Useful resources and reassuring commentary

Also Medium's design is nice and friendly to those of us whose eyes are giving up in protest after years of looking at too-small text on glowing screens.

Colorme

I absolutely do not need this, but ... direct manipulation!

Okay, idea: have a javascript widget you can insert on article pages on your blog. This widget collects basic tracking data, offers the ability to follow the author, and depending on how the author configures it can do a few other things: display related articles the user might want to read, let users fav articles, and let users comment on articles (using Twitter OAuth, maybe with Medium's highlighting UI.)

Basically it's Medium for the decentralized web, or an up-to-date version of webrings. To replicate Medium's success there would have to be editorial judgment applied to who can join the network, but it would be interesting to have an "unlimited class" version of the widget where the only control exercised is what's necessary to avoid malicious activity (easier said than done, I know.)

If you have all this stuff you can create a site to serve as a front door, or several front doors for different topics. You can also create composite RSS streams, a social layer (mention other users in comments, or even in the main body of an article - the crawler could look for twitter handles or links to in-network sites in article text.) Oh, and you're well-placed to create a boutique ad network, assuming you sign up the right people.

The tracking data would be anonymized, of course, despite the impact on ad revenue. I want to make the tracking data fully public, as well, to emphasize how non-creepy it is.

Like Medium, it could turn into a drug if the traffic angle works out, but that would be a good problem to have. And you can drop out any time, the only thing you lose is the comment history (and the service could offer an export feature for that.)

Someone's gotta have tried this, right?

Google Fonts combinations
more at Beautiful fonts

some net.art for you: boxes

Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword

Tagent: the concept of a hyperlink is overloaded. It seems weird that by default links to completely different domains are represented the same way as links to a paragraph on the current page.

"... if it takes you more than 5 seconds to think of an appropriate icon ..." then don't rely on an icon there. Nielsen/Norman on icon usability.

I want to create a timeline with Timeline by Verite.

• Grid v1 (from 2014 - five years later, yes, time for a refresh)
• A List Apart: Fluid Grids: this place could use some freshening up, don't you think?
• Streamlined, Vol. 1: psherburne mix
• 'Moving Out of Poverty': outstanding new mega-study from the World Bank
• Musicophilia: amazing music blog by one of the world's most accomplished music geeks, with an outstanding knowledge of post-punk. Many, many mixes.
• Ushahidi: African-born FOSS crisis info crowdsourcing tool

All the clarity and rigor you want from a basic reference source. Five stars.

Read the whole thing though.

Don't ask why I need these, but thank god.

Rules are more useful than guidelines, if they're correct. (And I think these are correct, or at least I'm not badass enough to be breaking them.)

The only useful-looking trick in this list of "53 css techniques you can't live without".

Six Apart gets it. A lot of companies would try to unify TypePad/LiveJournal/Vox to serve nebulous branding objectives. 6A recognizes they're overlapping but separate products that need distinct identities.

Anyway, Vox might be cool. I'm sick of crappy, walled-off social networking sites.

FINALLY A GOOD DHTML OUTLINER.

With collaborative nonsense.

I'm never, ever going to use this, but that's some crazy shit.

• What needs to happen for flat cats

• Making local filesystem blog integration work

• desirable features for that information sharing app i'm going to write someday

• ib - make a list of all the places that would need to change for a more automated fields/serialization solution - including re-writing old entries when adding / removing fields - then, add a second timestamp (minor revision)

• rss feed of comments on ib

• when logged in, display private categories
• at end of category list, display "uncategorized" link
• here's an idea about how list UI could work: mouseover near list item bullet, bullet is highlighted and horizontal box pops up, first line excerpt from text, below, buttons: delete, move to top of doc, top of section, bottom of section, mark as done, then a button for each _Section_ (move to that section - maybe left side prepends and right side appends?)
• just switch to Markdown - that or make _bold_ and *italics* work
• switch to flat tagging structure, including, yes, private tags
• email pair support - config apache to include cookie info in logfile?

• i want a two-pane AJAX interface, like Yojimbo, with tags on the left and a list of entries on the right
  • should be able to tag tags, so on the left you have the tag you're looking at, a list of tags that are tagged with it, and (maybe) a list of things it's tagged with
  • left pane: browse mode (see above), list: by # entries, by mod date...

• smarttext->html happens in javascript _only_. page loads with hidden textarea(s) with entry text, then adds entry html to the DOM tree
  • incidentally, add in-page editing to this, and you're close to a situation where every entry is a self-contained file (see TiwyWiki) - add Groove and you now have an offline-capable wiki (assuming the relative links will find their way back to the docs stored in Groove)
• debug expand/collapse on IE
• expand/collapse +/- bullet images
• "views": on a per-entry basis, be able to choose a "view" - module used for editing/viewing, e.g. to-do list view with clicky UI shit and shit
• microcontent-type display
• rate entries: how? slider? stars? hmmm
• checkbox: "this is a category"
  • what happens to child entries/categories if parent is no longer a category?
    • they just get moved up the hierarchy (ie, they get their former parent's categories)
  • what if a category entry is private?
    • check vip cookie, if yes, display in italics wherever categories are listed, if no don't display
  • what needs to happen for this to occur?
    • add checkbox / entry field
    • change get_categories()
    • display stuff as "category (parent 1, parent 2, ...)"

• get rid of globals

• feed builder isn't stripping tags right - leaves alt text from images

• passwordless editing
• every entry has a "last major modified" date and a "last modified" date
• then, implement some sort of version control system: view old versions of an entry, rollback to a version.
• THEN in-place editing (which auto-saves, with no cancel button?)

• cron job on imac to backup ib data code via ftp

• mobile - cookieless login, links to next actions by project (based on first word? up to first dash?) link to single-line new entry box

• timed events/comments (ie, way to postdate a timestamp on a new post)
• comments in single post mode

• mindmap-style editing via ajax or whatever
  • nodes are just titles until you open them up
    • can default to nodes open or closed
  • smart about stuff: eg, pasting a hyperlink on a node makes the node a link
  • category nodes are special: just containers for links to other nodes (?????)
• this may or may not simplify things: but analysis and synthesis as two separate activities? (ie analysis: trad. outliner/mindmap mode, quick keystrokes to add children/peers; synthesis: re-drawing as a non-hierarchical concept map, marking stuff as categories)
  • hey wait a minute, yeah: tags and then playlists on top of those (for like "LA Music") or whatever

• ability to check off items in lists (see basecamp to-do lists)
• script to auto-move Notes with leading "-"s to ibnextactions on phone/Outlook sync?

also see: notes about the PIM i want to build

ok: start with succinct problem definition? maybe even use cases?

• want to add structure to entries (outliner/mindmapper)
• want more rational tagging structure (Music/LA, Other/LA, Music/Events -> Music, Events, LA - but with easy access to intersections: Music LA, Music LA Events)
• want faster, 100% keyboard-based editing etc

why am i resistant to storing work notes in ib?

• concerns about confidentiality
• no search for private entries
• not available offline (ah ha!)

stuff i've done!

• fuck it, let's just make titles the first line
• make the entry title the html page title
• striphtml
• private check sets edit screen bkgrnd gray
• smart lists v1
• before in-place editing: write changes to _two_ files, ibcurrent.db and ibfull.db. ibcurrent is what gets displayed; old versions of revised entries are cleaned from ibcurrent.db. ibfull has every version of everything.
• keyboard shortcut to expand/collapse all

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. (not just pseudo-latin)