@grigs@front-end.social
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

grigs

@grigs@front-end.social

Co-Founder of Cloud Four. Author of Progressive Web Apps from A Book Apart. Trying to balance work, life, and taking care of my father. he/him

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grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

I’ve been thinking about and wanting to read more on ethical frameworks for AI (or machine learning and LLMs) but perhaps in a more narrow way than most of the discussions I’ve encountered thus far.

Most of what I read are focused on the large societal impact of AI: job loss, human labor devalued, copyright issues, environmental issues, Terminator movies come to life.

All of these things are legitimate concerns. And I like reading about them, but that's not what I'm looking for.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Instead, I’m trying to figure out the framework by which I might determine that AI was ethical in the small in a given product.

For example, I think the fact my robot vacuum can use AI to recognize dog poop and wires is undeniably a benefit. No one lost a job because of it. It's not going to take over the world. Maybe there were copyright violations in training? I can't say. I would even guess that the water consumption for this AI use case doesn't compare to ChatGPT, et al.

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Second question related to https://front-end.social/@grigs/111545851723524327

The reason why many sites open outbound links in new tabs or windows is because the site owners believe doing so will result in more users returning to their site increasing their time on site and presumably increasing ad revenue or purchasing.

Are there any studies that have measured this effect? Is there any proof that it actually works?

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

In 1999, Jakob Nielson wrote that the back button was the second most frequently used navigation feature after clicking on links.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/the-top-ten-web-design-mistakes-of-1999/

For those friends who work on browsers, is this still true? Is the back button still a heavily used feature by users?

For this question, I would consider swipe to go back to be the equivalent of clicking the button.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

The reason I ask this question is because this is the primary argument I make against opening links in new tabs or windows. But the data is old enough that some people question if it is still true.

BTW, there are also accessibility issues with opening links in new tabs or windows as documented by WCAG.
https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/G200.html

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Why We’re Dropping Basecamp from Duke University Libraries https://blogs.library.duke.edu/blog/2023/11/30/why-were-dropping-basecamp/ /ht @spaceninja

Well-written prose in this piece. I felt a bit of professional jealousy at the kicker. The last three graphs… :chef’s kiss:

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Today is Blue Beanie Day celebrating web standards. So proud of the small role that we at @cloudfour have had in helping push web standards forward!

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Apple’s new Personal Voice feature lets people who are losing their voice recreate it digitally so they can use Live Speech to talk. The latest ad is moving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra9I0HScTDw

Thinking about how my father unexpectedly lost his voice after a stroke left him with a trach makes me wonder if even if you aren’t at any immediate risk of losing your voice, if it still makes sense to do this.

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

About a month ago, I wrote about how there was one type of project that we seem to excel at, but that we didn’t know what to call it. Well, we finally published our attempt to describe it.
https://cloudfour.com/does/legacy-app-modernization/

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback. What do you think? Did we capture the essence of this work well?
https://front-end.social/@grigs/111331595745772669

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Over the years, many people have told me that I should make my Responsive Images 101 series into a book. I always demurred. It seemed like a lot of work.

But thanks to my Cloud Four colleagues who drove this project, Responsive Images 101 is now a lovely ebook that you can download and read at your leisure!
https://cloudfour.com/thinks/announcing-our-new-ebook-responsive-images-101/

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

I need some help. We’ve been working to define better what we do at Cloud Four. Turns out that just being really good at the web and wanting to share what we learn is a little hard to differentiate on.

So we’ve been looking at past projects to determine if they might be areas worth focusing on. And there is one type of project I think we excel at, but I have no idea what to call it. And without a name, it is nearly impossible to research.

So what would you call it?
https://cloudfour.com/thinks/what-do-you-call-this-thing-we-do/

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw I should say that one of the problems we're having is trying to figure out how we would find people who need our help? So I don’t think coining a new phrase will help. I need to figure out what the people who have this problem call it so we can say, “If you're looking for X, come see us because we're really good at X.”

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Stumbled onto Ditto for the first time today, and am having a little trouble wrapping my mind around it. https://www.dittowords.com/

It promotes itself as a “a single source of truth for your product copy” and touts how it helps writers “create and manage a text component library” which I didn’t know was a thing.

