Jim Nielsen’s Blog
A Well Known URL For Your Personal Avatar
Well-known URLs are pretty neat. I’ve even dared propose one before here on my blog.
And now I’m...
2 weeks ago
Well-known URLs are pretty neat. I’ve even dared propose one before here on my blog.
And now I’m here to propose another:
.well-known/avatar
The idea is: anybody that owns a domain can put their avatar in a well-known location.
I’ve already implemented this for my own site[1]....
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Get You Some Practical Accessibility
Sara has been working on a new course titled Practical Accessibility and it is available for...
2 weeks ago
Sara has been working on a new course titled Practical Accessibility and it is available for pre-order right now.
I’ve never met Sara in person, but have been an online follower for some time. She is one of those people who has the discipline and eye to make everything they...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Browser Defaults We Throw Away
Stefan Judis on Twitter:
I'm diving into @remix_run and I strongly agree with the sentiment that a...
a week ago
Stefan Judis on Twitter:
I'm diving into @remix_run and I strongly agree with the sentiment that a JS approach that includes writing event.preventDefault all the time is kinda off.
The browser defaults are great, and yet we're rollin' our own for years now. 🤔
I’ve been thinking...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Power of Fast Feedback Cycles
I was hyperlinked to this comment where Rich Harris stopped by Hacker News to clarify his position...
3 weeks ago
I was hyperlinked to this comment where Rich Harris stopped by Hacker News to clarify his position on the (controversial?) steps Svelte is taking to move off Typescript in favor of types-via-JSDoc comments.
First off, I love how Rich prefaces his comments by basically saying,...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Gratitude For a Web That Tries Not to Break
Chris wrote a response to my wondering-out-loud remarks about whether logical properties make CSS...
a month ago
Chris wrote a response to my wondering-out-loud remarks about whether logical properties make CSS easier to learn.
His response is great. And his tabular comparison of properties is short and concise and punchy in the way only Chris Coyier can reason about CSS.
His post actually...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Link Preload as Image
I’ve been playing with these fancy new view transitions and my experience thus far is that they work...
a week ago
I’ve been playing with these fancy new view transitions and my experience thus far is that they work ok on localhost, but as soon as I push code to a preview branch on a remote server, the image loads between transitions are janky because of image loading.
Granted, this stuff...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Circles and Momentum
I had not come across this graphic from swyx until recently:
I like this reminder.
I know for me,...
a month ago
I had not come across this graphic from swyx until recently:
I like this reminder.
I know for me, it’s often too easy to slip into a kind of cynicism that only sees endless stationary circles rather than ones with directional momentum.
It reminds me of the visualizations of...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Building an Infinite Spreadsheet
As of late, I’ve been working on Quadratic: an infinite canvas spreadsheet that runs code. Think...
3 weeks ago
As of late, I’ve been working on Quadratic: an infinite canvas spreadsheet that runs code. Think Figma (infinite canvas) meets Excel (spreadsheet) meets VSCode (IDE). In addition to formulas (e.g. SUM(A1:A5)) every cell in Quadratic can be the result of code (right now it’s...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Date and Time with a Static Site Generator
Do you have a static site generator?
If so, how do you handle the date and time for when your posts...
2 weeks ago
Do you have a static site generator?
If so, how do you handle the date and time for when your posts are published?
For me, I record the publish date once: in the filename (e.g. 2023-05-16-my-slug.md). That YYYY-MM-DD string in the filename is the canonical location for my posts’...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Setting Your Social Handle as Your Domain Name on Bluesky
I recently got an invite to Bluesy (thx JJ). I wanted to try it purely for the satisfaction of...
3 weeks ago
I recently got an invite to Bluesy (thx JJ). I wanted to try it purely for the satisfaction of setting my domain name as my handle, as I’m fan of the idea of apex domain’s becoming the currency of online handles. As I once tweeted: domains are the OG handles.
Granted, I own...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Cite Your Sources, AI
In a recent note of mine, I quoted Jaron Lanier on AI chatbots:
There are two ways this could go....
a month ago
In a recent note of mine, I quoted Jaron Lanier on AI chatbots:
There are two ways this could go. One is that we pretend the bot is a real thing, a real entity like a person, then in order to keep that fantasy going we’re careful to forget whatever source texts were used to have...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Notes and Reflections from Rich Harris’ Talk
Rich has a new talk and, as usual, it’s full of practicality. I’ve got my text editor open and ready...
a month ago
Rich has a new talk and, as usual, it’s full of practicality. I’ve got my text editor open and ready to take notes as we go.
