Justified Text: Better Than Expected? – Cloud Four
Some interesting experiments in web typography here.
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What I’ve learned about writing AI apps so far | Seldo.com
LLMs are good at transforming text into less text
Laurie is really onto something with this:
This is the biggest and most fundamental thing about LLMs, and a great rule of thumb for what’s going to be an effective LLM application. Is what you’re doing taking a large amount of text and asking the LLM to convert it into a smaller amount of text? Then it’s probably going to be great at it. If you’re asking it to convert into a roughly equal amount of text it will be so-so. If you’re asking it to create more text than you gave it, forget about it.
Depending how much of the hype around AI you’ve taken on board, the idea that they “take text and turn it into less text” might seem gigantic back-pedal away from previous claims of what AI can do. But taking text and turning it into less text is still an enormous field of endeavour, and a huge market. It’s still very exciting, all the more exciting because it’s got clear boundaries and isn’t hype-driven over-reaching, or dependent on LLMs overnight becoming way better than they currently are.
HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me | WIRED
When haters deny HTML’s status as a programming language, they’re showing they don’t understand what a language really is. Language is not instructing an interlocutor what to do in a way that leaves no room for other interpretations; it is better and richer than that. Like human language, HTML is conversational. It is remarkably adept at adapting to context. It can take a different shape on any machine, from a desktop browser or an e-reader screen to a mobile app or a screen reader for the blind (so long as that device is built to present hypertext).
Hell, yeah!
Ultimately, even as HTML has become the province of professionals, it cannot be gatekept. This is what makes so many programmers so anxious about the web, and sometimes pathetically desperate to maintain the all-too-real walls they’ve erected between software engineers and web developers.
Hell, yeeeeaaaaahhh!!!
What other programmers might say dismissively is something HTML lovers embrace: Anyone can do it. Whether we’re using complex frameworks or very simple tools, HTML’s promise is that we can build, make, code, and do anything we want.
CCC | Ban tracking and personalised advertising
A ban on tracking-based personalised advertising will provide an incentive to reinforce sustainable alternative models and, in fact, will be a condition for making them viable. The advertising industry already has sustainable, proven concepts for effective online advertising that do not require targeted tracking and personalisation (e.g. contextual advertising).
Daring Fireball: Kottke on the Art and Power of Hypertextual Writing
Hypertext links are an information-density multiplier.
The way I’ve long thought about it is that traditional writing — like for print — feels two-dimensional. Writing for the web adds a third dimension. It’s not an equal dimension, though. It doesn’t turn writing from a flat plane into a full three-dimensional cube. It’s still primarily about the same two dimensions as old-fashioned writing. What hypertext links provide is an extra layer of depth. Just the fact that the links are there — even if you, the reader, don’t follow them — makes a sentence read slightly differently. It adds meaning in a way that is unique to the web as a medium for prose.
Long live hypertext! – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden
This is how I write:
As an online writer, my philosophy is link maximalism; links add another layer to my writing, whether I’m linking to an expansion of a particular idea or another person’s take, providing evidence or citation, or making a joke by juxtaposing text and target. Links reveal personality as much as the text. Linking allows us to stretch our ideas, embedding complexity, acknowledging ambiguity, holding contradictions.
Coming home | A Working Library
While one of the reasons oft declared for using POSSE is the ability to own your content, I’m less interested in ownership than I am in context. Writing on my own site has very different affordances: I’m not typing into a little box, but writing in a text file. I’m not surrounded by other people’s thinking, but located within my own body of work. As I played with setting this up, I could immediately feel how that would change the kinds of things I would say, and it felt good. Really good. Like putting on a favorite t-shirt, or coming home to my solid, quiet house after a long time away.
Mandy’s writing positively soars and sings in this beautiful piece!
There are two kinds of advertising – Chris Coyier
Contextual advertising works. Targeted advertising? Who knows!
Let’s see all that proof that 400+ requests for thirsty ass always-running JavaScript is just what we have to do to make advertising good.
Write Alt Text Like You’re Talking To A Friend – Cloud Four
This is good advice:
Write alternative text as if you’re describing the image to a friend.
a view source web
As a self-initiated learner, being able to view source brought to mind the experience of a slow walk through someone else’s map.
This ability to “observe” software makes HTML special to work with.
Can you feel the rhythm‽ · 13 March 2024
Adam makes a very good point here: the term “vertical rhythm” is quite chauvanistic, unconciously defaulting to top-to-bottom writing modes; the term “logical rhythm” is more universal (and scalable).
The Subversive Hyperlink - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Subvert the status quo. Own a website. Make and share links.
Beyond the Frame | Untangling Non-Linearity
A fascinating look at the connections between hypertext and film editing. I’m a sucker for any article that cites both Ted Nelson and Walter Murch.
How independent writers are turning to AI
I missed this article when it was first published, but I have to say this is some truly web-native art direction: bravo!
Utopia WCAG warnings | Trys Mudford
Wouldn’t it be great if all web tools gave warnings like this?
As you generate and tweak your type scale, Utopia will now warn you if any steps fail WCAG SC 1.4.4, and tell you between which viewports the problem lies.
CSS Text balancing with text-wrap:balance - Ahmad Shadeed
Ahmad runs through some of the scenarios where text-wrap: balance could be handy.
Even though it’s not well-supported yet in browsers, there’s no reason not to start adding it to sites now; it’s classic progressive enhancement.
The perfect link - The A11Y Collective
How do we write, design, and code a link that works for everyone on every device? Let’s dive into the world of creating the perfect link, without making a pig’s breakfast of it.
Preventing too-short final lines of blocks | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
Check out the demo that Rich has put together to go with Amelia’s proposed syntax.
www91.pdf
This is the flyer that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau distributed at the Hypertext 91 Conference—the one where their submission was infamously rejected.
The WWW project merges the techniques of information rerieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.
The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. lt aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.
An end to typographic widows on the web | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
Rich explains what text-wrap:balance does …and what it doesn’t.