective, and makes web content inaccessible to many people with disabilities? It’s our old friend CAPTCHA! In a group note dated 16 December 2021, the W3C explains how CAPTCHA excludes disabled users, and suggests alternatives which may be kinder and more reliable: Various approaches have been employed over many years to distinguish human users of web…

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Heal an ailing web

On the occasion of the web’s 35th anniversary, its inventor had this to say: 5 years ago, when the web turned 30, I called out some of the dysfunction caused by the web being dominated by the self-interest of several corporations that have eroded the web’s values and led to breakdown and harm. Now, 5 years on as we arrive at the Web’s 35th Birthday, the rapid advancement of AI has exacerbated…

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Death of a father

How a real-life tragedy scuttled the hopes of a Samuel L. Jackson film.

“187” is a gorgeously lensed, strongly acted Samuel L. Jackson thriller, notable for its sun-dazzled Los Angeles setting, complex morality, and breakthrough trip-hop soundtrack. It would likely have been widely discussed at the time of its release, and might still be remembered, like the not thematically dissimilar “Falling Down”—filmed in the same city and released by the same studio a few years…

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Open-source moderation

Bluesky introduces open-source, collaborative moderation for federated social media websites: Bluesky was created to put users and communities in control of their social spaces online. The first generation of social media platforms connected the world, but ended up consolidating power in the hands of a few corporations and their leaders. Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on…

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New music from the beyond

Happy heavenly birthday to my dear, deceased, devil brother Pete Zeldman. Today, 5 March 2024, to celebrate Pete’s life… Lost in Sound Records is releasing an album of solo drums, Enigma, which will keep rhythmic enthusiasts and scholars busy for…well, forever. And ALSO 2.5D, his crazy interesting NYC rock band… [has released] its first single. —Cindy Shapiro Hear that single, written by Pete,…

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“Where the people are”

It’s nearly twenty years ago, now, children. Facebook had only recently burst the bounds of Harvard Yard. Twitter had just slipped the bonds of the digital underground. But web geeks like me still saw “social media” as a continuation of the older digital networks, protocols, listservs, and discussion forums we’d come up using, and not as the profound disruption that, partnered with smartphones…