shadowfaxRodeo

That's a good point about the favicon mix. I really want to get a difinitve answer to all this. I'll do some tests when I have time.

I guess that should read most servers? I'm not much of a backend dev, but every default I've seen has included the charset in the headers.

I realize I'm blowing against the wind on this one!

On a site by site basis it seems that you really can get rid of it. I've only tested my own sites offline in various browsers and they work fine without the meta tag.

One example of a site that doesn't use it is YouTube, and I figured that can't be an accident.

So i guess the question is — should we keep markup for the case where someone downloads our webpage on a legacy browser?

For me the answer is yes, if people are using an old netbook on a dialup connection and they save your site locally to save data. That could be a good idea. I'll do some testing though because I think even old IE defaults to utf-8.

Someone correct me if i'm wrong but I've been doing a bit of research and I'm pretty sure you can remove these:

    <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico">

by default if a supported icon isn't found in the markup all browsers search for favicon.ico at the site's root.

The same is true for apple touch icon, you can just remove it:

   <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">

I've tested this and it works fine on apple devices.

   <meta charset="UTF-8">

By default servers add the charset as an http header. So you don't need to declare it in the document — in the case of offline where there are no http headers, the browser works out what encoding to use. And since utf-8 is the only valid charset for HTML5 it should be the default. I've tested this a bit, and it seems to work.

Which element is hacky?

The inlined icon feels hacky maybe. Inlining very small files is a good idea I think though. Sending an entire request for only 108 bytes is a bit wasteful.

Great tool.

I've been doing some tests with Emoji / SVG favicons.

There's a couple of problems. They don't show up on some old browsers and in google search results.

For old browsers there's a solution, which is to have a raster .ico version of the icon at the root of the domain: e.g. example.com/favicon.ico

But for the google issue, I'm not sure if that's the solution. Whatever google is using to render svg icons in their search results just doesn't like emojis. I haven't tested that yet.

also as others have pointed out there's this bit of code that can save you an http request:

<link rel="icon" href="data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 99 99'><text y='.9em' font-size='90'>EMOJI</text></svg>">

So then how will the software convert the X,Y coordinates into text that is read out to a screen reader? I think many of the other comments put it more eloquently than I can.

How would the software that lets me add text to images work? Presumably it would use unicode.

And how would the software that extracts text from an image store the extracted text? If it comes accross a number of symbols from different domains how would it save them, and what table of contents would it use as a reference? Unicode.

Amazing, bookmarked.

Where did you get all of them from, and is there a way of contributing manuals?

This is extraordinary.

Thanks that's really useful — I definitely have the time to watch videos at the moment so that was an easy sell.

I'm talking from the perspective of the developers. It's not that difficult to accomodate people. Following principles on progressive enhancement is actually easier than not doing it.

If you're looking for a way to out-compete your competitors, how about making an app that works for the people they've left out?

Everybody fits into a 1%.

Why design for vision, hearing, motor, cognitive impairments, older browsers, feature phones, 2g connections, motion sensitivity, unusual input devices, smart watches, tvs, game consoles, low-powered devices, languages other than English?

I don't mean to sound harsh, but I'm very tired of hearing this argument. It's not that hard to accomodate people, especially on Apple devices, they give you all the tools to do this.

Don't be shocked if X group is a small fraction of your users if your design has made it clear they're not welcome.

I'm just interested really, happy to spend lots of time doing it for fun.

Generally when you build clean HTML like you say, it benefits everybody, including the developers.

There's also plenty of applications that simply wouldn't work without javascript.

I'd advocate for at least having a <noscript> tag explaining briefly why it doesn't work.

The podcast "How to save a Planet" did an interesting two parter on kelp farming as a climate solution. If anyone is interested:

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/94h3rvm/kelp-...

The author didn't touch one of the biggest issues of Tailwind. It ignores the Cascade part of CSS.

Even after optimizing Tailwind. You still end up with way more css than you should have. Add all the classes in the HTML and you're sending users a massive amount of data.

Instead of writing:

    main > * + * {
      margin-top:1rem
    }

you write `mt-100` a thousand times.

100% agree. I use server-side analytics for vanity metrics like "unique visits," and a contact form for feedback.

People really appreciate not being tracked, or having to agree to cookies.

I built a tool for playing around with different dithering effects and palettes if anyone is interested in having a play: https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this

This looks really interesting. Bookmarked it. Thanks for your work.

But is there any way of verifying if what you're saying is true?

That's 3000 martian sols. So ~3090 earth days. 90 days more impressive than the headline suggests.

I managed to get most of my family to use telegram. I just stopped using whatsapp and convinced a few of them to do so also, the rest came because they couldn't speak to us otherwise.

The key was being stubborn and banking on them eventually wanting to talk to me.

Hi Surma! fantastic article. You can save a lot of data switching to a lossless format as you said, and especially when using ordered dithering. Even if the color palette is quite large.

Error diffusion causes problems for certain color palettes, but usually results in a smaller image size.

I've made a tool for doing this: https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this, you can easily half the size of a jpeg by dithering it and exporting it as a png.

I just finished making an online dithering tool, doodad.dev/dither-me-this if anyone wants to play around with dithering.

I'll be re-jigging it based on some info from that article, and definitely adding 'blue noise' as an option. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you. I don't fully understand your answer. But i'll do some research until I do.

Thank you. That was a deliberate fix, in case the preview split was only showing the original image, the user might think nothing has changed. It could definitely be smarter than that though. I'll add it to the list.

There are some really great Egyptian Hieroglyphs including this derpy bird 𓅮 and one far too rude to print here.

This is a great idea.

I've been trying to start a movement to get quarantined folks to divest from fossil fuels, sign up to climate pressure groups, and register to vote.

The idea being we have all this time on our hands, time we can use to fight the other global catastrophe that's unfolding — the climate crisis.

https://greenquarantine.org/

If anyone wants to chip in and help, please let me know!

Yes, it is needed. The online group that seems to be making the most progress you can read about here:

https://medium.com/@brucefenton/we-need-ventilators-we-need-...

People are focusing on the ventilators because in Italy there aren't enough to go around, and they have had to triage them.

The UK government just put out a plea to manufacturers to make ventilators for the same reason.

There are also lots of unstable regions of the world that won't be able to get ventilators at scale. In those places being able to build one with off the shelf parts will save lives.

Kid Pix is one of my ealiest memories. Watching this has brought back a lot of memories.