#187 - Downtime

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Issue #187! I hope all is well and you’re finding time for yourself.

Personally, I’ve been taking it fairly easy. After a busy month or so of travel, family events and weddings, it was time for some rest and recuperation. During this downtime I’ve rediscovered the power of baths, my love of Zero 7 and cooking.

Work-wise, I’m making slow progress – the best kind. I’ve been writing, planning my next moves and generally taking my time about things. It’s the approach that seems to work best for me.

Here are some links that caught my eye over the month of June. And, a couple of bits from me. One on humans.txt files and the other about email masking.

Thought provoking #

“Any organization, any person, any community that is resilient is one where people are coming together, where there is outside support, where there is shared contribution toward a shared future” How to Cultivate Resilience: A Four Part Framework.

“I like to think that a well structured page on a website would also make a sensible ToC after scraping the page’s HTML.” Sara J. Wallén in Aspects of Accessibility (a11y) - Semantics, Contrast and… Anxiety?

Books I’ve read. Derek Sivers’ book notes are now public.

Design and Code #

Introduction to Defensive CSS. A new project from Ahmad Shadeed which covers CSS practices that designers and developers can use to write resilient CSS.

The the smallest CSS. I was glad to stumble upon this post from Robin Rendle, as the topic of writing less CSS interests me a lot.

“Prefer HTML over CSS over Images over Typefaces over JavaScript, in that order. Roughly.” One of Baldur Bjarnason’s 136 facts every web dev should know before they burn out and turn to landscape painting or nude modelling.

The web is for Humans. I recently added a humans.txt file to my website to quietly express some gratitude towards the folk who have influenced how I built websites.

Don’t forget to fill out the 2022 Jamstack community survey!

Typography #

The Do’s and Don’ts of pairing typefaces. Narrow down your options by understanding the most common classifications, looking for typefaces with multiple variations and distinct characters, and pairing typefaces together with consistency and readability in mind.

Atkinson Hyperlegible is a free open source font by Applied Design Works, designed specifically for improved legibility and readability, to help those with low vision continue to enjoy the written word.

Seabell Type Foundry are releasing three new free fonts every month for the rest of 2022.

Performance and sustainability #

Don’t Sink Your Website With Third Parties. A fantastic read from Ken Harker about the impact third-party scripts have on web performance, and what you can do to solve the problem.

Two lines of CSS that boosts 7x rendering performance! Murtaza Nathani explains the benefits of content-visibility and contain-intrinsic-size.

Privacy and security #

I recently started Masking email, in an effort to protect my privacy, fight spam and reclaim control of my inbox. This post looks at what it is, how it works and the tools you can use to get started.

Something to listen to #

Web OG’s Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman join Chris and Dave to talk about Building the web in 2022.

Thank you for reading #

That’s it for this month! Thanks for tuning in for another issue.

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Seeing you in the next one.

Harry


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