Via Hacker News, this Chrome for Developers post dives into browser colors beyond RGB.
Elsewhere
Jason Fried again, with an insight into Apple’s new Vision Pro that one important value proposition is recording:
What I think is super interesting about the Apple Vision Pro is the potential to be able to literally see through someone else’s eyes. Not just see their field of vision — you can get at that with head or eyeglass mounted cameras — but to actually see where they’re looking. To know what they’re focused on. To lock in with them. To see how they see. To watch them look from their point of view. Standing in someone’s shoes is one thing, but even if you could do that, you’d still be looking through your own eyes. But to literally see as they’d see from someone else’s point-of-view perspective feels groundbreaking. If I was making an app for this, I’d call it “See With”.
For the past few months I’ve retreated from working on a software product to, well, for a month after October 7th I didn’t seem to get much work done, then I was working on software systems for clients. Now dipping my toe back into RSSDeck, the biggest edifice I’ve ever created, I’m inspired by this short piece by Jason Fried, “To Make”:
I’ve consulted. I’ve done client work. I’ve advised. I’ve served on boards. I’ve invested. I’ve written books. I’ve spoken on the circuit. I’ve blogged for years. I have to say, I’ve found no greater professional joy than working with a tight group of people to ship and support our own products.
Jakob Nielsen has written a series of articles (8 so far) on UX in the age of AI. They are:
- AI Is First New UI Paradigm in 60 Years
- AI Vastly Improves Productivity for Business Users and Reduces Skill Gaps
- AI vs. Metaverse: Which Is the 5th Generation UI?
- UX Needs a Sense of Urgency About AI
- Prompt-Driven AI UX Hurts Usability
- ChatGPT Does Almost as Well as Human UX Researchers in a Case Study of Thematic Analysis
- How Much UX Do You Need for AI Projects?
- “Prompt Engineering” Showcases Poor Usability of Current Generative AI
David Pogue on Apple’s VisionPro:
Its development was supposedly insanely expensive, internally contentious, and repeatedly delayed. But the result is so advanced and polished, it makes Meta’s VR headsets look like Blackberries.
My take on VisionPro: Tim Cook knew that the iPhone is near perfect for what it is, and Apple needs a whole new level of difficult to keep pushing the envelope technologically. Maybe I’m getting carried away, but I’ve just realized how many of my website’s categories this post is relevant to — a lot!
In “What’s your problem with Tailwind?” Chris Ferdinandi of Go Make Things articulates and illustrates why I’ve instinctively shied away from CSS frameworks:
It is faster during the prototyping phase… And then there inevitably comes a time where I need to update the style. Now, instead of just making a single change on a single class in a CSS file, I make a dozen little changes across numerous HTML elements scattered across many pages.
Basically, the styling code ends up being in the HTML, where it does not belong, rather than in the CSS, where it does.
At Why Svelte?, the homepage states “CSS is component-scoped by default” — the “by default” being the compliment vice pays to virtue. Because at the Github discussion on this issue (Ability to disable css scope across entire application #4764), Svelte Core Member/Maintainer @Conduitry, 2nd in commits only to founder Rich Harris, writes:
In general, using global CSS everywhere is something we want to steer people away from, and doesn’t feel like something we want to natively make easy or tacitly endorse.
The “C” in “CSS” stands for “cascading” yet the purpose of scoping CSS in components is to neuter that cascade. For the poster of this issue, Svelte’s stance was a dealbreaker, as it would be for me too. Scoped CSS components are the wussy option, which is fine and in many cases perhaps more viable, but the wussy option they should remain.
Interesting, seeing Ars Technica’s slant on Twitter’s handling of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman because, like most tech blogs, they lean establishment/woke, and I’d expect some pushback in the comments. But instead the comments are far more supportive of the movement (I’m trying to find a term to speak of it without speaking against it, but it objects to even being termed) than is the piece itself, and quite a few condemn the author and the publication for irresponsibly posting a link to the film. One gem by mikesmith (8y, 3,207 comments):
The next time a right-wing weirdo confidently declares that the definition of “woman” is inexorably linked to their genitalia ask them how many genitals they’ve personally inspected to be sure about it since they’re so confident.
What a mindblowing, humbling project: infinitemac.org — every Mac system since January 24th, 1984, in the browser!
Via Paul Graham, who chose Gerald Ford’s portrait as his favorite, “every american president, but they’re all cool and they all sport a mullet” by Cam Harless.
Process
Architecture
Before building your site or system, plans are required for both the back and front ends.
Installation & configuration
As well as smarts, what really makes a successful implementation likely is experience.
Recently
Introducing version 3 of painter Juan Carlos Bronstein’s site
This one was a labor of love wherein the background remains dark, the panther pink.
products
eeMindBody (Free)
MindBody is a web-based management system widely used by yoga studios. Using MindBody's SOAP-based API, eeMindBody provides an easy way for a studio's ExpressionEngine web site to access its MindBody data.
External SAEF (Free)
Insert a row into any MySQL database table using a form on an ExpressionEngine page.
Tied Entries (Free)
An ExpressionEngine plugin to access content entries further than a single relationship away.
Debugging
The plugin provides two approaches to debugging.
One is to use the show_xml= parameter, setting it to "y" or "yes". This displays the XML request and response instead of what appears between the eemindbody opening and closing tags. The show_xml="y" option should help if you are receiving data but it isn't quite what you expect, or for a quick peek/reminder of the data fields available.
The second approach is to use EE's template debugging log. If there are any errors then the plugin displays the text "eemindbody" in bold followed by an explanation. If the call to MindBody failed, due to say a credentials or network error, then these SoapFault and Exception errors are displayed with accompanying messages. If the call to MindBody succeeds but the data returned is bad, ie, if the SOAP Response field "Status" does not have a value of "Success", then the Status and accompanying message is displayed.