theAdhocracy
How should you define where your support starts and finishes? When can you reasonably use a new CSS feature or browser API? Despite my general grumpiness around the new Baseline metrics, Richard (and …
A look at why ARIA should be treated like any other web …
There's a lot I like about the IndieWeb community, but one of the best elements is a constant determination to strive to be better. Their recent adoption of an official "Life Happens" policy …
CSS? Fonts? Italics? Sidebars? What witchcraft is this? Is this not theAdhocracy, the home of plain HTML and nothing more (despite the clear problems associated with that)? Well: yes! But at …
How do you decide which use cases you should support and which you shouldn't? This question has been hovering in the back of my mind for quite a while now, because it seems to be increasingly …
Looking back over what I've previously written about Last.fm is a little, well, shameful. Since as long ago as July 2015 I've been noting how the service has a large void: analog music. I love having …
I am an …
Yes, I am one of those irritating people that have decided to resurrect an audio format that, by all rights, should be long extinct. And, further yes, I'm also now going to complain about my …
I received an Amazon Echo for my birthday. I honestly wasn't expecting to, so it was a really fun and exciting surprise to unwrap; although, I have to admit that my initial reaction was "What am I …
Khoi Vinh recently linked out to an article by Amanda Shendruk looking at the data behind female inclusion in comic books. As both Khoi and Amanda state, it should come as no surprise that the …
There are a lot of new web technologies emerging at the moment which really feel like we're entering a new era. Over the last decade, the likes of HTML5, ES6+, flexbox etc. have brought the web, and …
What's this, a new article? Containing a new Flickr album? Well, who would have …
I recently had need to embed a Flickr album, as I've done many times before. When I published the article, however, the album was broken and only showed a single image. Odd, sure, but I figured I had …
An attempted experiment to replicate the blog layout of ilovetypography.com, which uses floats to great effect, with more modern CSS Grid and Flex techniques. Turned out to not be quite so simple, but taught me a lot about the benefits and limitations of CSS Grid.
Migrating assets to a new CMS can be a complete pain, but working out which files go with each page or article on a website doesn't have to be a nightmare if you start with a solid foundation. For me, that means tightly coupling my folder structure on the server with my content structure on the website, a workflow that Craft is particularly nifty at automating.
Having just got back from Sidmouth Folk Festival, I wanted to jot down some of my thoughts about the eleven artists we managed to see whilst the music was still firmly playing in my ears. From the traditional to the modern "nu-folk", we certainly had a great spread of styles, instruments and traditions. Some might even say it was folk'ing awesome!
The GOV.UK UX and design team are fascinating. Every time I've had to use the website I've found it a breeze, which is an enormous achievement on their behalf. Better yet, they're incredibly …
Jonas has put together a useful overview of why the "new" Context API in React is probably a better option than Redux for many simple use cases, as well as step-by-step instructions on how to set up …
I mostly use my iPad for watching YouTube. So what do I do now that Google has locked my device out of the YouTube app because it's too old? Why is it possible for a company to effectively remove features from my device that worked yesterday?
Having trouble with Windows 10 and wallpaper slideshows? There's an app for that... actually, quite a few, they're just hard to find, so I curated a few that I've stumbled across for you.
In which I begin by questioning why microformats are defined on the class attribute, instead of somewhere more bespoke, and end up concluding that I don't understand what microformats are actually for... and I'm not sure anyone else does, either.
Notes from the fully remote React Summit 2020 (or at least the talks I tuned in for). Lots covered, from static-site generators and the Jamstack through to React state management and accessibility. What a fun day!
Well, it only took about a week of dazed puzzling, data tables, and tearing my hair out in clumps, but I think I may finally have a rough content taxonomy for theAdhocracy. A rough first version, that is. Let me explain...
Notes from my second fully remote conference, this time Sparkbox's UnConference. Being able to freely access talks from the US is a rare bonus of everything going on right now, and this did not disappoint. Musical cameos, great talks on UX, accessibility, design systems, and amazing speakers. Great event (despite the time difference).
An interesting thought experiment from Chris: if a client asked you to build a website that could last a minimum of 10 years, what would you do? Lots of influential people in his answers, but I'm …
A great review of the differences and similarities between universal design, inclusive design, and plain old accessibility, from one of the originators of universal design within the web community …
I love Heydon's breakdown of why "accessible" =/= "good". To paraphrase: accessibility is about removing barriers that would prevent people from using your site, but if the content is crap or the …
A detailed overview of the various methods available to locally store website or web app data. Overall, the recommendation …
An interesting read that covers some of the basic terminologies of typesetting, as well as the technicalities of how browsers actually interpret the line-height value. Hint: it's not what you'd …
Notes from the 2020 Jamstack Conf. Some interesting dives in the Jamstack community and various applications of Jamstack technologies, with tweet threads as usual.