Whatever Framework You’re Using, It’s Fine
Note: that’s coming from the author of a framework!
Rich points out that most of the degraded, slow, hostile...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Types in JavaScript With Zod and JSDoc
There are cases where I like types in JavaScript. And I don’t mind Typescript, especially for bigger...
2 months ago
There are cases where I like types in JavaScript. And I don’t mind Typescript, especially for bigger projects — as long as somebody more knowledgable than me sets it up and maintains it.
When I want type hints in VSCode for smaller, personal projects, I use JSDoc which lets you...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Single Line Comments in CSS
Brad Frost noted on Twitter how he recently made a website with plain HTML, CSS, JS, etc., and found...
a week ago
Brad Frost noted on Twitter how he recently made a website with plain HTML, CSS, JS, etc., and found himself missing some of the ergonomics from Sass.
Having mostly abandoned Sass on personal projects, I was curious what he felt was missing.
He mentioned nesting media queries,...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Site Search in Arc Browser — For Your Own Site
Arc just released site search built right into the browser.
Want to search for something...
a month ago
Arc just released site search built right into the browser.
Want to search for something specifically on Twitter? Pull up the search bar and start typing Twitter:
Select the site search option and hit Tab. This puts you into what I’ll call “site search mode”:
Once you enter...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Watch Transitions in Slow Motion in Chrome’s DevTools
For those of you about to do view transitions, I salute you!
And I pass on this super useful...
5 days ago
For those of you about to do view transitions, I salute you!
And I pass on this super useful (perhaps obvious) piece of information I received from Bramus: watch your animations play out in slow motion using Chrome’s devtools.
I’ve been working on view transitions on my icon...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Offline Is Just Online With Extreme Latency
I just finished watching “Local-first Software” by Peter Van Hardenberg and loved it!
He talks about...
a month ago
I just finished watching “Local-first Software” by Peter Van Hardenberg and loved it!
He talks about changing the paradigm we’re currently in where a program runs in the cloud and we look at it when we’re online, to one where the program runs on the device in our hands and we...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
AI & The Science of Creativity
In an effort to better understand how all this AI stuff works, I’ve been chipping away at Stephen...
a month ago
In an effort to better understand how all this AI stuff works, I’ve been chipping away at Stephen Wolfram’s meticulous piece, “What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?”.
As you likely know, ChatGPT works by guessing at the next word. Here’s Stephen:
when ChatGPT does...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
AI Takes Over Because of Human Hype, Not Machine Intelligence
Geoff, in his recent blog post “Damn the AI Torpedos”:
The idea that businesses are already waging...
2 months ago
Geoff, in his recent blog post “Damn the AI Torpedos”:
The idea that businesses are already waging an “AI arms race”…that one those very companies, Microsoft, can invest $11 billion into OpenAI while laying off the folks responsible for keeping AI, um, responsible…that real...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
The Alphabet as Technology
Robin has an interesting post about the technology of words:
Thinking of a language as a technology...
2 months ago
Robin has an interesting post about the technology of words:
Thinking of a language as a technology or a product is strange at first but the more you look at them the more they resemble microwaves or dishwashers; incredibly complicated under the hood but also sort of boring on...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
More Everything With AI
From the announcement blog post for Microsoft 365 Copilot:
You can give it natural language prompts...
2 months ago
From the announcement blog post for Microsoft 365 Copilot:
You can give it natural language prompts like “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads.
With Copilot, you’re always...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Notes to Self on Mastodon
Disclaimer: I still don’t fully understand the mechanics of Mastodon. But this is my attempt to...
a month ago
Disclaimer: I still don’t fully understand the mechanics of Mastodon. But this is my attempt to articulate what I do understand in a way that helps me better understand the differences — and similarities — between Twitter and Mastodon, especially when it comes to owning more of...
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Logical Properties and Ease
I’ll admit, I’m late to the logical properties party.
The purist in me loves the idea because it...
2 months ago
I’ll admit, I’m late to the logical properties party.
The purist in me loves the idea because it makes CSS more internally consistent with its design to be a language-agnostic framework for uni-directional layout. Chris gets at this in his recent post, “Why aren’t logical...
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