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This Page is Designed to Last

jeffhuang.com

421–430 of 458 posts

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case just use sans-serif or a web-safe font and avoid the third-party dependency.

Here as we enter the 2020s, there are no longer any web safe fonts. Those 1990s Core Fonts for the Web (Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet, etc.) are no longer universal across all widely used platforms.

Yeah okay, but the initial suggestion (just specify "sans serif") still holds. Or really, if we're talking about a webpage to last, why do we even care about what font is being used? If you care enough about a font that the glyphs used are important for layout, then obviously you're going to need to include the font. If the specific look of the page is essential to the content conveyed, it seems likely to me you won't be using a standard font anyway.

For typical "the words matter more than how the words look" content...can someone explain to me why we care about including the font?

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#422
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Markdown is not a specification Not by that name... https://commonmark.org/

It is stil not a specification like restructuredText[1]. Also wikiMarkup (which really started this markdown) is different from GitHub markdown, which is different from other markdown editors. Also many sites use their own markdown versions. If you are in restructuredText world there is one specification and all implementation adhere to it, be it pandoc, sphinx, pelican, nikola. The beauty of it is that it has extens…

I don't know why markdown is so popular other than maybe "it was easy to get running" or "works for me".

It's better than "designed by a committee" standards, but it lacks elegance or maybe craftsmanship.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#423

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

Firefox actually purges history automatically. For instance, the oldest history I have on this browser right now is from January 2018. I found about this the hard way.

You can increase the retention period to centuries via about:config.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#424
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'd love to see an extreeeemely minimal tool which lets you drop some files in a folder and then create an index page that links to those." I use the tree command on BSD to do just that. It has the option of creating html output with a number of additional options. An example: tree -P *.txt -FC -H http://baseHREF -T 'Your Title' -o index.html

Oh wow thanks for sharing. I use tree all the time, but had no idea you could do this. baseHREF should be the full root domain, e.g. example.com?

Yeah. And play around with it. It's quite flexible. Color, CSS and other goodies. Takes me about 2 seconds to update my entire site...

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem has been solved a long time ago if you use Pinboard. https://pinboard.in/ Just pay the yearly subscription so pinboard can cache your bookmarks.

Until pinboard goes OOB

Pinboard is a profitable online equivalent to a mom and pop shop. It’s sustainable and its founder isn’t chasing growth at all costs. It also has a cult following, so OOB is highly unlikely.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#426
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Google Analytics works fine in PRC. Google Fonts also isn’t blocked but I recall it being hit-and-miss in terms of responsiveness when I was working on a website that targeted Chinese audience a few years ago. However, I just tried resolving fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com on a Chinese server of mine, and they both resolve to a couple of Beijing IP addresses belonging to AS24424 Beijing Gu Xiang I…

Not sure "working fine in PRC" is really something you can say about anything web related. I do occasional web dev from within China and had to eliminate external references to get manageable page load times. At least from where I work pulling in practically anything from outside the Great Firewall will have a high probability of killing page load time. Anything hosted by Google in particular will often have you star…

Yes, any additional domain you request to has a non-negligible chance of killing the entire connection. To GP, noticing that one request works once from a server (not a home or mobile connection) really means nothing. Every ISP has different and constantly changing failure modes.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here as we enter the 2020s, there are no longer any web safe fonts. Those 1990s Core Fonts for the Web (Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet, etc.) are no longer universal across all widely used platforms.

Yeah okay, but the initial suggestion (just specify "sans serif") still holds. Or really, if we're talking about a webpage to last, why do we even care about what font is being used? If you care enough about a font that the glyphs used are important for layout, then obviously you're going to need to include the font. If the specific look of the page is essential to the content conveyed, it seems likely to me you won'…

There is another thread in this discussion where we discuss this, pointing out that default fonts in browsers tend to be quite ugly.

See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21841011

There’s also layout issues caused when replacing a font with another font, unless the metrics are precisely duplicated. There’s a reason RedHat paid a lot of money to have Liberation Sans with the exact same metrics as Arial, Liberation Serif have the same metrics as Times New Roman, and Liberation Mono have the same metrics as Courier New.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if I even remembered I'd bookmarked something in the first place I had recently participated in a discussion on the problem of forgetting bookmarks[1]. Copying my workflow from there, 1. If the entire content should be easily viewed, then store via pocket extension. 2. If a partial content should be easily viewed i.e. some snippet with link to entire source, then store in notes (Apple). 3. If the content seem useful…

My solution for a small subset of the forgetting problem: I frequently see something and want to try it out the next time I want to do something else. So I emulate User Agent strings and append lots of "like [common thing I search for a lot]" to the bookmark. When I start typing into the search bar for those other things I'll be reminded of the bookmark. For example, since file.io is semi-deprecated I decided to try…

That was useful, can you add this to the original needgap thread I linked?

Disclaimer: needgap is a problem validation platform I built.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Stack Overflow guidelines have "solved" this problem in about the cleanest way currently possible: expect links to die, and include the relevant information in your answer. If the link still works when it gets clicked on that's a bonus, but it shouldn't need to be available for the content you're reading to be understandable.

And there's also the HTTP 300 codes if content has been moved.

When a website disappears completely, there is no web server to respond with HTTP 300.
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