m0xEE @m0xee@librem.one

Portrait of a Cat with a Hairstyle | Портрет кошки с прической

https://straycatsobserver.ru/cats/2024-I0308278

#whitecat #cowcat #猫 #ねこ #кошка #cat #fedicats #catsofpixelfed #pixelfedcats

New family! This is Frankie. She's a feral #kitten. She's all about squeaking and eating.
#Cats

The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

I've told this story at conferences - but due to the general situation I thought I'd retell it here.

A few years ago I was doing policy research in a housing benefits office in London. They are singularly unlovely places. The walls are brightened up with posters offering helpful services for people fleeing domestic violence. The security guards on the door are cautiously indifferent to anyone walking in. The air is filled with tense conversations between partners - drowned out by the noise of screaming kids.

In the middle, a young woman sits on a hard plastic chair. She is surrounded by canvas-bags containing her worldly possessions. She doesn't look like she is in a great emotional place right now. Clutched in her hands is a games console - a PlayStation Portable. She stares at it intensely; blocking out the world with Candy Crush.

Or, at least, that's what I thought.

Walking behind her, I glance at her console and recognise the screen she's on. She's connected to the complementary WiFi and is browsing the GOV.UK pages on Housing Benefit. She's not slicing fruit; she's arming herself with knowledge.

The PSP's web browser is - charitably - pathetic. It is slow, frequently runs out of memory, and can only open 3 tabs at a time.

But the GOV.UK pages are written in simple HTML. They are designed to be lightweight and will work even on rubbish browsers. They have to. This is for everyone.

Not everyone has a big monitor, or a multi-core CPU burning through the teraflops, or a broadband connection.

The photographer Chase Jarvis coined the phrase "the best camera is the one that’s with you". He meant that having a crappy instamatic with you at an important moment is better than having the best camera in the world locked up in your car.

The same is true of web browsers. If you have a smart TV, it probably has a crappy browser.

My old car had a built-in crappy web browser.

Both are painful to use - but they work!

If your laptop and phone both got stolen - how easily could you conduct online life through the worst browser you have? If you have to file an insurance claim online - will you get sent a simple HTML form to fill in, or a DOCX which won't render?

What vital information or services are forbidden to you due to being trapped in PDFs or horrendously complicated web sites?

Are you developing public services? Or a system that people might access when they're in desperate need of help? Plain HTML works. A small bit of simple CSS will make look decent. JavaScript is probably unnecessary - but can be used to progressively enhance stuff. Add alt text to images so people paying per MB can understand what the images are for (and, you know, accessibility).

Go sit in an uncomfortable chair, in an uncomfortable location, and stare at an uncomfortably small screen with an uncomfortably outdated web browser. How easy is it to use the websites you've created?

I chatted briefly to the young woman afterwards. She'd been kicked out by her parents and her friends had given her the bus fare to the housing benefits office. She had nothing but praise for how helpful the staff had been. I asked about the PSP - a hand-me-down from an older brother - and the web browser. Her reply was "It's shit. But it worked."

I think that's all we can strive for.

Here are some stats on games consoles visiting GOV.UK

Interestingly we have 3,574 users visiting https://t.co/CcU3PLPTpj on games consoles:
• Xbox - 2,062
• Playstation 4 - 1,457
• Playstation Vita - 25
• Nintendo WiiU - 14
• Nintendo 3DS - 16

20/22

— Matt Hobbs (@TheRealNooshu) February 1, 2021

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/

#HTML5 #web #WeekNotes #work

I still don't get how people can endure a character limit of 300. That's so small. Even if I try to be brief, I often hit the limit. This post is already at 160, and there's barely any information.

For fans of Terry Pratchett, or the Pratchett-curious, there's a Humble Bundle right now with 35 Discworld books (epubs through Kobo) for around $20. Pay more to donate more to charity.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/terry-pratchetts-discworld-harpercollins-encore-books

Wahn – Drifted Vol. 2

https://www.clongclongmoo.org/2024/09/16/wahn-drifted-vol-2-2/

#bync #electronic #experimental #idm #ccmusic #creativecommons

🐿️ Envie de voir du mignon ? De partager des trucs qui font du bien au moral dans votre flux #matrix ?

Le salon #fr #Awww est là pour ça, une safe place pour aller bien, quand tout va mal.

https://matrix.to/#/#awww:matrix.org

#france #element #cute #cats

Zur Ablenkung von vielem, ein bisschen #catcontent. Inklusive Pfoto! Die Fotos habe ich heute beim Aufräumen wieder gefunden.

Cats download firmware updates once a month from the cat cloud. Here we see that Margaret has lost her signal half way through the process and has become bricked.

Fear not, she will enter recovery mode when a fly enters the room.

#CatsOfMastodon #caturday