@robinwhittleton@front-end.social
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

robinwhittleton

@robinwhittleton@front-end.social

Front-end at IKEA (focusing on design systems, accessibility), ex GOV.UK. Opinions my own (or at least not IKEA’s). 🇸🇪🇬🇧🇪🇺 #designSystems #accessibility #standardEbooks

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sarajw, (edited ) to random
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

From years of being bored, unsatisfied, or struggling in various jobs and industries, I finally feel like I have come home.

I'm so happy to join an industry with such brilliant, interesting, and gloriously nerdy people - I mean this in the best possible way!

I have attended both Beyond Tellerrand Düsseldorf and CSS Day 2024 and, wow. Huge thank yous to the organisers, speakers, and to the many warm and funny fellow attendees I had the joy to socialise with.

This is my church.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw haven’t been to a front-end conf in years: COVID, shifting job priorities, the long death of front-end Twitter and a feeling of not having contacts in the current set of interesting people meant giving them a lower priority. But the chatter I’ve seen from CSS Day is making me properly jealous for the first time in ages. Next year then.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw @SaraSoueidan they got noted on web-a11y Slack a while ago as well. It’s such a simple thing that was suggested in an accessibility review by Tommy Feldt (not on fedi) and we added them to the design system in less than a day. Nice to be a good example though 😊

tanepiper, to random
@tanepiper@tane.codes avatar

Should this even be optional? 🤔

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@tanepiper if you’ve got a hidden phone stashed from a domestic abuser then you definitely don’t want it giving up its own location loudly.

ben, to fediverse
@ben@werd.social avatar

There's no good way to prevent AI models from being trained on art published on the fediverse. But there's work we can do to prevent it and protect the artists who post there. https://werd.io/2024/protecting-artists-on-the-fediverse

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@simon @timbray @ben https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-opt-into-or-out-of-full-text-search-on-mastodon/ is a good summary.

sarajw, to accessibility
@sarajw@front-end.social avatar

Hm. The @EUCommission had a website about accessibility overlays and... Now it's hidden under a SharePoint login? Did someone insist they take it down?

#accessibility #overlaysAreTerrible

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw @EUCommission seems that it’s intended for internal use only. Not sure if it was an accidental publish in the first place.

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

Most of my spare brain power is currently going to wondering how my attempt at the is going to go on Sunday. Trying to enjoy the run-up nerves, as there won’t be another first attempt at a marathon.

zachleat, to random
@zachleat@zachleat.com avatar

inside me is two woffs that I desperately wish was one variable woff

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@zachleat I looked into this for the day job, but there’s no value unless you specifically want to use the variability.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@zachleat maybe we’ve heavily optimised our files already, but I was seeing more KB with a variable font. Partially this was down to an unknown-to-me semibold in Noto Sans variable. But even after stripping that out, the axes added enough that it wasn’t worth it.

Where we did see a big benefit from variable fonts was (ironically) not in the font itself, but in halving the size of the CJK font chunk CSS.

robin, to random
@robin@mastodon.social avatar

If you're still using Chrome in 2024, the only question is why?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/technology/google-chrome-browser-data.html

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@robin some big Chrome ad campaigns going on in Sweden at least. Guess they’re getting worried.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@robin I’d assumed it was getting iPhone users to switch in advance of a Blink release. I can’t find the videos now, but there’s one about “fake homepages” and a couple on built-in translate being useful when you’re on holiday.

gutenberg_org, (edited ) to random
@gutenberg_org@mastodon.social avatar

Service outage April 9 via @gbnewby

Due to an unplanned outage at our hosting facility, search functions and book download pages have been unavailable since the afternoon of April 9. We hope to have services restored by the morning of April 10 (Eastern Daylight Time). It may take a little time after that for the latest new books to be processed.

Thanks for your comprehension!

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@gutenberg_org hope all of the PG staff aren’t too stressed. It’ll be fixed when it’s fixed ❤️

ben, to random
@ben@werd.social avatar

Made the mistake of writing a jokey post about Tesla FSD, someone posted it to Hacker News, getting a few private messages, rethinking my life

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@ben ah nuts, genuinely sorry :/ In retrospect I should have guessed that it would have turned into a flamewar. Today’s lesson…

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

Reworked the IKEA SVG logo today to fix some jankiness in Chromium in fractional scaling environments, and saved 110 bytes in the process. A good Friday ☺️

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

I have a child that doesn't like pizza. I also received a sourdough starter from a friend last week that I'm preparing some experiments with.

Will I change their mind?

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw @hdv good thing you left Sweden then, given the prevalance of chips on pizza.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw my local pizzeria has a “King Kung” which apparently comprises tomato sauce, cheese, kebab meat, chilis, chips and garlic sauce.

Still sounds better than fish finger pizza 🤢

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw @hdv the true Swedish pizza experience.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw @hdv this has turned into a quality Friday afternoon Slack thread at work too. Was just reminded about Stellan’s kiwi pizza https://www.expressen.se/kvallsposten/stellans-pizza-blev-en-snackis-i-hela-varlden/

baldur, (edited ) to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Not going to comment on the US vs Apple lawsuit, but I will say this: a big corporation doesn’t get into lawsuits and regulatory trouble with several countries on several continents without severe misbehaviour. Nobody sues a multi-billion dollar multinational just for fun. Apple earned this

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@baldur six orders of magnitude out 😅

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@baldur multi-trillion at this point ($2.6T+ today). It’s insane.

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

Starting to feel like there’s something wrong with me as a developer, when I see my colleague’s happy faces whenever AI or LLMs are mentioned. At best it’s a little interesting and at worst a ridiculous waste of resources for a negative value.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@Jbasoo I don’t use Copilot personally, but the biggest value seems to be as an “unblocker” rather than as a constant aid. At least nonsense is a starting point I guess.

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

This is impossible with current CSS right? Couplets where on each line the initial part is width-matched for the entire verse, but the second part can overflow into a new linebox. Closest I’ve got is display: table which gets us width matching, but of course that doesn’t allow for overflow.

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@sarajw yep, each line is a span separated by a br, and contains two spans. I could change that if necessary.

I did play around with subgrid a bit but didn’t get anywhere promising. Will give it another go though later.

tanepiper, to random
@tanepiper@tane.codes avatar

How did humanity exist for hundreds of thousands of years, yet it seems our cultural memory only really goes back about 3500 years?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240307-the-160-year-mystery-of-the-stone-age-venus-figurines

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@tanepiper Australian Aboriginal memory seems to go back further, e.g. an oral tradition that contains records of one of the last volcanos to erupt in mainland Australia 30k years ago: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-26/study-dates-victorian-volcano-that-buried-a-human-made-axe/11991290

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

Hm, in this latest newsletter, Jakob Nielsen suggests generative AI can “replace” accessibility. this idea is wrong on various levels https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/accessibility-generative-ui

(grumpy me notes this also contains an infographic without alt; something something about getting basics right before making grander statements)

robinwhittleton,
@robinwhittleton@front-end.social avatar

@hdv what Nielsen is not considering (or has conveniently swept under the rug) is that to engage with a tuned AI that generates a design, a user would have to expose their needs and consequently their disability status to the company in question. It’s a complete non-starter from a privacy point of view in any sane regulatory system.

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