Testing out iA Writer for my notes. I had been using Craft, which is pretty nice, but a release a few weeks ago broke the interactivity of the scrollbar, which, unfortunately, is an a11y showstopper for me.
I’ve been using iA Writer for years for writing, but never for my notes collection. So far, so good!
I might return to Craft if they fix this issue soon, tho. Great team over there doing cool stuff.
(Yes I know about Obsidian and no I can’t use it either because of a11y reasons.)
For literally no reason The Hollies’ Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress popped in my head and made itself at home.
How do web-based desktop apps (eg, Slack, Discord) perform compared to fully native desktop apps in terms of screen readers?
Did you hear the bard’s new ditty about killing that undead wizard?
“I got 99 problems but a lich ain’t one.”
What’s your favorite NASA logo?
Remember kids, cool URIs don't change! https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html
For the last two days at work, I’ve been able to:
Breath of fresh air, let me tell you.
I keep seeing a lot of posts about @eleventy so I just want to throw mine out there. I made this website for listening to synthwave mixes from YouTube.
One cool thing about Eleventy is that it can generate pages from API data, which is exactly what mine does.
I wrote some thoughts down about CSS micro-frameworks and classless CSS themes. https://blakewatson.com/journal/surveying-the-landscape-of-css-micro-frameworks/
Anybody have any micro CSS frameworks they like? These are a sort of step up in capability from classless themes, but are smaller than something like Bootstrap.
A few examples I know of:
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Writing about classless CSS themes.
If the new yellow iPhone color isn't called easy peasy lemon squeezy then Apple is just wasting everyone’s time.
Speaking of classless CSS stylesheets, I should of included a link to the OG collection from the W3C. https://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/
I've been trying to figure out what it is I love about these classless (or even low-class) CSS “frameworks,” but I still can't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, here are some of my favorites so far. Please send me yours if you have any.
I would love to give Obsidian a real try but there is a very obscure bug that prevents me from using many of the fancy web-based editors.
For some reason, when using certain web based editors (including Slack and Discord), the macOS Accessibility Keyboard completely stops offering word prediction, leaving me to click one letter at a time, with no completion support.
I suspect it has to do something with contenteditable because the problem doesn't occur in regular inputs.
If AI ever figures out how to create believable hands in images, that's the beginning of the end for us.
Every now and again I come across a web article written in a beautiful serif font.
“Ooh, who are you?” I mumble under my breath.
I inspect it in devtools only to find out it’s Georgia.
Gets me every time.
You can shame me for unsubscribing from your marketing spam, but you can’t win. With each opt-out I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
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Testing status.log app’s Mastodon connection.
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I am thinking it’s a sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images and when we kiss they perfectly align.
What site generators do people like for user guides and documentation?
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I made an old man rant on social.lol about scrollbars and it became my most popular social media post ever. Gives me warm fuzzies that so many others care about this humble-yet-powerful UI control.
Ok so I'm watching Babylon 5 now and it's all @ghoulpus’s fault.
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Upgraded all of my internet gear down to the ethernet cables. Hopefully this finally solves the terrible coverage in my house. But why do these fancy routers need to look like alien tech from sci-fi?
I had scrollbars on the brain and I’m trying to write more, so here are some thoughts about the mighty scrollbar as a slowly dying UI control. #WebDev #a11y #ui #design
https://blakewatson.com/journal/neglecting-the-scrollbar-a-costly-trend-in-ui-design/
Anyone who uses or knows about screen readers… do they support scrollbars decently? Do they announce anything about length of the page or your current location on a page?
Just curious if the visual feedback scrollbars offer is represented by screen readers.
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The opening keyboard synths on Everything In Its Right Place. Bliss I tell you.
ChatGPT just wrote me a beautiful short post about the merits of the scrollbar as a UI control. Guess I’ll toss it and write a rambly-yet-passionate one instead. 😓
I keep saying this but… UI developers, please remember that the scrollbar isn’t only a visual indicator but a draggable, interactive control.
Don’t hide it with no easy way to reveal it. And please don’t make it so thin that it’s unduly difficult to click (yes some ppl use scrollbars this way).
Don’t assume a scroll wheel/ball/gesture is 100% available or accessible to the user.
How many frontend engineers does it take to make an icon link in Vuetify? Turns out it’s 5.