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I miss the programmable web (2021)

matt-rickard.com

101–110 of 180 posts

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewed and hired many developers. Not once was the tech stack of their personal website, if they had one, ever brought up or considered.

i just will assume most hiring gatekeepers will make superficial judgements about the appearance of your portfolio work and many developers will do the same about your code. not everyone is willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

In most companies I worked for, there is no portfolio to show unless you want to violate the NDAs.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#102

I miss the "immediate web". Being able to work on simple things without feeling like they are useless, pointless or perceptibly outdated. Now it's install node, install git, install npm, install a gazillion packages, run localhost then hope everything works. Build command, clean command, eject commands, deploy command, pre processors, post processers, documentations full of so much jargon that i feel burnt out lookin…

I hate all that nonsense, so I don't use it.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#104
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sites can impose a Content Security Policy, that (among other things) can disable inline JavaScript. This makes it a real PITA to modify web sites with user CSS/JS. I am personally aligned with pro-CSP because it can greatly reduce the attack surface of web sites I host, and is quite effective and precise. Browser extensions can, and do, play around CSP. Bookmarklets has no overhead in the browser, because they are j…

I don't see how this could be truly secure if it's JS running on the client. There is nothing stopping a user from running a custom version of Chromium or otherwise that ignores CSPs... Maybe I'm not fully understanding what is being restricted here and where the code is being run.

I guess it's reducing the attack surface for your users, as you can't have a malicious userscript that would log your cc number or something

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#105
post #29
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t dead but with more and more build systems that obfuscate everything in the page, including CSS classes and IDs, it’s sometimes hard to do something really useful.

Would you mind giving me an example of something you've wanted to do that is really hard (or even nearly impossible) due to the these issues (so I have a standing concrete challenge case)?

As an example, I wanted to create a custom, more compact style sheet for JIRA (I don’t understand all those products with complex interfaces AND white space everywhere). I failed. It’s a PITA to write any selector and it wouldn’t survive the next build from the devs.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#106

I'm still happily using userChrome.css and userContent.css in Firefox to customize both its UI as well as a couple of sites I visit regularly. To do so, you need to enable toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets in about:config.

I use an extension like Stylus to sync these across browsers and devices

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#107
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok scrape data from manifold.markets

Does it change a lot? Because it's pretty easy as is... eg. % curl -s https://manifold.markets | htmlq '#__next > div > main > div.items-center.flex.flex-col > div > div.gap-8.flex.flex-col > ul > div > div > div > div.relative.flex-1.gap-3.pr-1.flex.flex-col > div.peer.absolute.-left-6.-top-4.-bottom-4.right-0.z-10 > a' will get you all the anchors for the stories on the home page, and from there it's easy to get an…

It changes quite often. Since tailwind is utility based and not semantic it will likely break within the week.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#108
post #22

I miss: bookmarklets and user scripts I use bookmarklets all the time. I can't imagine living without them. For example, this is how I read HN: https://twitter.com/marekgibney/status/1551483561621979136 The bookmarklet takes me to the latest HN post I have not seen. When I click it again, it takes me to the next I have not seen. As soon as I see a post I have seen before, I know I am up to date. I can't imagine readi…

This has me really confused. The example you shared in that tweet is very misformed code that I cannot get to run anywhere.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Instagram ads. Impossible to block through CSS now as the CSS classes are dynamically generated + it's even hard to pick out sponsored posts using .js too.

I am pretty sure that there is a team of engineers whose job is to office obfuscate ads on Instagram and Facebook.

Surely these people can find something more beneficial to society to work on, such as selling heroin to middle schoolers.

Re: I miss the programmable web (2021)

#110
post #22

I miss: bookmarklets and user scripts I use bookmarklets all the time. I can't imagine living without them. For example, this is how I read HN: https://twitter.com/marekgibney/status/1551483561621979136 The bookmarklet takes me to the latest HN post I have not seen. When I click it again, it takes me to the next I have not seen. As soon as I see a post I have seen before, I know I am up to date. I can't imagine readi…

  javascript:if (typeof e!=='undefined') e.style.background='#ccc';
  e=Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.age%20a:not(.s)')).sort().at(-1);
  e.style.background='#ff0';e.classList.add('s');
  e.scrollIntoView({behavior:"smooth",block:"center",});{}
Looks like the code got mangled in the Twitter post, in particular the curly braces at the end. And the line order, "e=" should be at the beginning logically.

  javascript:e=Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.age%20a:not(.s)')).sort().at(-1); if (typeof e!=='undefined') { e.style.background='#ccc'; e.style.background='#ff0'; e.classList.add('s'); e.scrollIntoView({behavior:"smooth",block:"center"}); }
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