I’m still trying to understand how Ditto differs from a content management system. Is anyone using it? How do you think of it as different than say a headless CMS?

zachleat, to random
@zachleat@zachleat.com avatar

The Ideal Viewport Doesn’t Exist

https://viewports.fyi/

Loved the visual example of 3 distinct viewports on a single iOS device: Safari, in-app browser (boo!), and the long-press quick preview.

By our friends at @setstudio (@andy et al!)

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@zachleat @setstudio @andy The ideal viewport is the one I’m using at the moment.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@zachleat @setstudio @andy Well, my screen size is 1920x1080, but let me open dev tools so I can see what my viewport size is…

Oops, sorry, now it is 1418x892 with dev tools open. Let me close dev tools and see if I can find a screen ruler to measure. Ok, I'm just going to split screen this window so I can find the ruler…

Oh, now the ideal viewport is 940×979 at half screen…

Maybe I should build my own site that auto-publishes my viewport so everyone can keep up?

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@zachleat @setstudio @andy I’ll get the VCs lined up asap.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@zachleat I feel bad about all the work @andy and @setstudio did on their beautiful site only to find out there is an ideal viewport.

So I asked ChatGPT for code to find my viewport to add to the site. It suggested:

var idealViewportWidth = window.innerWidth;
var idealViewportHeight = window.innerHeight;
var sentence = "The ideal viewport is " + idealViewportWidth + " pixels wide and " + idealViewportHeight + " pixels tall.";

That should work until we get funding and can build a realtime API.

scottjehl, to random
@scottjehl@mstdn.social avatar

This post by @grigs illustrates the challenge businesses face in finding technical advice that's actually going to be good for their business when popular practices so often lead to poor performance.
https://cloudfour.com/thinks/who-can-you-trust-with-your-online-business/

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@danjac @scottjehl we’ve thought about offering this service, but it feels like the reality is that many projects won’t be good candidates for the conversion without a massive rebuild.

And selling organizations on paying for that rebuild is a steep ask—especially given the ones that might be able to afford it are also likely to be the ones with developers on staff—likely the same ones who picked React in the first place.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@scottjehl @danjac my experience with WPT SSG experiments was not reliable. Pages broke regularly. But that is similar to the direction I was heading:
https://front-end.social/@grigs/109820553119110254
https://front-end.social/@grigs/109820601199977122

Unfortunately, solutions like this assume there is already some routing in the app using Next or whatever and the biggest problem sites are the <div></div> monstrosities.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@scottjehl @danjac BTW, I’d love to be proven wrong about this.

I looked at this for awhile and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t a good path and that we’d be signing up for grief by giving hope that would be crushed when we dig into the underlying repo.

If there was a reliable path to take any random React SPA and make it a fast WPA that wasn’t completely dependent on the idiosyncratic nature of whatever the original developers had built, I would jump at the opportunity.

grigs,
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

@scottjehl @danjac it doesn’t even have to be a miracle cure. Just a series of tools in the toolbox that could be applied consistently and put someone on the path towards reducing their technical debt incrementally instead of having to scrap everything and start over.

Sadly, it feels like many React apps fall in the scrap everything bucket.

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

Who can you trust with your online business?
https://cloudfour.com/thinks/who-can-you-trust-with-your-online-business/

Wherein I describe two phone calls with people whose sites have deep issues, tilt against React windmills, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries about the state of our industry.

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

My father passed away Thursday. I feel weird posting about it because most of you never met him.

But I talked a lot about his care over the last few years. People have asked about him and our family. So I know people who didn't know him have followed along. I always appreciated your concern and support.

He was a kind, funny, and generous person. He was a great dad. I miss him.

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

We watched the season finale of Ahsoka last night. It felt like there was a lot of context that was only available to people who have watched the animated shows. I never have so I left the season a bit mystified. Moments that I think were supposed to be emotional, didn’t land at all.

I wanted so much to like the series because I love Rosario Dawson and she is badass as Ahsoka. But I can’t recommend it unless you know more backstory than I did going in.

grigs, to random
@grigs@front-end.social avatar

The picture element for unexpected art direction
by @anniegreens documents an elegant solution for making sure images match light and dark themes without using JS.

The example of bright screenshots on dark screens is something that I’ve noticed. Despite that, I’m not sure I’m ready to sign up for creating duplicate screenshots because, well, I’m lazy.

But this <picture> solution kinda makes me want to overcome my laziness and do it. It’s that cool.

https://weblog.anniegreens.lol/2023/10/the-picture-element-for-unexpected-art-direction

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