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The online home of Jeremy Keith, an author and web developer living and working in Brighton, England.
IndieWeb
theverge.com/press-room/617654/internet-community-future-research
Good news for the fediverse, the indie web, and community sites like The Session:
People are abandoning massive platforms in favor of tight-knit groups where trust and shared values flourish and content is at the core. The future of community building is in going back to the basics.
Research by the Sea was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in yeeeeeears. So many good, useful, inspiring, thoughtful, provocative talks. Much more about ethics and power and possibility than I’d expected. None of the ‘utopian bullshit’ you usually get at a product or digital conference, to quote one of the speakers!
I miss being excited by technology. I wish I could see a way out of the endless hype cycles that continue to elicit little more than cynicism from me. The version of technology that we’re mostly being sold today has almost nothing to do with improving lives, but instead stuffing the pockets of those who already need for nothing. It’s not making us smarter. It’s not helping heal a damaged planet. It’s not making us happier or more generous towards each other. And it’s entrenched in everything — meaning a momentous challenge to re-wire or meticulously disconnect. I’m slowly finding my own ways of breaking free to regain a sense of self and purpose.
This is a great little helper in understanding anchor positioning in CSS.
Google Fonts only lets you download .ttf files meaning that if you want to self-host your fonts (and you should), you have to first convert them to .woff2 files.
Luckily this tool has been online for over a decade, doing what Google Fonts should be doing by default.
Thursday session
The stage is set for #ResearchByTheSea
Getting ready to host Research By The Sea tomorrow:
This is very nice HTML web component by Miriam, progressively enhancing an ordered list of audio elements.
This describes how I like to work too.
Rich suggests another reason why the UX of websites on mobile is so shit these days:
The path to installing a native app is well trodden. We search the App Store (or ironically follow a link from a website), hit ‘Get’ and the app is downloaded to our phone’s home screen, ready to use any time with a simple tap.
A PWA can also live on your home screen, nicely indistinguishable from a native app. But the journey to getting a PWA – or indeed any web app – onto your home screen remains convoluted to say the least. This is the lack of equivalence I’m driving at. I wonder if the mobile web experience would suck as badly if web apps could be installed just as easily as native apps?
If you like the prospect of an old man ranting at clouds, this is for you.
I see the personal website as being an antidote to the corporate, centralised web. Yeah, sure, it’s probably hosted on someone else’s computer – but it’s a piece of the web that belongs to you. If your host goes down, you can just move it somewhere else, because it’s just HTML.
Sure, it’s not going to fix democracy, or topple the online pillars of capitalism; but it’s making a political statement nonetheless. It says “I want to carve my own space on the web, away from the corporations”. I think this is a radical act. It was when I originally said this in 2022, and I mean it even more today.
Reading Matrix by Lauren Groff.
You can think of flying to Mars like one of those art films where the director has to shoot the movie in a single take. Even if no scene is especially challenging, the requirement that everything go right sequentially, with no way to pause or reshoot, means that even small risks become unacceptable in the aggregate.
joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2025/02/generative-ai-use-and-human-agency.html
You do not have to use generative AI.
AI itself cannot be held to account.
If you use AI, you are the one who is accountable for whatever you produce with it.
There are contexts in which it is immoral to use generative AI.
Correcting or fact checking generative AI may take longer than just doing a task yourself, or with conventional AI tools.
You do not have to use generative AI.
Thursday session
Wednesday session
A fun new font from Jason:
Citywide is a sans serif family inspired by mid-1900s bus and train destination roll signs.
Some good—if overlong—writing advice.
- Focus on what matters to readers
- Be welcoming to everyone
- Swap formal words for normal ones
- When we have to say sorry, say it sincerely
- Watch out for jargon
- Avoid ambiguity: write in the active voice
- Use vivid words & delightful wordplay
- Make references most people would understand
- Avoid empty adjectives & marketing cliches
- Make people feel they’re in on the joke – don’t punch down
- Add a pinch of humour, not a dollop
- Smart asides, not cheap puns and cliches
- Be self-assured, but never arrogant
A handy one-pager for front-end web developers:
Here are ways to keep track of what you can use, of what’s new in web browsers, and ways you can influence the development of the platform by making your voice heard.
You can still have a home. A place to hang up your jacket, or park your shoes. A place where you can breathe out. A place where you can hear yourself think critically. A place you might share with loved ones who you can give to, and receive from.
Now, more than ever, it’s critical to own your data. Really own it. Like, on your hard drive and hosted on your website.
Is taking control of your content less convenient? Yeah–of course. That’s how we got in this mess to begin with. It can be a downright pain in the ass. But it’s your pain in the ass. And that’s the point.
Monday session
